
CHARLES DICKENS. 

^T. 53. 
From a Photograph taken in England ^ 1865. 



THE 



Fireside Dickens. 

A CYCLOPEDIA 

OF THE 

Best Thoughts 

OF 

CHARLES DICKENS. 



COMPBISINQ 



A CABEFUL SELECTION OF HIS BEST WBITINGS, 

ARRANGED IN SUBJECTS AND IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER 

WITH A COMPLETE INDEX. 

DESIGNED AS A 

READY REFERENCE TO HIS ENTIRE WORKS 

AND FOR 

FIRESIDE HALF-HOUR READINGS. 



F. G. DE IfONTAINE. 



WITH NUMEROUS CHARACTER ILLUSTRATIONS. 



^. 



NEW YORK: 

G. W. Car let on &r Co.^ Publishers. 

1883. 

ISOLD ONLY BY STJBSCRIPTION,\ 



T^^ 






\l$^ 



COPTBIGHT, 

V. Q. DE FONTAINE, 




WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 

The Grave of Charles Dickens, 

Near the Tombs of Shakspeare, Garrick, Chaucer and Dryden. 

(Drawn by S. L. Fildes.) 



INTRODUCTION. 



The object of this volume is to present in a compact form — alphabetically 
arranged for Ready Reference and for Fireside Half-hour readings — a se- 
lection of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens. It is only a great genius 
— one which has identified itself with the reading millions — that will bear 
such a test. But when an author has become a fountain of phrases and 
characters, and for more than thirty-five years tinged our current literature 
with his personages and phraseology — when Pickwick and the Wellers ; 
Pecksniff and Mark Tapley; Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; Peggotty 
and Barkis ; Susan Nipper and Dot ; Captain Cuttle and Wal'r ; Sairey 
Gamp and Mrs. Harris; Micawber and Mr. Turveydrop ; Little Nell, "Jo," 
and Paul; nay, the entire roll of fourteen hundred and twenty-five creations 
of his fancy, have become "as household words"— a collection of the *' Best 
Thoughts" of such an author will be neither unwelcome nor useless to those 
who admire the existing monuments of his literary labors. 

A compilation of this kind, indeed, has long been a want, for Charles 
Dickens has so forcibly impressed his strong; individualities upon all he has 
written, that there is scarcely a profession, or trade, or stratum of society, or 
subject, which, touched by his artistic pen, has not received some new light 
or shadow that makes the picture more vivid than before. Hence, he who 
reads simply to converse well or quote aptly, or he who would 

** Steal a thought and clip it round its edge, 
And challenge him whose 'twas, to swear to it," 

will find within these pages that which concerns every theme in life. 

The Lawyer, Minister, Physician, Journalist, Artist, Actor, Author, Orator, 
Inventor, Musician, Architect, School-master, Philanthropist, Life Insurance 
Agent, Broker, Auctioneer, Collector, Short-hand Writer, Undertaker, 
Jailor, Executioner, Stage Driver, House-keeper, Nurse,— all these and more 
have their place in the intellectual phantasmagoria — all are the objects of 
unmistakable satire, humor, or pathos— all wilffind something within these 
pages which concerns their various callings. Critics may quarrel with the 
art of Dickens, but the people will always admire his genius. Regarded 
from any point of view, his works constitute a unique gallery of portraits, 
wherein one may enjoy sympathy with all that is tender and true in 
humanity, or, on the other hand, find not extravagant illustrations of that 
which is false and forbidding. 

The author dwells among powerful contrasts. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
has described him as "a kind of Shakespeare, working in terra cotta instead 
of marble ;" while M. Taine, in his History of English Literature, alleges that 
he "contains an English painter," who, with passionate art, gives a voice to 
matter, and makes imaginary objects equivalent to realities. 

Whatever Dickens has described, is impressed upon the imagination with 
all the detail and truth of a living presence. Is it the massive machinery of 
a *'Dock Yard"— you hear the "scrunch" of the power-press. Is it the 
wind— you witness the "small tyranny with which it wreaks its vengeance 
on the fallen leaves, and then goes whirling among the crazy timbers 6i a 
steeple to mingle its moans with the Voices of the Bells." Is it an English 
home, at Christmas— you are sitting at the same board with Tiny Tim and 
Bob Cratchit, and there is not a detail of the feast missing, from the aroma 
of the annual pudding to the brewing of the punch. Does he paint a por- 
trait—his masterly touches fasten upon memory the hypocrisy of PecksniflE, 



1 

INTRODUCTION. 



Chadband, and Stiggins ; the rude devotion of Captain Cuttle, Sani Weller, 
and Mark Tapley; the sturdy strength of Boythorn; the villainy of Carker, 
Jonas Chuzzlewit, Fagin, and Sikes ; the noble generosity of the Cheeryble 
Brothers ; the selfish obstinacy of Dombey and Gradgrind ; the imperious- 
ness of Bounderby ; the dying face of Stephen Blackpool, turned to the star 
that *' ha' shined upon me in my pain and trouble down below ;" the sim- 
plicity of Tom Pinch, and the sweet child-life of Paul Dombey, Florence, 
and Little Nell ! 

As the diamond-cutter chips from the rough stone an angle here and an 
angle there to give perfection to the brilliant, so did Dickens develop 
thought until it became prismatic and picturesque, each character standing 
out as the incarnation of some virtue, vice, or absurdity. 

Nor was the satire of Dickens without a healthful purpose. His descrip- 
tions of Debtor's Prisons, the Court of Chancery, the Yorkshire schools and 
school-masters, the circumlocution Office, the spurious philanthropists, 
hypocritical pretenders to goodness, organized business swindlers, stony- 
hearted capitalists, and brutal hospital nurses, illustrate the power with 
which he thrust his victim through and through until life was extinct. His 
irony and ridicule thus concentrated upon all the classes of institutions 
which he exposed, directed public attention to the existing evils, and resulted 
in reform. 

In the language of Thackeray, "As for the charities of Mr. Dickens, the 
multiplied kindnesses which he has conferred upon us all, upon our children, 
upon people educated and uneducated, upon the myriads who speak our 
common tongue, have not you, have not I, all of us, reason to be thankful 
to this kind friend, who soothed and charmed so many hours ; brought 
pleasure and sweet laughter to so many homes ; made such multitudes of 
children happy ; endowed us with such a sweet store of gracious thoughts, 
fair fancies, soft sympathies, hearty enjoyments ? There are creations of 
Mr. Dickens which seem to me to rank as personal benefits ; figures so 
delightful that one feels happier and better for knowing them, as one does 

for being brought into the society of very good men and women 

Thankfully I take my share of the feast of love and kindness which this 
gentle, and generous, and charitable soul has contributed to the happiness 
of the World. I take and enjoy my share, and say a benediction for the 
meal." 

No novelist has been more thoroughly identified and associated with the 
illustrations originally made for his books than Charles Dickens. No 
author has ever been more fortunate and happy in the artists employed to 
embody and carry out to the eye the creations of his fancy, and rarely have 
illustrations been designed which have appealed more forcibly to the imag- 
ination of the reader. 

Unlike most book illustrations, where the designers have been chosen by 
the publisher, the original artists for illustrating Dickens' works were 
chosen by the author himself, and most of the subjects were by 
him selected and carefully considered. 

The pictures throughout this volume are not only faithful realizations of 
the Author's fancies, but they are exquisite designs in themselves — artistic 
and graceful, tender and touching, dramatic and painful, humorous and 
comic in the highest degree — while conveying a definite and truthful idea 
of the period and the times in which the stories were written. 

This *' Cyclopedia of Best Thoughts" contains upwards of fifteen 
hundred selections and embodies a versatility of thought and felicity of 
expression that make it the cream of the works of the popular novelist. 
It is therefore earnestly commended not only to those who have complete 
editions and desire a companion volume for ready reference, but to the 
general reader who may seek the pleasure that is to be derived from an 
irregular and cursory perusal of these '' Best Thoughts." 

August I, 1883. F. G. De Fontaine. 




Artist's Suggestions for the Head of Mr. Domhky 
Submitted to Dickens, for his Sklection. 



THE 



BEST THOUGHTS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



"So live thy better— let thy worst thoughts die." 

Sir Walter Balbish. 



ABBEY-Nell in tlie old. 

Already impressed, beyond all telling, by the 
silent building and the peaceful beauty of the 
spot in which it stood — majestic age surrounded 
by perpetual youth — it seemed to her, when she 
heard these things, sacred to all goodness and 
virtue. It was another world, where sin and 
sorrow never came ; a tranquil place of rest, 
where nothing evil entered. 

When the bachelor had given her in con- 
nection with almost every tomb and flat grave- 
stone some histoiy of its own, he took her down 
into the old crypt, now a mere dull vault, and 
showed her how it had been lighted up in the 
time of the monks, and how, amid lamps de- 
pending from the roof, and swinging censers 
exhaling scented odors, and habits glittering 
with gold and silver, and pictures, and precious 
stuffs, and jewels all flashing and glistening 
through the low arches, the chaunt of aged 
voices had been many a time heard there, at 
midnight, in old days, while hooded figures 
knelt and prayed around, and told their rosaries 
of beads. Thence, he took her above ground 
again, and showed her, high up in the old walls, 
small galleries, where the nuns had been wont 
to glide along — dimly seen in their dark dresses 
so far off — or to pause, like gloomy shadows, 
listening to the prayers. He showed her, too, 
how the warriors, whose figures rested on the 
tombs, had worn those rotting scraps of armor 
up above — how this had been a helmet and that 
a shield, and that a gauntlet — and how they 
had wielded the great two-handed swords, and 
beaten men down with yonder iron mace. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54. 

The very light coming through sunken win- 
dows, seemed old and gray, and the air, redolent 
of earth and mould, seemed laden with decay, 
purified by time of all its grosser particles, and 
sighing through arch, and aisle, and clustered 
pillars, like the breath of ages gone ! Here was 
the broken pavement, worn so long ago by pious 
feet that Time, stealing on the pilgrims' steps, 
had trodden out their track, and left but cntmb- 
ling stones. Here were the rotten beam, the sink- 
ing arch, the sapped and mouldering wall, the 
lowly trench of earth, the stately tomb on which 
no epitaph remained — all, marble, stone, iron, 
wood, and dust, one common monument of ruin. 
The best work and the worst, the plainest and 
the richest, the stateliest and the least imposing — 
both of Heaven's work and man's — all found one 
common level here, and told one common tale. 

Some part of the edifice had been a baronial 



chapel, and here were effigies of warriors stretch- 
ed upon their beds of stone with folded hands 
— crost-legged, those who had fought in the 
Holy Wars — girded with their swords, and 
cased in armor as they had lived. Some of 
these knights had their own weapons, helmets, 
coats of mail, hanging upon the walls hard by, 
and dangling from rusty hooks. Broken and 
dilapidated as they were, they yet retained their 
ancient form, and something of their ancient 
aspect. Thus violent deeds live after men upon 
the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will 
survive in mournful shapes long after those who 
worked the desolation are but atoms of earth 
themselves. 

The child sat down, in this old silent place, 
among the stark figures on the tombs — they 
made it more quiet there than elsewhere, to her 
fancy — and gazing round with a feeling of awe, 
tempered with a calm delight, felt that now 
she was happy, and at rest. She took a Bible 
from the shelf, and read ; then, laying it down, 
thought of the summer days and the bright 
springtime that would rome — of the rays of sun 
that would fall in aslant upon the sleeping 
forms — of the leaves that would flutter at the 
window, and play in glistening shadows on the 
pavement — of the songs of birds, and growth of 
buds and blossoms out of doors — of the sweet 
air that would steal in and gently wave the tat- 
tered banners overhead. What if the spot 
awakened thoughts of death ! Die who would, 
it would still remain the same ; these sights and 
sounds would still go on as happily as ever. 
It would be no pain to sleep amidst them. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53. 

ABILITY— Misdirected. (Stryver.) 

When his host followed him out on the stair- 
case with a candle, to light him down the stairs, 
the day was coldly looking in through its grimy 
windows. When he got out of the house, the 
air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the 
river dark and dim, the w^hole scene like a life- 
less desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning 
round and round before the morning blast, as 
if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the 
first spray of it, in its advance, had begun the 
ovcKivhelming of the city. 

Waste forces within him, and a desert all 
around, this man stood still on his way across a 
silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in 
the wilderness before him, a mirage of honora- 
ble ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In 
the fair city of this vision there were airy gal- 



ACTOR 



6 



ACTOa 



leries from which the loves and graces looked 
upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life 
hung ripening, waters of hope that sparkled in 
his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climb- 
ing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he 
threw Himself down in his clothes on a neglected 
bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. 

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose ; it rose upon no 
sadder sight than the man of good abilities and 
good emotions, incapable of their directed ex- 
ercise, incapable of his own help and his own 
happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and re- 
signing himself to let it eat him away. 

Tale of Two Cities^ Chap. 5. 

ACTOR— The Dying-. 

" I kept my promise. The last four-and- 
twenty hours had produced a frightful alteration. 
The eyes, though deeply sunk and heavy, shone 
with a lustre frightful to behold. The lips were 
parched, and cracked in many places ; the dry 
hard skin glowed with a burning heat, and there 
was an almost unearthly air of wild anxiety in 
the man's face, indicating even more strongly 
the ravages of the disease. The fever was at its 
height. 

" I took the seat I had occupied the night be- 
fore, and there I sat for hours, listening to 
sounds which must strike deep to the heart of 
the most callous among human beings — the 
awful ravings of a dying man. From what I 
had heard of the medical attendant's opinion, I 
knew there was no hope for him : I was sitting 
by his death-bed. I saw the wasted limbs, 
which, a few hours before, had been distorted 
for the amusement of a boisterous gallery, 
writhing under the tortures of a burning fever 
— I heard the clown's shrill laugh, blending 
with the low murmurings of the dying man. 

" It is a touching thing to hear the mind re- 
verting to the ordinary occupations and pur- 
suits of health, when the body lies before you 
weak and helpless ; but when those occupa- 
tions are of a character the most strongly op- 
posed to anything we associate with grave or 
solemn ideas, the impression produced is infi- 
nitely more powerful. The theatre, and the 
public-house, were the chief themes of the 
wretched man's wanderings. It was evening, 
he fancied ; he had a part to play that night ; it 
was late, and he must leave home instantly. 
Why did they hold him, and prevent his going ? 
— ^he should lose the money — he must go. No ! 
they would not let him. He hid his face in his 
burning hands, and feebly bemoaned his own 
weakness, and the cruelty of his persecutors. A 
short pause, and he shouted out a few doggerel 
rhymes — the last he had ever learnt. He rose 
in bed, drew up his withered limbs, and rolled 
about in uncouth positions — he was acting — he 
was at the theatre. A minute's silence, and he 
murmured the burden of some roaring song. 
He had reached the old house at last : how hot 
the room was. He had been ill, very ill, but 
he was well now, and happy. Fill up his glass. 
Who was that, that dashed it from his lips ? It 
was the same persecutor that had followed him 
before. He fell back upon his pillow and 
moaned aloud. A short period of oblivion, and 
he was wandering through a tedious maze of 
low-arched rooms — so low, sometimes, that he 
must creep upon his hands and knees to make 
his way along ; it was close and dark, and 



every way he turned, some obstacle impeded 
his progress. There were insects too, hideous, 
crawling things, with eyes that stared upon him, 
and filled the very air around — glistening hor- 
ribly amidst the thick darkness of the place. 
The walls and ceiling were alive with reptiles 
— the vault expanded to an enormous size — 
frightful figures flitted to and fro — and the 
faces of men he knew, rendered hideous by 
gibing and mouthing, peered out from among 
them — they were searing him with heated irons, 
and binding his head with cords till the blood 
started — and he struggled madly for life. 

" At the close of one of these paroxysms, 
when I had with great difficulty held him down 
in his bed, he sank into what appeared to be a 
slumber. Overpowered with watching and ex- 
ertion, I had closed my eyes for a few minutes, 
when I felt a violent clutch on my shoulder. 
I awoke instantly. He had raised himself up, 
so as to seat himself in bed — a dreadful change 
had come over his face, but consciousness had 
returned, for he evidently knew me. The child, 
who had been long since disturbed by his rav- 
ings, rose from his little bed, and ran towards 
its father, screaming with fright — the mother 
hastily caught it in her arms, lest he should in- 
jure it in the violence of his insanity ; but, ter- 
rified by the alteration of his features, stood 
transfixed by the bedside. He grasped my 
shoulder convulsively, and, striking his breast 
with the other hand, made a desperate attempt 
to articulate. It was unavailing — he extended 
his arm towards them, and made another vio- 
lent effort. There was a rattling noise in the 
throat — a glare of the eye — a short stifled groan, 
and he fell back — dead ! " — Pick., Chap. 3. 

ACTOR— His Reading- of Hamlet. 

" How did you like my reading of the charac- 
ter, gentlemen ?" said Mr. Waldengarver, almost, 
if not quite, with patronage. 

Herbert said from behind (again poking me), 
" massive and concrete." So I said boldly, as 
if I had originated it, and must beg to insist 
upon it, " massive and concrete." 

" I am glad to have your approbation, gen- 
tlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, with an air 
of dignity, in spite of his being ground against 
the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat 
of the chair. 

" But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengar- 
ver," said the man who was on his knees, " in 
which you're out in your reading. Now mind ! 
I don't care who says contrairy ; I tell you so. 
You're out in your reading of Hamlet when you 
get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I 
dressed made 'the same mistakes in his reading 
at rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer 
on each of his shins, and then at that rehearsal 
(which was the last) I went in front, sir, to the 
back of the pit, and whenever his reading 
brought him into profile, I called out, ' I don't 
see no wafers ! ' And at night his reading was 
lovely." 

****** 

When we were in a side alley, he turned and 
asked, " How do you think he looked ? — 1 
dressed him." 

I don't know what he had looked like, ex- 
cept a funeral ; with the addition of a large 
Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a 
blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance 



ACTOR 



ADJECTIVES 



of being insured in some extraordinary Fire 
Office. But I said he had looked very nice. 

" When he come to the grave," said our con- 
ductor, " he showed his cloak beautiful. But, 
judging from the wing, it looked to me that 
when he see the ghost in the queen's apartment, 
he might have made more of his stockings." 
Great Expectations, Chap. 31. 

ACTOR-** Feelingr a part." 

" We had a first-tragedy man in our company 
once, who, when he played Othello, used to 
black himself all over. But that's feeling a 
part and going into it as if you meant it ; it isn't 
usual — more's the pity." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 48. 

ACTORS— A g-athering: of. 

A pretty general muster of the company had 
by this time taken place ; for besides Mr. Len- 
ville and his friend Tommy, there were present, 
a slim young gentleman with weak eyes, who 
played the low-spirited lovers and sang tenor 
songs, and who had come arm-in-arm with the 
comic countryman — a man with a tumed-up 
nose, large mouth, broad face, and staring eyes. 
Making himself very amiable to the Infant Phe- 
nomenon, was an inebriated elderly gentleman 
in the last depths of shabbiness, who played the 
calm and virtuous old men ; and paying espe- 
cial court to Mrs. Crummies was another elderly 
gentleman, a shade more respectable, who played 
the irascible old men — those funny fellows who 
have nephews in the army, and perpetually run 
about with thick sticks to compel them to marry 
heiresses. Besides these, there was a roving- 
looking person in a rough great-coat, who strode 
up and down in front of the lamps, flourishing 
a dress-cane, and rattling away, in an under- 
tone, with great vivacity, for the amusement of 
an ideal audience. He was not quite so young 
as he had been, and his figure was rather run- 
ning to seed ; but there was an air of exag- 
gerated gentility about him, which bespoke the 
hero of swaggering comedy. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 23. 

ACaUAINTANCE-The art of extendiAgr. 

Sir Barnet's object in life was constantly to 
extend the range of his acquaintance. Like a 
heavy body dropped into water — not to dispar- 
age so worthy a gentleman by the comparison — 
it was in the nature of things that Sir Barnet 
must spread an ever-widening circle about him, 
until there was no room left. Or, like a sound 
in air, the vibration of which, according to the 
speculation of an ingenious modern philosopher, 
may go on travelling for ever through the inter- 
minable fields of space, nothing but coming to 
the end of his mortal tether could stop Sir Bar- 
net Skettles in his voyage of discovery through 
the social system. 

Sir Barnet was proud of making people ac- 
quainted with people. He liked the thing for 
its own sake, and it advanced his favorite object 
too. For example, if Sir Barnet had the good 
fortune to get hold of a raw recruit, or a country 
gentleman, and ensnared him to his hospitable 
villa. Sir Barnet would say to him on the morn- 
ing after his arrival, " Now, my dear Sir, is 
there anybody you would like to know? Who 
is there you would wish to meet ? Do you 
take any interest in writing people, or in paint- 



ing or sculpturing people, or in acting people, 
or in anything of that sort ? " Possibly the pa- 
tient answered yes, and mentioned somebody 
of whom Sir Barnet had no more personal 
knowledge than of Ptolemy the Great. Sir 
Barnet replied, that nothing on earth wa^s easier, 
as he knew him very well : immediately called 
on the aforesaid somebody, left his card, wrote 
a short note : — " My dear Sir — penalty of your 
eminent position — friend at my house naturally 
desirous — Lady Skettles and myself participate 
— trust that genius being superior to ceremo- 
nies, you will do us the distinguished favor 0.4 
giving us the pleasure," etc., etc. — and so killed 
a brace of birds with one stone, dead as door- 
nails. — Dombey and Son, Chap. 24. 

ACaUAINTANCE-A Charity to Mr. Toots 

" Captain Gills," blurted out Mr. Toots, one 
day all at once, as his manner was, " do you 
think you could think favorably of that propo- 
sition of mine, and give me the pleasure of your 
acquaintance ? " 

" Why, I tell you what it is, my lad," replied 
the Captain, who had at length concluded on a 
course of action ; " I've been turning that there 
over." 

" Captain Gills, it's very kind of you," retorted 
Mr. Toots. " I'm much obliged to you. Upon 
my word and honor. Captain Gills, it would be 
a charity to give me the pleasure of your ac- 
quaintance. It really would." 

"You see, Brother," argued the Captain 
slowly, " I don't know you." 

" But you never can know me. Captain Gills," 
replied Mr. Toots, steadfast to his point, " if 
you don't give me the pleasure of your acquaint- 
ance." — Dombey and Son, Chap. 39. 

ADAPT ABHilTY- 

Gentlemen of the free and easy sort, who 
plume themselves on being acquainted with a 
move or two, and being usually equal to the 
time-of-day, express the wide range of their 
capacity for adventure by observing that they 
are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to 
manslaughter ; between which opposite ex- 
tremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide 
and comprehensive range of subjects. Without 
venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I 
don't mind calling on you to believe that he 
was ready for a good broad field of strange ap- 
pearances, and that nothing between a baby 
and rhinoceros would have astonished him very 
much. — Chris. Carol, Stave 3. 

ADDRESSES-Public. 

Mayors have been knighted for " going up " 
with addresses : explosive machines intrepidly 
discharging shot and shell into the English 
Grammar. — Ed. Drood, Chap. 12. 

ADJECTIVES— Bark's use of profane. 

We enter, and Bark flies out of bed. Bark is 
a red villain and a wrathful, with a sanguine 
throat that looks very much as if it were ex- 
pressly made for hanging, as he stretches it out, 
in pale defiance, over the half-door of his hutch. 
Bark's parts of speech are of an awful sort — 
principally adjectives. I won't, says Bark, have 
no adjective police and adjective strangers in 
my adjective premises ! I won't, by adjective 
and substantive I Give me my trousers, and I'll 



A£)MIR£K 



8 



ADVERTISING 



send the whole adjective police to adjective and 
substantive ! Give me, says Bark, my adjective 
trousers ! I'll put an adjective knife in the 
whole bileing of 'em. I'll punch their adjective 
heads. I'll rip up their adjective substantives. 
Give me my adjective trousers ! says Bark, and 
I'll spile the bileing of 'em ! — On Duty with 
Inspector Field. Reprinted Pieces. 

ADMIREB,— Qiuale as an indiscriminate. 

While we were in London, Mr. Jarndyce was 
constantly beset by the crowd of excitable ladies 
and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much 
astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented him- 
self soon after our arrival, was in all such excite- 
ments. He seemed to project those two shining 
knobr, of temples of his into everything that 
went on, and to brush his hair farther and 
farthei back, until the very roots were almost 
ready lo fly out of his head in inappeasable 
philanthropy. All objects were alike to him, 
but he was always particularly ready for any- 
thing in the way of a testimonial to any one. 
His great power seemed to be his power of in- 
discriminate admiration. He would sit for 
any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, 
bathing his temples in the light of any order of 
luminary. Having first seen him perfectly 
swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I 
had supposed her to be the absorbing object of 
his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake, 
and found him to be train-bearer and organ- 
blower to a whole procession of people. 

Bleak House, Chap. 15. 

ADVERTISEMENTS— Pecnliarities of. 

'• Dreaming, Tom ? " 

" No," said Mr. Pinch, " No. I have been 
looking over the advertising sheet, thinking 
there might be something in it which would be 
likely to suit me. But, as I often think, the 
strange thing seems to be that nobody is suited. 
Here are all kinds of employers wanting all 
sorts of servants, and all sorts of servants want- 
ing all kinds of employers, and they never seem 
to come together. Here is a gentleman in a 
public? office in a position of temporary dif- 
ficulty, who wants to borrow five hundred 
pounds ; and in the very next advertisement 
here is another gentleman who has got exactly 
that sum to lend. But he'll never lend it to 
him, John, you'll find ! Here is a lady possess- 
ing a moderate independence, who wants to 
board and lodge with a quiet, cheerful family : 
and here is a family describing themselves in 
those very words, ' a quiet, cheerful family,' 
who want exactly such a lady to come and live 
with them. But she'll never go, John ! Neither 
do any of these single gentlemen who want an 
airy bed-room, with the occasional use of a 
parlor, ever appear to come to tenns with these 
other people who live in a rural situation, re- 
markable for its bracing atmosphere, within 
five minutes' walk of the Royal Exchange. 
Even those letters of the alphabet, who are 
always running away from their friends and 
being entreated at the tops of columns to come 
back, never do come back, if we may judge from 
the number of times they are asked to do it, 
and don't. It really seems," said Tom, relin- 
quishing the paper, with a thoughtful sigh, " as 
if people had the same gratification in printing 
their complaints as in making them known by 



word of mouth ; as if they found it a comfort 
and consolation to proclaim, ' I want such and 
such a thing, and I can't get it, and I don't ex- 
pect I ever shall ! ' " — Martin Chuzzlewit, Ch. 36. 

ADVERTlSINGt— As a means of reveng-e. 

If I had an enemy whom I hated — which 
Heaven forbid ! — and if I knew of something 
that sat heavy on his C()nscience, T think I 
would introduce that someUiing into a Posting- 
Bill, and place a large impression in the hands 
of an active sticker. I can scarcely imagine a 
more terrible revenge. I should haunt him, by 
this means, night and day. I do not mean to 
say that I would publish his secret, in red let- 
ters two feet high, for all the town to read : I 
would darkly refer to it. It should be between 
him, and me, and the Posting-Bill. Say, for ex- 
ample, that, at a certain period of his life, my 
enemy had surreptitiously possessed himself of 
a key. I would then embark my capital in the 
lock business, and conduct that business on the 
advertising principle. In all my placards and 
advertisements, I would throw up the line 
Secret Keys. Thus, if my enemy passed an 
uninhabited house, he would see his conscience 
glaring down on him from the parapets, and 
peeping up at him from the cellars. If he took 
a dead-wall in his walk, it would be alive with 
reproaches. If he sought refuge in an omnibus, 
the panels thereof would become Belshazzar's 
palace to him. If he took a boat, in a wild en- 
deavor to escape, he would see the fatal words 
lurking under the arches of the bridges over the 
Thames. If he walked the streets with down- 
cast eyes, he would recoil from the very stones 
of the pavement, made eloquent by lampblack 
lithograph. If he drove or rode, his way would 
be blocked up by enormous vans, each pro- 
claiming the same words over and over again 
from its whole extent of surface. Until, having 
gradually grown thinner and paler, and having 
at last totally rejected food, he would miserably 
perish, and I should be revenged. This con- 
clusion I should, no doubt, celebrate by laugh- 
ing a hoarse laugh in three syllables, and fold- 
ing my arms tight upon my chest, agreeably to 
most of the examples of glutted animosity that 
I have had an opportunity of observing in con- 
nexion with the Drama — which, by-the-bye, as 
involving a good deal of noise, appears to me 
to be occasionally confounded with the Drum- 
mer. — Bill- Stic king. Reprinted Pieces. 

ADVERTISINa-A btiilding " biUed." 

The foregoing reflections presented them- 
selves to my mind, the other day, as I contem- 
plated an old warehouse which rotting paste 
and rotting paper had brought down to the 
condition of an old cheese. It would have 
been impossible to say, on the most conscien- 
tious survey, how much of its front was brick 
and mortar, and how much decaying and de- 
cayed plaster. It was so thickly encrusted with 
fragments of bills, that no ship's keel after a 
long voyage could be half so foul. All traces 
of the broken windows were billed out, the 
doors were billed across, the waterspout was 
billed over. The building was shored up to 
prevent its tumbling into the street ; and the 
very beams erected against it, were less wood 
than paste and paper, they had been so con- 
tinually postf'd and reposted. The forlorn dregs 



ADVERTISING 



APFECTION 



of old posters so encumbered this wreck, that 
there was no hold for new posters, and the 
stickers had abandoned the place in despair, 
except one enterprising man who had hoisted 
the last masquerade to a clear spot near the 
level of the stack of chimneys, where it wavgd 
and drooped like a shattered flag. Below the 
rusty cellar-grating, crumpled remnants of old 
bills torn down rotted away in wasting heaps of 
fallen leaves. Here and there, some of the 
thick rind of the house had peeled off in strips, 
and fluttered heavily down, littering the street ; 
but still, below these rents and gashes, layers 
of decomposing posters showed themselves, as if 
they were interminable. I thought the building 
could never even be pulled down, but in one 
adhesive heap of rottenness and poster. As to 
getting in — I don't believe that if the Sleeping 
Beauty and her Court had been so billed up, 
the young prince could have done it. 

Reprinted Pieces. 
****** 

Robbery, fire, murder, and the ruin of the 
United Kingdom — each discharged in a line by 
itself, like a separate broadside of red-hot shot 
— were among the least of the warnings ad- 
dressed to an unthinking people. 

Reprinted Pieces. '' Bill-sticking^ 

ADVERTISING-Show-bms. 

Next day the posters appeared in due course, 
and the public were informed, in all the colors 
of the rainbow, and in letters afflicted with 
every possible variation of spinal deformity, 
how that Mr. Johnson would have the honor of 
making his last appearance that evening, and 
how that an early application for places was re- 
quested, in consequence of the extraordinary 
overflow attendant on his performances. It 
being a remarkable fact in theatrical history, 
but one long since established beyond dispute, 
that it is a hopeless endeavor to attract people 
to a theatre unless they can be first brought to 
believe that they will never get into it. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 30. 

ADVERTISEMENTS - Alphabetical an- 
swers to. 

Answers out of number were received, with 
all sorts of initials ; all the letters of the al- 
phabet seemed to be seized with a sudden wish 
to go out boarding and lodging ; voluminous 
was the correspondence between Mrs. Tibbs 
and the applicants ; and most profound was 
the secrecy observed. " E." did'nt like this ; 
" I." couldn't think of putting up with that ; 
" I. O. U." did'nt think the terms would suit 
him ; and " G. R." had never slept in a French 
bed. — Tales. The Boarding House^ Chap. i. 

ADVERTISEMENT-A walking. 

So, he stopped the unstamped advertisement 
— an animated sandwich, compqsed of a boy 
between two boards. 

Characters {Sketches), Chap. 9. 

ADVICE OF MRS. BAQNET-On conduct. 

"Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "give him my 
opinion. You know it. Tell him what it is." 

" It is, that he cannot have too little to do with 
people who are too deep for him, and cannot 
be too careful of interference with matters he 
does not understand ; that the plain rule is, to 



do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing 
underhanded or mysterious, and never to put 
his foot where he cannot see the ground." 

Bleak House, Chap. 27. 

ADVICE OF MR. MICAWBER-On pro- 
crastination and money. 

" My dear young friend," said Mr. Micawber, 
" I am older than you ; a man of some experi- 
ence in life, and — and of some experience — in 
short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At 
present, and until something turns up (which I 
am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing 
to bestow but advice. Still, my advice is so far 
worth taking that — in short, that I have never 
taken it myself, and am the " — here Mr. Mi- 
cawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all 
over his head and face, up to the present mo- 
ment, checked himself and frowned — " the mis- 
erable wretch you behold." 

'* My dear Micawber ! " urged his wife. 

" I say," returned Mr. Micawber, quite for- 
getting himself, and smiling again, " the mis- 
erable wretch you behold. My advice is, never 
do to-morrow what you can do to-day. Pro- 
crastination is the thief of time. Collar him." 

" My poor papa's maxim," Mrs. Micawber 
observed. 

" My dear," said Mr. Micawber, " your papa 
was very well in his way, and heaven forbid 
that I should disparage him. Take him for all 
in all, we ne'er shall— in short, make the ac- 
quaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, 
at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and 
able to read the same description of print with- 
out spectacles. But he applied that maxim to 
our marriage, my dear ; and that was so far 
prematurely entered into, in consequence, that 
I never recovered the expense." 

Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, 
and added : " Not that I am sorry for it. Quite 
the contrary, my love." After which he was 
grave for a minute or so. 

'* My other piece of advice, Copperfield," 
said Mr. Micawber, " you know. Annual in- 
come twenty pounds, annual expenditure nine- 
teen nineteen six, result, happiness. Annual 
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure 
twenty pounds ought and six, result, misery. 
The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the 
god of day goes down upon the dreary scene 
and — and, in short, you are for ever floored. 
As I am ! " — David Copperfield, Chap. 12. 

AFFECTION— The expression of. 

'• Mature aff"ection, homage, devotion, does 
not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is 
modest and retiring ; it lies in ambush, waits 
and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Some- 
times a life glides away, and finds it still ripen- 
ing in the shade." — David Copperfield, Chap. 41. 

APFECTION-The subtlety of. 

There is a subtlety of perception in real at- 
tachment, even when it is borne towards man 
by one of the lower animals, which leaves the 
highest intellect behind. To this mind of the 
heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some 
bright ray of the truth shot straight. 

When I think of him, with his impenetrably 
wise face, walking up and down with the 
Doctor, delifijhted to be battered by the hard 



AFFECTION 



10 



APFIilCTION 



I 



words in the Dictionary ; when I think of him, 
carrying huge watering-pots after Annie ; kneel- 
ing down, in very paws of gloves, at patient 
microscopic work among the little leaves ; ex- 
pressing as no philosopher could have expressed, 
in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her 
friend ; showering sympathy, trustfulness, and 
affection, out of every hole in the watering-pot ; 
when I think of him, never wandering in that 
better mind of his to which unhappiness ad- 
dressed itself, never bringing the unfortunate 
King Charles into the garden, never wavering 
in his grateful service, never diverted from his 
knowledge that there was something wrong, or 
from his wish to set it right— I really feel 
almost ashamed of having known that he was 
not quite in his wits, taking account of the 
utmost I have done with mine. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 42. 

AFFECTION— Of the idiot (Bamaby Rudg-e). 
Heaven alone can tell with what vague 
thoughts of duty and affection ; with what 
strange promptings of nature, intelligible to 
him as to a man of radiant mind and most en- 
larged capacity ; with what dim memories of 
children he had played with when a child him- 
self, who had prattled of their fathers, and of 
loving them, and being loved ; with how many 
half-remembered, dreamy associations of his 
mother's grief and tears and widowhood, he 
watched and tended this man. But that a 
vague and shadowy crowd of such ideas came 
slowly on him; that they taught him to be 
sorry when he looked upon his haggard face, 
that they overflowed his eyes when he stooped 
to kiss him, that they kept him waking in a 
tearful gladness, shading him from the sun, 
fanning him with leaves, soothing him when he 
started in his sleep— ah ! what a troubled sleep 
it was — and wondering when j/^^ would come to 
join them and be happy, is the truth. He sat 
beside him all that day ; listening for her foot- 
steps in every breath of air, looking for her 
shadow on the gently waving grass, twining the 
hedge-flowers for her pleasure when she came, 
and his when he awoke ; and stooping down 
from time to time to listen to his mutterings, 
and wonder why he was so restless in that quiet 
place. The sun went down, and night came 
on, and he was still quite tranquil ; busied with 
these thoughts, as if theje were no other people 
in the world, and the dull.cknid of smoke hang- 
ing on the immense cky in the distance, hid no 
vices, no crimes, no life jar death, or causes of 
disquiet — nothing but clear air. 

Bartmby Rudge, Chap. 68. 



new feelings should usurp their place, as it is 
that the sweetest productions of the earth, lef 
untended, should be choked with weeds an 
briars." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 46. 

AFFECTIONS— Of childhood. 

" Shall we make a man of him ? " repeater 
the Doctor. 

" I had rather be a child," replied Paul. 

" Indeed ! " said the Doctor. " Why ? " 

The child sat on the table looking at him, 
with a curious expression of suppressed emotion 
in his face, and beating one hand proudly on 
his knee, as if he had the rising tears beneatV 
it, and crushed them. But his other banc 
strayed a little way the while, a little farther- 
farther from him yet— until it lighted on th» 
neck of Florence. " This is why," it seemed to 
say, and then the steady look was broken up 
and gone ; the working lip was loosened ; and 
the tears came streaming forth. 

Dombey and Son, Chap. ii. 

AFFI^ICTION— The agony of. 

" Tliey little know, who coldly talk of tbef 
poor man's bereavements, as a happy release^ 
from pain to the departed, and a merciful relief 
from expense to the survivor— they little know, 
I say, what the agony of those bereavements is. 
A silent look of affection and regard when all 
other eyes are turned coldly away — the con- 
sciousness that we possess the sympathy and 
affection of one being when all others have 
deserted us— is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the 
deepest affliction, which no wealth could pur- 
chase, or power bestow." — Pick. Chap. 21. 



AFFECTIONS— WoTinded. 

Agitation and anxiety of mind scatter wrinkles 
and grey hairs with no unsparing hand ; but 
deeper traces follow on the silent uprooting of 
old habits, and severing of dear, familiar ties. 
The affections may not be so easily wounded as 
the passions, but their hurts are deeper, and 
more lasting. — Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 81. 

AFFECTIONS— The natural. 

" Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, 
are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, 
but like other beautiful works of His, they 
must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural 
that they should be wholly obscured, and that 



AFFLICTION— Assuaged by Memory. 

" If anything could soothe the first sharp pain 
of a heavy loss, it would be— with me — the re- 1 
flection that those I mourned, by being inno- ] 
cently happy here, and loving all about them, 
had prepared themselves for a purer and hap- 
pier world. The sun does not shine upon this 
fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon 

" I believe you are right," said the gentleman 
who had told the story. 

" Believe ! " retorted the other, " can anybody 
doubt it? Take any subject of sorro\\'ful re- 
gret, and see with how much pleasure it is asso- 
ciated. The recollection of past pleasure may 

become pain " 

" It does," interposed the other. 
" Well ; it does. To remember happiness 
which cannot be restored, is pain, but of a soft- 
ened kind. Our recollections are unfortunately 
mingled with much that we deplore, and with 
many actions which we bitterly repent ; still, in 
the most chequered life I firmly think there are 
so many little rays of sunshine to look back 
upon, that I do not believe any mortal (unless 
he had put himself without the pale of hope) 
would deliberately drain a goblet of the waters 
of Lethe, if he had it in his power." 

" Possibly you are correct in that belief," said 
the grey-haired gentleman, after a short reflec- 
tion. " I am inclined to think you are." 

" Why, then," replied the other, " the good in 
this state of existence preponderates over the 
bad, let mis-called philosophers tell us what 
they will. If our affections be tried, our affec- 
tions are our consolation and comfort ; and 



APPLICTION 



11 



AI.FHABET 



memory, however sad, is the best and purest 
link between this world and a better." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6. 

APFLICTION-Comfort in. 

In the exhaustless catalogue of Heaven's 
mercies to mankind, the power we have of find- 
ing some germs of comfort in the hardest trials 
must ever occupy the foremost place ; not only 
because it supports and upholds us when we 
most require to be sustained, but because in this 
source of consolation there is something, we 
have reason to believe, of the divine spirit ; 
something of that goodness which detects, 
amidst our own evil doings, a redeeming qual- 
ity ; something which, even in our fallen nature, 
we possess in common with the angels ; which 
had its being in the old time when they trod 
the earth, and lingers on it yet, in pity. 

Barnaby Rudge^ Chap. 47. 

AFFRONT-Mr. Pickwick's. 

" Sir," said Mr. Tupman, " you're a fellow ! " 

" Sir," said Mr. Pickwick, " you're another ! " 

Mr. Tupman advanced a step or two, and 
glared at Mr. Pickwick. Mr. Pickwick re- 
turned the glare, concentrated into a focus by 
means of his spectacles, and breathed a bold 
defiance. Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle 
looked on, petrified at beholding such a scene 
between two such men. 

" Sir," said Mr. Tupman, after a short pause, 
speaking in a low, deep voice, *• you have called 
"me old." 

" I have," said Mr. Pickwick. 

" And fat." 

" I reiterate the charge." 

" And a fellow." 

" So you are ! " 

There was a fearful pause. 

" My attachment to your person, sir," said 
Mr. Tupman, speaking in a voice tremulous 
with emotion, and tucking up his wristbands 
meanwhile, " is great — very great — but upon 
that person I must take summary vengeance." 

" Come on, sir ! " replied Mr. Pickwick. Stim- 
ulated by the exciting nature of the dialogue, 
the heroic man actually threw himself into a 
paralytic attitude, confidently supposed by the 
two bystanders to have been intended as a pos- 
ture of defence. 

" What ! " exclaimed Mr. Snodgrass, sud- 
denly recovering the power of speech, of which 
intense astonishment had previously bereft him, 
and rushing between the two, at the imminent 
hazard of receiving an application on the tem- 
ple from each, " What ! Mr. Pickwick, with the 
eyes of the world upon you ! Mr. Tupman, 
who, in common with us all, derives a lustre 
from his undying name ! For shame, gentle- 
men ; for shame." 

The unwonted lines which momentary pas- 
sion had ruled in Mr. Pickwick's clear and 
. open brow, gradually melted away as his young 
friend spoke, like the marks of a black-lead 
pencil beneath the softening influence of India 
rubber. His countenance had resumed its 
usual benign expression ere he concluded. 

Pickwick, Chap. 15. 

AGE-A youthful old. 

"Brother Ned, my dear boy," returned the 
0L>er old fellow, " I believe that Tim Linkin- 



water was born a hundred-and-fifty years old, 
and is gradually coming down to five-and-twen- 
ty ; for he's younger every birthday than he 
was the year before." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 37. 

AGE— The duties of old. 

" Dear me ! " said Mr. Omer, " when a man 
is drawing on to a time of life where the two 
ends of life meet ; when he finds himself, how- 
ever hearty he is, being wheeled about for the 
second time in a species of go-cart ; he should 
be over-rejoiced to do a kindness if he can. He 
wants plenty. And I don't speak of myself, 
particular," said Mr. Omer, "because, sir, the 
way I look at it is, that we are all drawing on 
to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are, 
on account of time never standing still for a 
single moment. So let us always do a kindness, 
and be over-rejoiced. To be sure ! " 

David Copperjield, Chap. 51. 

AGE— Revered by the poor. 

Age, especially when it strives to be self-re- 
liant and cheerful, finds much consideration 
among the poor. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 6. 

AlilBI— The Elder "Weller's idea of an. 

" The first matter relates to your governor, 
Sammy," said Mr. Weller. " He's a goin' to be 
tried to-morrow, ain't he ? " 

" The trial's a comin' on," replied Sam. 

" Veil," said Mr. Weller, " Now I s'pose he'll 
want to call some witnesses to speak to his 
character, or p'haps to prove a alleybi. I've 
been a turnin' the bisness over in my mind, and 
he may make his-self easy, Sammy. I've got 
some friends as'll do either for him, but my ad- 
vice 'ud be this here — never mind the charac- 
ter, and stick to the alleybi. Nothing like a 
alleybi, Sammy, nothing." Mr. Weller looked 
very profound as he delivered this legal opinion ; 
and burying his nose in his tumbler, winked 
over the top thereof at his astonished son. 

" Why, what do you mean ? " said Sam ; " you 
don't think he's a-goin' to be tried at the Old 
Bailey, do you ? " 

" That ain't no part of the present con-sider- 
ation, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller. "Verever 
he's a-goin* to be tried, my boy, a alleybi's the 
thing to get him off. Ve got Tom Vildspark 
off that 'ere manslaughter, with a alleybi, ven 
all the big vigs to a man said as nothing 
couldn't save him. And my 'pinion is, Sammy, 
that if your governor don't prove a alleybi, 
he'll be what the Italians call reg'larly flum- 
moxed, and that's all about it." 

Pickwick, Chap. 33. 
****** 

Sam had put up the steps, and was preparing 
to jump upon the box, when he felt himself 
gently touched on the shoulder ; and looking 
round, his father stood before him. The old 
gentleman's countenance wore a mournful ex- 
pression, as he shook his head gravely, and 
said, in warning accents : 

" I know'd what 'ud come o' this here mode 
o' doing bisness. Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy 
worn't there a alleybi ! " — Pickwick,Chap. 34. 

ALPHABET- Learning the. 

To this day, when I look upon the fat blacl^ 



ALPHABET 



12 



AMERICANS 



letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of 
their shapes, and the easy good nature of O and 
Q and S, seem to present themselves again be- 
fore me as they used to do. But they recall no 
feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the con- 
trary, I seem to have walked along a path of 
flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have 
been cheered by the gentleness of my mother's 
voice and manner all the way. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 4. 

ALPHABET— Reminiscences of its study. 

We never see any very large, staring, black, 
Roman capitals, in a book, or shop-window, or 
placarded on a wall, without their immediately 
recalling to our mind an indistinct and confused 
recollection of the time when we were first in- 
itiated in the mysteries of the alphabet. We 
almost fancy we see the pin's point following 
the letter, to impress its form more strongly on 
our bewildered imagination ; and wince invol- 
untarily, as we remember the hard knuckles 
with which the reverend old lady who instilled 
into our mind the first principles of education 
for ninepence per week, or ten and sixpence 
per quarter, was wont to poke our juvenile 
head occasionally, by way of adjusting the con- 
fusion of ideas in which we were generally in- 
volved. — Scenes^ Chap, ii. 

ALPS— Among- the. 

* * * * -Y^z-g began rapidly to descend ; 
passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of 
arched galleiies, hung with clusters of dripping 
icicles ; under and over foaming waterfalls ; 
near places of refuge, and galleries of shelter 
against sudden danger ; through caverns, over 
whose arched roofs the avalanches slide, in 
spring, and bury themselves in the unknown 
gulf beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and 
through horrible ravines : a little shifting speck 
in the vast desolation of ice and snow, and 
monstrous granite rocks : down through the 
deep Gorge of the Saltine, and deafened by the 
torrent plunging madly down, among the riven 
blocks of rock, into the level country, far below. 
Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between 
an upward and a downward precipice, into 
warmer weather, calmer air, and softer scenery, 
until there lay before us, glittering like gold or 
silver in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-cov- 
ered, red, green, yellow, domes and church- 
spires of a Swiss town. — Pictures from Italy. 

AMERICANS— Their Characteristics. 

They are by nature frank, brave, cordial, 
hospitable, and affectionate. Cultivation and 
refinement seem but to enhance their warmth 
of heart and ardent enthusiasm ; and it is the 
possession of these latter qualities in a most 
remarkable degree which renders an educated 
American one of the most endearing and most 
generous of friends. I never was so won upon 
as by this class ; never yielded up my fall con- 
fidence and esteem so readily and pleasurably 
as to them ; never can make again in half a 
year so many friends for whom I seem to enter- 
tain the regard of half a life. 

These qualities are natural, I implicitly be- 
lieve, to the whole people. That they are, how- 
ever, sadly sapped and blighted in their growth 
among the mass, and that there are influences at 
work" which endanger them still more, and give 



but little present promise of their healthy restora- 
tion, is a truth that ought to be told. 

It is an essential part of every national char- 
acter to pique itself mightily upon its faults, 
and to deduce tokens of its virtue or its wisdom 
from their very exaggeration. One great blem- 
ish in the popular mind of America, and the 
prolific parent of an innumerable brood of 
evils, is Universal Distrust. Yet the Ameri- 
can citizen plumes himself upon this spirit, 
even when he is sufficiently dispassionate to per- 
ceive the ruin it works, and will often adduce 
it, in spite of his own reason, as an instance of 
the great sagacity and acuteness of the people, 
and their superior shrewdness and independ- 
ence. 

" You carry," says the stranger, " this jeal- 
ousy and distrust into every transaction of pub- 
lic life. By repelling worthy men from your 
legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of 
candidates for the suffrage, who, in their every 
act, disgrace your Institutions and your peo- 
ple's choice. It has rendered yoii so fickle and 
so given to change that your inconstancy has 
passed into a proverb ; for you no sooner set up 
an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down 
and dash it into fragments ; and this because 
directly you reward a benefactor or a public 
servant you distrust him, merely because he is 
rewarded ; and immediately apply yourself to 
find out, either that you have been too bounti- 
ful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in 
his deserts. Any man who attains a high 
place among you, from the President down- 
wards, may date his downfall from that moment ; 
for any printed lie that any notorious villain 
pens, although it militate directly against the 
character and conduct of a life, appeals at once 
to your distrust, and is believed. You will 
strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and 
confidence, however fairly won and well deserv- 
ed ; but you will swallow a whole caravan of 
camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts 
and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, 
or likely to elevate the character of the govern- 
ors or the governed among you ? " 

The answer is invariably the same ; " There's 
freedom of opinion here, yon know. Ever}' 
man thinks for himself, and we are not to be 
easily overreached. That's how our people 
come to be suspicious." 

Another prominent feature is the love of 
" smart " dealing, which gilds over inany a 
swindle and gross breach of trust, many a defal- 
cation, public and private, and enables many 
a knave to hold his head up with the best, who 
well deserves a halter ; though it has not 
been without its retributive operation, for this 
smartness has done more, in a few years, 
to impair the public credit, and to cripple 
the public resources, than dull honesty, how- 
ever rash, could have effected in a century. 
The merits of a broken speculation, or a bank- 
ruptcy, or of a successful scoundrel, are not 
gauged by its or his observance of the golden 
rule, " Do as you would be done by," but are 
considered with reference to their smartness. 
I recollect, on both occasions of our passing 
that ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remark- 
ing on the bad effects such gross deceits must 
have when they exploded, in generating a want 
of confidence abroad, and discouraging foreign 
investment ; but I was given to understand that 



AMEBICANS 



13 



AXEBICANS 



this was a very smart scheme, by which a deal 
of money had been made, and that its smartest 
feature was that they forgot these things abroad 
in a very short time, and speculated again as 
freely as ever. The following dialogue I have 
held a hundred times : " Is it not a very dis- 
graceful circumstance that such a man as So- 
and-so should be acquiring a large property by 
the most infamous and odious means, and, not- 
withstanding all the crimes of which he has 
been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by 
your citizens ? He is a public nuisance, is he 
not ? " " Yes, sir." " A convicted liar ? " " Yes, 
sir." " He has been kicked, and cuffed, and 
caned ? " " Yes, sir." " And he is utterly dis- 
honorable, debased, and profligate ? " " Yes, 
sir." '• In the name of wonder, then, what is his 
merit ? " " Well, sir, he is a smart man." 

Am. Notes, Chap. i8. 

They certainly are not a humorous people, 
and their temperament always impressed me as 
being of a dull and gloomy character. In 
shrewdness of remark, and a certain cast-iron 
quaintness, the Yankees, or people of New Eng- 
land, unquestionably take the lead, as they do 
in most other evidences of intelligence. But 
in travelling about out of the large cities — as I 
have remarked in former parts of these vol- 
umes — I was quite oppressed by the prevailing 
seriousness and melancholy air of business, 
which was so general and unvarying, that at 
every new town I came to I seemed to meet 
the very same people whom I had left behind 
me at the last. Such defects as are perceptible 
in the national manners seem to me to be refer- 
able, in a great degree, to this cause ; which has 
generated a dull, sullen persistence in coarse 
usages, and rejected the graces of life as unde- 
serving of attention. There is no doubt that 
Washington, who was always most scrupulous 
and exact on points of ceremony, perceived 
the tendency towards this mistake, even in his 
time, and did his utmost to correct it. — Chap. i8. 

AMERICANS— Their Devotion to Dollars. 

All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, 
and associations, seemed to be melted down 
into dollars. Whatever the chance contribu- 
tions that fell into the slow cauldron of their 
talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with 
dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, 
measures gauged by their dollars ; life was 
auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked 
down for its dollars. The next respectable 
thing to dollars was any venture having their 
attainment for its end. The more of that 
worthless ballast, honor and fair-dealing, which 
any man cast overboard from the ship of his 
Good Name and Good Intent, the more ample 
stowage-room he had for dollars. Make com- 
merce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface 
the banner of the nation for an idle rag ; pol- 
lute it star by star, and cut out stripe by stripe, 
as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do 
anything for dollars ! What is a flag to them I 

One who rides at all hazards of limb and 
life in the chase of a fox, will prefer to ride 
recklessly at most times. So it was with 
these gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot, 
in their eyes, who brawled the loudest, and who 
cared the least for decency. He was their 
champion, who, in the brutal fury of his own 



pursuit, could cast no stigma upon them, for 
the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin learn- 
ed in the five minutes' straggling talk about 
the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative 
assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such 
peaceful toys ; to seize opponents by the 
throat, as dogs or rats might do ; to bluster, 
bully, and overbear by personal assailment, 
were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and stabs at 
Freedom, striking far deeper into her House 
of Life than any sultan's scimitar could reach ; 
but rare incense on her altars, having a grateful 
scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward 
to the seventh heaven of Fame. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. i6. 

AMERICAN EAGIiE-The. 

" What are you thinking of so steadily ? " 
said Martin. 

" Why, I was a thinking, sir," returned Mark, 
" that if I was a painter and was called upon 
to paint the American Eagle, how should I do 
it?" 

" Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I 
suppose." 

" No," said Mark, " that wouldn't do for 
me, sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat, 
for its short-sightedness ; like a Bantam, for its 
bragging ; like a Magpie, for its honesty ; like 
a Peacock, for its vanity ; like an Ostrich, for 
its putting its head in the mud, and thinking 
nobody sees it — " 

*' And like a Phoenix, for its power of spring- 
ing from the ashes of its faults and vices, ane' 
soaring up anew into the sky ! " said Martin. 
" Well, Mark, let us hope so." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 34. 

AMERICAN HABITS - SaUvatory Phe- 
nomena. 

The journey from New York to Philadel- 
phia is made by railroad and two ferries, and 
usually occupies between five and six hours. It 
was a fine evening when we were passengers in 
the train ; and, watching the bright sunset from 
a little window near the door by which we sat, 
my attention was attracted to a remarkable ap- 
pearance issuing from the windows of the gen- 
tlemen's car immediately in front of us, which 
I supposed for some time was occasioned by a 
number of industrious persons inside ripping 
open feather-beds, and giving the feather« to 
the wind. At length it occurred to nie that 
they were only spitting, which was indeed the 
case ; though how any number of passengers 
which it was possible for that car to contain 
could have maintained such a playful and in- 
cessant shower of expectoration, I am still at a 
loss to understand, notwithstanding the experi- 
ence in all salivatory phenomena which I after- 
wards acquired. 

I made acquaintance, on this journey, with 
a mild and modest young Quaker, who opened 
the discourse by informing me, in a grave whis- 
per, that his grandfather was the inventor of 
cold-drawn castor-oil. I mention the circum- 
stance here, thinking it probable that this is the 
first occasion on which the valuable medicine in 
question was ever used as a conversational ape- 
rient. — American Notes, Chap. 7. 

AMERICANS-In Washington. 

There were some fifteen or twenty persons 



AMERICAN PUBLICISTS 



14 



AMERICANS 



in the room. One, a tall, wiry, muscular old 
man, from the West, sunburnt and swarthy, 
with a brown- white hat on his knees and a giant 
umbrella resting between his legs, who sat bolt 
upright in his chair, frowning steadily at the 
carpet, and twitching the hard lines about his 
mouth, as if he had made up his mind " to fix " 
the President on what he had to say, and 
wouldn't bate him a grain. Another, a Ken- 
tucky farmer, six feet in height, with his hat on, 
and his hands under his coat-tails, who leaned 
against the wall and kicked the floor with his 
heel, as though he had Time's head under his 
shoe, and were literally " killing " him. A third, 
an oval-faced, bilious-looking man, with sleek 
black hair cropped close, and whiskers and 
beard shaved down to blue dots, who sucked 
the head of a thick stick, and from time to time 
took it out of his mouth to see how it was get- 
ting on. A fourth did nothing but whistle. A 
fifth did nothing but spit. And indeed all these 
gentlemen were so very persevering and ener- 
getic in this latter particular, and bestowed their 
favors so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take 
it for granted the Presidential housemaids have 
high wages, or, to speak more genteelly, an am- 
ple amount of " compensation." 

American Notesy Chap. 8. 

AMERICAN PUBLICISTS. 

It is no great matter what Mrs. Hominy said, 
save that she had learnt it from the cant of a 
class, and a large class, of her fellow-country- 
men, who, in their every word, avow themselves 
to be as senseless to the high principles on 
which America sprang, a nation, into life, as 
any Orson in her legislative halls. Who are no 
more capable of feeling, or of caring, if they 
did feel, that by reducing their own country to 
the ebb of honest men's contempt, they put in 
hazard the rights of nations yet unborn, and 
very progress of the human race, than are the 
swine who wallow in their streets. Who think 
that crying out to other nations, old in their 
iniquity, " We are no worse than you ! " (No 
worse !) is high defence, and 'vantage-ground 
enough for that Republic, but yesterday let 
loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so 
maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, 
foul to the eye, and almost hopeless to the sense, 
that her best friends turn from the loathsome 
creature with disgust. Who, having by their 
ancestors declared and won their Independence, 
because they would not bend the knee to cer- 
tain public vi :es and corruptions, and would not 
abrogate the truth, run riot in the Bad, and turn 
their backs upon the Good ; and lying down 
contented with the wretched boast that other 
Temples also are of glass, and stones which 
batter theirs may be flung back ; show them- 
selves, in that alone, as immeasurably behind 
the import of the trust they hold, and as un- 
worthy to possess it, as if the sordid huckster- 
ings of all their little governments — each one a 
kingdom in its small depravity — were brought 
into a heap for evidence against them. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 22. 

AMERICAN WOMEN-FasMonable. 

In order that their talk might fall again into 
its former pleasant channel, Martin addressed 
himself to the young ladies, who were very gor- 
geously attired in very beautiful colors, and had 



every article of dress on the same extensive 
scale as the little shoes and the thin silk stock- 
ings. This suggested to him that they were 
great proficients in the French fashions, which 
soon turned out to be the case, for though their 
information appeared to be none of the newest, 
it was very extensive : and the eldest sister, in 
particular, who was distinguished by a talent 
for metaphysics, the laws of hydraulic pressure, 
and the rights of human kind, had a novel way 
of combining these acquirements and bringing 
them to bear on any subject from Millinery to 
the Millennium, both inclusive, which was at 
once improving and remarkable ; so much so, 
in short, that it was usually observed to reduce 
foreigners to a state of temporary insanity in 
five minutes. 

Martin felt his reason going ; and as a means 
of saving himself, besought the other sister (see- 
ing a piano in the room) to sing. With this re- 
quest she willingly complied ; and a bravura 
concert, solely sustained by the Misses Norris. 
presently began. They sang in all languages — 
except their own. German, French, Italian, 
Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss ; but nothing na- 
tive ; nothing so low as native. For, in this 
respect, languages are like many other travel- 
lers : ordinary and commonplace enough at 
home, but 'specially genteel abroad. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17. 

AMERICANS— The social obsei^ances o±. 

The Honorable Elijah Pogram looked at 
Martin as if he thought " You don't mean that, 
I know ! " and he was soon confiraied in this 
opinion. 

Sitting opposite to them was a gentleman in 
a high state of tobacco, who wore quite a little 
beard, composed of the overflowings of that 
weed, as they had dried about his mouth and 
chin : so common an ornament that it would 
scarcely have attracted Martin's observation, 
but that this good citizen, burning to assert his 
equality against all comers, sucked his knife for^ 
some moments, and made a cut with it at the 
butter just as Martin was in the act of taking 
some. There was a juiciness about the deed 
that might have sickened a scavenger. 

When Elijah Pogram (to whom this was an 
every-day incident) saw that Martin put the 
plate away, and took no butter, he was quite de- 
lighted, and said : 

" Well ! The morbid hatred of you British to 
the institutions of our country, is as-TON-ish- 
ing ! " 

" Upon my life ! " cried Martin, in his turn, 
"this is the most wonderful community that 
ever existed. A man deliberately makes a hog 
of himself, and that's an institution ! " 

" We have no time to ac-quire forms, sir," 
said Elijah Pogram. 

"Acquire!" cried Martin. " But it's not a 
question of acquiring anything. It's a question 
of losing the natural politeness of a savage, 
and that instinctive good breeding which ad- 
monishes one man not to offend and disgust 
another. Don't you think that man over the 
way, for instance, naturally knows better, but 
considers it a very fine and independent thin§ 
to be a brute in small matters ? " 

"He is a na-tive of our country, and is nat'- 
rally bright and spry, of course," said Mr. Po- 
gram. 



I 



ANATOMICAL SUBJECT 



15 



ANCESTRY 



" Now, observe what this comes to, Mr. Po- 
gram," pursued Martin. " The mass of your 
countrymen begin by stubbornly neglecting 
little social observances, which have nothing to 
do with gentility, custom, usage, government, 
or country, but are acts of common, decent, 
natural, human politeness. You abet them in 
this, by resenting all attacks upon their social 
offences as if they were a beautiful national 
feature. From disregarding small obligations 
they come in regular course to disregard great 
ones ; and so refuse to pay their debts. What 
they may do, or what they may refuse to do 
next, I don't know ; but any man may see if he 
will, that it will be something following in nat- 
ural succession, and a part of one great growth, 
which is rotten at the root." 

The mind of Mr. Pogram was too philosoph- 
ical to see this ; so they went on deck again, 
where, resuming his former post, he chewed 
until he was in a lethargic state, amounting to 
insensibility. — Mat tin Chuzzlewit^ Chap. 34. 

AKLERICANS— Mark Tapley's opinion of. 

" Take notice of my words, sir. If ever the 
defaulting part of this here country pays its 
debts — along of finding that not paying 'em 
won't do in a commercial point of view, you 
see, and is inconvenient in its consequences — 
they'll take such a shine out of it, and make 
such bragging speeches, that a man might sup- 
pose no borrowed money had ever been paid 
afore, since the world was first begun. That's 
the way they gammon each other, sir. Bless 
you, / know 'em. Take notice of my words, 
now ! " — Martin Chuzzlewit^ Chap. 23. 

ANATOMIC Ali SUB JECT-Wegff as an. 

" Now, look here, what did you give for 
me?" 

" Well," replies Venus, blowing his tea, his 
head and face peering out of the darkness, over 
the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the 
old original rise in his family : " you were one 
of a warious lot, and I don't know." 

Silas puts his point in the improved form of 
" What will you take for me ? " 

" Well," replies Venus, still blowing his tea, 
" I'm not prepared, at a moment's notice, to 
tell you, Mr. Wegg." 

" Come ! According to your own account, 
I'm not worth much," Wegg reasons persua- 
sively. 

" Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant 
you, Mr. Wegg ; but you might turn out valu- 
able yet, as a ," here Mr. Venus takes a gulp 

of tea, so hot that it makes him choke, and sets 
his weak eyes watering ; " as a Monstrosity, if 
you'll excuse me." 

♦ *«««* 

" I have a prospect of getting on in life and 
elevating myself by my own independent exer- 
tions," says Wegg, feelingly, " and I shouldn't 
like — I tell you openly I should not like — un- 
der such circumstances, to be what I may call 
dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me 
there, but should wish to collect myself like a 
genteel person." 

* « * « « * 

" Mr. Wegg, not to name myself as a work- 
man without an equal, I've gone on improving 
myself in my knowledge of anatomy, till both 
by sight and by name I m perfect. Mr. Wegg, 



if you was brought here loose in a bag to be 
articulated, I'd name your smallest bones blind- 
fold equally with your largest, as fast as I could 
pick 'em out, and I'd sort 'em all, and sort your 
wertebrae in a manner that would equally sur- 
prise and charm you." 

Our Mutual Friend ^ Book /., Chap. 7. 

ANCESTRY— A satire on the pride of. 

As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to 
polite breeding, can possibly sympathize with 
the Chuzzlewit family without being first as- 
sured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is 
a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly 
descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve ; 
and was, in the very earliest times, closely con- 
nected with the agricultural interest. If it 
should ever be urged by grudging and malicious 
persons that a Chuzzlewit, in any period of the 
family history, displayed an overweening 
amount of family pride, surely the weakness 
will be considered not only pardonable but 
laudable, when the immense superiority of the 
house to the rest of mankind, in respect of this, 
its ancient origin, is taken into account. 

It is remarkable that as there was, in the 
oldest family of which we have any record, a 
murderer and a vagabond, so we never fail to 
meet, in the records of all old families, with in- 
numerable repetitions of the same phase of 
character. Indeed, it may be laid down as a 
general principle, that the more extended the 
ancestry, the greater the amount of violence 
and vagabondism ; for in ancient days, those 
two amusements, combining a wholesome ex- 
citement with a promising means of repairing 
shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling 
pursuit and the healthful recreation of the 
Quality of this land. 

Consequently, it is a source of inexpressible 
comfort and happiness to find, that in various 
periods of our history, the Chuzzlewits were 
actively connected with divers slaughterous con- 
spiracies and bloody Trays. It is further re- 
corded of them, that being clad from head to 
heel in steel of proof, they did on many occa- 
sions lead their leather-jerkined soldiers to the 
death, with invincible courage, and afterwards 
return home gracefully to their relations and 
friends. 

There can be no doubt that at least one 
Chuzzlewit came over with William the Con- 
queror. It does not appear that this illustrious 
ancestor " came ovti " that monarch, to employ 
the vulgar phrase, at any subsequent period : 
inasmuch as the Family do not seem to have 
been ever greatly distinguished by the posses- 
sion of landed estate. And it is well known 
that for the bestowal of that kind of property 
upon his favorites, the liberality and gratitude 
of the Norman were as remarkable as those 
virtues are usually found to be in great men 
when they give away what belongs to other 
people. 

Perhaps in this place the history may pause 
to congratulate itself upon the enormous amount 
of bravery, wisdom, eloquence, virtue, gentle 
birth, and true nobility, that appears to have 
come into England with the Norman Invasion : 
an amount which the genealogy of every an- 
cient family lends its aid to swell, and which 
would, beyond all question, have been found to 
be just as great, and to the full as prolific in 



ANCESTRY 



16 



ANIMAIiS 



giving birth to long lines of chivalrous de- 
scendants, boastful of their origin, even though 
William the Conqueror had been William the 
Conquered : a change of circumstances which, 
it is quite certain, would have made no man- 
ner of difference in this respect. 

****** 
It is also clearly proved by the oral tradi- 
tions of the Family, that there existed, at some 
one period of its history which is not distinctly 
stated, a matron of such destructive principles, 
and so familiarized to the use and composition 
of inflammatory and combustible engines, that 
she was called " The Match Maker : " by which 
nickname and byword she is recognized in the 
Family legends to this day. Surely there can 
be no reasonable doubt that this was the 
Spanish lady, the mother of Chuzzlewit Fawkes. 
* * * * * * 

It has been rumored, and it is needless to 
say the rum.or originated in the same base quar- 
ters, that • a certain male Chuzzlewit, whose 
birth must be admitted to be involved in some 
obscurity, was of very mean and low descent. 
How stands the proof? When the son of that 
individual, to whom the secret of his father's 
birth was supposed to have been communicated 
by his father in his lifetime, lay upon his death- 
bed, this question was put to him in a distinct, 
solemn, and formal way : " Toby Chuzzlewit, 
who was your grandfather?" To which he, 
with his last breath, no less distinctly, solemnly, 
and formally replied : and his words were taken 
down at the time, and signed by six witnesses, 
each with his name and address in full : " The 
Lord No Zoo." It may be said — it has been 
said, for human wickedness has no limits — that 
there is no Lord of that name, and that among 
the titles which have become extinct, none at 
all resembling this, in sound even, is to be dis- 
covered. But what is the irresistible inference? 
— Rejecting a theory broached by some well- 
meaning but mistaken persons, that this Mr. 
Toby Chuzzlewit's grandfather, to judge from 
his name, must surely have been a Mandarin 
(vrfiich is wholly insupportable, for there is no 
pretence of his grandmother ever having been 
out of this country, or of any Mandarin having 
been in it within some years of his father's 
birth ; except those in the tea-shops, which can- 
not for a moment be regarded as having any 
bearing on the question, one way or other), 
rejecting this hypothesis, is it not manifest that 
Mr. Toby Chuzzlewit had either received the 
name imperfectly from his father, or that he 
had forgotten it, or that he had mispronounced 
it ? and that even at the recent period in ques- 
tion, the Chuzzlewits were connected by a bend 
sinister, or kind of heraldic over-the-left, with 
some unknown noble and illustrious House ? 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. i. 

ANCESTRY— Its Personal Importance. 

It is needless to multiply instances of the 
high and lofty station, and the vast importance 
of the Chuzzlewits, at different periods. If it 
came within the scope of reasonable probabil- 
ity that further proofs were required, they might 
be heaped upon each other until they formed 
an Alps of testimony, beneath which the bold- 
est scepticism should be crushed and beaten 
flat. As a goodly tumulus is already collected, 



and decently battened up above the Family 
grave, the present chapter is content to leave it 
as it is ; merely adding, by way of a final spade- 
ful, that many Chuzzlewits, both male and 
female, are proved to demonstration, on the 
faith of letters written by their own mothers, to 
have had chiselled noses, undeniable chins, forms 
that might have served the sculptor for a model, 
exquisitely-turned limbs, and polished fore- 
heads of so transparent a texture that the blue 
veins might be seen branching off in various 
directions, like so many roads on an ethereal 
map. This fact in itself, though it had been a 
solitary one, would have utterly settled and 
clenched the business in hand ; for it is well 
known, on the authority of all the books which 
treat of such matters, that every one of these 
phenomena, but especially that of the chiselling, 
are invariably peculiar to, and only make them- 
selves apparent in, persons of tlie very best con- 
dition. 

This history, having, to its own perfect satis- 
faction (and, consequently, to the full content- 
ment of all its readers), proved the Chuzzlewits 
to have had an origin, and to have been at one 
time or other of an importance which cannot 
fail to render them highly improving and accept- 
able acquaintance to all right-minded individu- 
als, may now proceed in earnest with its tasV 
And having shown that they must have had, by 
reason of their ancient birth, a pretty large 
share in the foundation and increase of the hu- 
man family, it will one day become its province 
to submit, that such of its members as shall be 
introduced in these pages, have still many 
counterparts and prototypes in the Great World 
about us. At present it contents itself with re- 
marking, in a general way, on this head . 
Firstly, that it may be safely asserted, and yet 
without implying any direct participation in the 
Monboddo doctrine touching the probability of 
the human race having once been monkej^s, 
that men do play very strange and extraordi- 
nary tricks. Secondly, and yet without trench- 
ing on the Blumenbach theory as to the de- 
scendants of Adam having a vast number of 
qualities which belong more particularly to 
swine than to any other class of animals in the 
creation, that some men certainly are remark- 
able for taking uncommonly good care of them- 
selves. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap, I. 

ANCESTORS— Remote and Doubtful. 

The better class of minds did not need to be 
informed that the Powlers were an ancient 
stock, who could trace themselves so exceed- 
ingly far back that it was not surprising if they 
sometimes lost themselves — which they had 
rather frequently done, as respected horse-flesh, 
blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, 
and the Insolvent Debtors' Court. 

Hard Times, Chap. 7. 

ANIMAIiS— Their Weather Instincts. 

There may be some motions of fancy among 
the lower animals at Chesney Wold. The 
horses in the stables— the long stables in a bar- 
ren, red brick court-yard, where there is a great 
bell in a turret, and a clock with a large 
face, which the pigeons who live near it, and 
who love to perch upon its shoulders, seem to be 
always consulting — they may contemplate some 
mental pictures of fine weather on occasions. 



ANIMALS 



17 



APARTMENT 



and may be better artists at them than the 
grooms. The old roan, so famous for cross- 
country work, turning his large eyeball to the 
grated window near his rack, may remember the 
fresh leaves that glisten there at other times, 
and the scents that stream in ; and may have a 
fine run with the hounds, while the human 
helper, clearing out the next stall, never stirs 
beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The 
grey, whose place is opposite the door, and who, 
with an impatient rattle of his halter, pricks 
his ears and turns his head so wistfully when it 
is opened, and to whom the opener says, " Woa 
grey, then, steady! Nobody wants you to- 
day ! " may know it quite as well as the man. 
The whole seemingly monotonous and uncom- 
panionable half-dozen, stabled together, may 
pass the long wet hours, when the door is shut, 
in livelier communication than is held in the 
servants' hall, or at the Dedlock Arms— or may 
even beguile the time by improving (perhaps 
corrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the 
corner. 

So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel, in the 
courtyard, with his large head on his paws, may 
think of the hot sunshine, when the shadows of 
the stable buildings tire his patience out by 
changing, and leave him, at one "time of the day, 
no broader refuge than the shadow of his own 
house, where he sits on end, panting and growl- 
ing short, and very much wanting something 
to worry, besides himself and his chain. So, now, 
half-waking, and all-winking, he may recall the 
house full of company, the coach-houses full of 
vehicles, the stables full of horses, and the out- 
buildings full of attendants upon horses, until 
he is undecided about the present, and comes 
forth to see how it is. Then, M'ith that impa- 
tient shake of himself, he may growl in the 
spirit, " Rain, rain, rain ! Nothing but rain — 
and no family here ! " as he goes in again, and 
lies down with a gloomy yawn. 

So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings 
across the park, who have their restless fits, and 
whose doleful voices, when the wind has been 
very obstinate, have even made it, known in the 
house itself: up-stairs, down-stair's, and in my 
lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole 
country-side, while the raindrops are pattering 
round their inactivity. So the rabbits, with 
their self-betraying tails, frisking in and out of 
holes at roots of trees, may be lively with 
ideas of the breezy days when their ears are 
blown about, or of those seasons of interest 
when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. 
The turkey in the poultry-yard, always troub- 
led with a class-grievance (probably Christmas), 
may be reminiscent of that summer morning 
wrongfully taken from him, when he got into 
the lane among the felled trees, where there 
was a barn and barley. The discontented 
goose, who stoops to pass under the old gateway, 
twenty feet high, may gabble out, if we only 
knew it, a waddling preference for weather 
when the gateway casts its shadow on the 
ground. 

Be this as it may, there is not much fancy 
otherwise stirring at Chesney Wold. If there 
be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a lit- 
tle noise in that old, echoing place, a long way 
and usually leads off to ghosts and my(*tery. 
Bleak House, Chap. 7. 

2 



ANNO DOMINI. 

Mr. Cruncher always spoke of the year of 
our Lord as Anna Dominoes : apparently under 
the impression that the Christian era dated from 
the invention of a popular game, by a lady who 
had bestowed her name upon it. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book II,, Chap. I. 

APARTMENTS-Of Mr. Tartar. 

Mr. Tartar's chambers were the neatest, the 
cleanest, and the best-ordered chambers ever 
seen under the sun, moon, and stars. The floors 
were scrubbed to that extent that you might 
have supposed the London blacks emancipated 
forever and gone out of the land for good. 
Every inch of brass work in Mr. Tartar's pos- 
session was polished and burnished till it shone 
like a brazen mirror. No speck, nor spot, nor 
spatter soiled the purity of any of Mr. Tartar's 
household gods, large, small, or middle-sized 
His sitting-room was like the admiral's cabin ■ 
his bath-room M^as like a dairy, his sleeping- 
chamber, fitted all about with lockers and 
drawers, was like a seedsman's shop ; and his 
nicely-balanced cot ju&t stirred in the midst as 
if it breathed. Everything belonging to Mr. 
Tartar had quarters of its own assigned to it ; 
his maps and charts had their quarters ; his 
books had theirs ; his brushes had theirs ; his 
boots had theirs ; his clothes had theirs ; his 
case-bottles had theirs ; his telescopes and other 
instruments had theirs. Everything was readily 
accessible. Shelf, bracket, locker, hook, and 
drawer were equally within reach, and were 
equally contrived with a view to avoiding waste 
of room, and providing some snug inches of 
stowage for something that would have exactly 
fitted nowhere else. His gleaming little service 
of plate was so arranged upon his sideboard as 
that a slack salt-spoon would have instantly be- 
trayed itself; his toilet implements were so 
arranged upon his dressing-table as that a tooth- 
pick of slovenly deportment could have been 
reported at a glance. So with the curiosities he 
had brought home from various voyages. Stuffed, 
dried, re-polished, or otherwise preserved, ac- 
cording to their kind; birds, fishes, reptiles, 
arms, articles of dress, shells, sea- weeds, grasses, 
or memorials of coral reef ; each was displayed 
in its especial place, and each could have been 
displayed in no better place. Paint and var- 
nish seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, 
in constant readiness to obliterate stray finger- 
marks wherever any might become perceptible 
in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No man-of-war was 
ever kept more spick and span from careless 
touch. On this bright summer day a neat awn- 
ing was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower-garden 
as only a sailor could rig it ; and there was a 
sea-going air upon the whole effect, so delight- 
fully complete that the flower-garden might 
have appertained to stern-windows afloat, and 
the whole concern might have bowled away 
gallantly with all on board, if Mr. Tartar had 
only clapped to his lips the speaking-trumpet 
that was slung in a corner, and given hoarse or- 
ders to have the anchor up, look alive there, 
men, and get all sail upon her ! 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 22. 

APARTMENT— A grim. 

They mounted up and up, through the musty 
smell of an old, close house, little used, to a 



APARTMENT 



18 



APARTMENT 



large garret bed-room. Meagre and spare, like 
all the other rooms, it was even uglier and grim- 
mer than the rest, by being the place of banish- 
ment for the worn-out furniture. Its movables 
were ugly old chairs with worn-out seats, and 
ugly old chairs without any seats ; a thread- 
bare, patternless carpet, a maimed table, a crip- 
pled wardrobe, a lean set of fire-irons, like the 
skeleton of a set deceased, a washing-stand 
that looked as if it had stood for ages in a hail 
of dirty soap-suds, and a bedstead with four 
bare atomies of posts, each terminating in a 
spike, as if for the dismal accommodation of 
lodgers who might prefer to impale them- 
selves. — Little DojTit, Chap. 3. 

APARTMENTS— Old and abandoned. 

The gaunt rooms, deserted for years upon 
years, seemed to have settled down into a 
gloomy lethargy from which nothing could 
rouse them again. The furniture, at once spare 
and lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than 
furnished them, and there was no color in all 
the house ; such color as had ever been there, 
had long ago started away on lost sunbeams — 
got itself absorbed, perhaps, into flowers, but- 
terflies, plumage of birds, precious stones, what 
not. There was not one straight floor, from 
the foundation to the roof; the ceilings were 
so fantastically clouded by smoke and dust, 
that old women might have told fortunes in 
ihem, better than in grouts of tea ; the dead- 
cold hearths showed no traces of having ever 
been warmed, but in heaps of soot that had 
tumbled down the chimneys, and eddied about 
in little dusky whirlwinds when the doors were 
opened. In what had once been a drawing- 
room, there were a pair of meagre mirrors, with 
dismal processions of black figures canying 
black garlands, walking round the frames ; but 
even these were short of heads and legs, and 
one undertaker-like Cupid had swung round on 
his own axis and got upside down, and another 
had fallen off altogether. 

Little Dorni, Chap. 5. 

APARTMENT— A spacious. 

With these words, the stranger put a thick 
square card into Kate's hand, and, turning to 
his friend, remarked, with an easy air, " that 
the rooms was a good high pitch ; " to which 
the friend assented, adding, by way of illustra- 
tion, " that there was lots of room for a little 
boy to grow up a man in either on 'em, vithout 
much fear of his ever bringing his head into 
contract vith the ceiling." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 21. 

APARTMENT-A small. 

Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that 
there wasn't room to swing a cat there ; but, as 
Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down 
on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, "You 
know, Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. 
I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does 
that signify to me ! " 

David Copperjield, Chap. 35. 

APARTMENT-of Dick Swiveller. 

" Fred," said Mr. Swiveller, " remember the 
)nce popular melody of * Begone, dull care : ' 
fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing 
of friendship ; and pass the rosy wine !" 



Mr. Richard Swiveller's apartments were in 
the neighborhood of Drury Lane, and, in addi- 
tion to this conveniency of situation, had the 
advantage of being over a tobacconist's shop, 
so that he was enabled to procure a refreshing 
sneeze at any time by merely stepping out on 
the staircase, and was saved the trouble and 
expense of maintaining a snuff-box. It was in 
these apartments that Mr. Swiveller made use 
of the expressions above recorded, for the con- 
solation and encouragement of his desponding 
friend ; and it may not be uninteresting or im- 
proper to remark that even these brief observa- 
tions partook in a double sense of the figurative 
and poetical character of Mr. Swiveller's mind, 
as the rosy wine was in fact represented by one 
glass of cold gin-and-water, which was replen- 
ished, as occasion required, from a bottle and 
jug upon the table, and was passed from one 
to another, in a scarcity of tumblers which, as 
Mr. Swiveller's was a bachelor's establishment, 
may be acknowledged without a blush. By a 
like pleasant fiction his single chamber was 
always mentioned in the plural number. In 
its disengaged times, the tobacconist had an- 
nounced as " apartments " for a single gentle- 
man, and Mr. Swiveller, following up the hint, 
never failed to speak of it as his rooms, his | 
lodgings, or his chambers : conveying to his 
hearers a notion of indefinite space, and leav- 
ing their imaginations to wander through long 
suites of lofty halls, at pleasure. 

In this flight of fancy, Mr. Swiveller was as- 
sisted by a deceptive piece of furniture, in 
reality a bedstead, but in semblance a book- 
case, which occupied a prominent situation in 
his chamber, and seemed to defy suspicion and 
challenge inquiry. There is no doubt that, by 
day, Mr. Swiveller firmly believed this secret 
convenience to be a bookcase and nothing 
more ; that he closed his eyes to the bed, re- 
solutely denied the existence of the blankets, 
and spurned the bolster from his thoughts. No 
word of its real use, no hint of its nightly ser- 
vice, no allusion to its peculiar properties, had 
ever passed between him and his most intimate 
friends. Implicit faith in the deception was 
the fiist article of his creed. To be the friend 
of Swiveller you must reject all circumstantial 
evidence, all reason, observation, and experi- 
ence, and repose a blind belief in the book- 
case. It was his pet weakness, and he cherish- 
ed it. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 7. 

APARTMENT— An ancient. 

The room into which they entered was a 
vaulted chamber, once nobly ornamented by 
cunning architects, and still retaining, in its 
beautiful groined roof and rich stone tracery, 
choice remnants of its ancient splendor. Foli- 
age carved in the stone, and emulating the 
mastery of Nature's hand, yet remained to tell 
how many times the leaves outside had come 
and gone, while it lived* on unchanged. The] 
broken figures supporting the burden of thel 
chimney-piece, though mutilated, were still dis-1 
tinguishable for what they had been — far diffei- 
ent from the dust without — and showed sadly by 
the empty hearth, like creatures who had out- 
lived their kind, and mourned their own too 
slow decay. 

An open door leading to a small room or cell, 
dim with the light that came through leaves of 



Ai'ARTMENTS 



19 



APARTMENT 



ivy, completed the interior of this portion of 
the ruin. It was not quite destitute of furni- 
ture. A few strange chairs, whose arms and 
legs looked as though they had dwindled away 
with age ; a table, the very spectre of its race ; 
a great old chest that had once held records in 
the church, with other quaintly-fashioned do- 
mestic necessaries, and store of fire-wood for 
the winter, were scattered around, and gave evi- 
dent tokens of its occupation as a dwelling- 
place at no very distant time. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 52. 

APARTMENTS-Dirty. 

This, however, was not the most curious fea- 
ture of those chambers ; that consisted in the 
profound conviction entertained by my esteemed 
friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. 
Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or 
whether it was imparted to him by Mrs. Miggot, 
the laundress, I never could ascertain. But I 
believe he would have gone to the stake upon 
the question. Now they were so dirty that I 
could take off the distinctest impression of my 
figure on any article of furniture by merely 
lounging upon it for a few moments ; and it 
used to be a private amusement of mine to 
print myself off — if I may use the expression — 
all over the rooms. It was the first large circu- 
lation I had. At other times I have accident- 
ally shaken a window curtain while in animated 
conversation with Parkle, and struggling insects, 
which were certainly red, and were certainly 
not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my 
hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, 
bound body and soul to the superstition that 
they were clean. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14. 

APARTMENTS-Dusty. 

There was so much dust in his own faded 
chambers, certainly, that they reminded me of 
a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic anticipation 
of the present time, which had newly been 
brought to light, after having remained buried 
a few thousand years. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14. 

APARTMENT— Mark Tapley's idea of a 
JoUy. 

" Jolly sort of lodgings," said Mark, rubbing 
his nose with the knob at the end of the fire- 
shovel, and looking round the poor chamber : 
"that's a comfort. The rain's come through 
the roof too. That ain't bad. A lively old 
bedstead, I'll be bound ; popilated by lots of 
wampires, no doubt. Come ! my spirits is a 
getting up again. An uncommon ragged night- 
cap this. A very good sign. We shall do yet ! " 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13. 

APARTMENT— And grloonxy furniture. 

It was a large, dark room, furnished in a fu- 
nereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded 
with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled 
md oiled, until the two tall candles on the table 
in the middle of the room were gloomily re- 
jected on every leaf ; as if they were buried in 
5eep graves of black mahogany, and no light to 
5peak of could be expected from them until they 
ivere dug out. 

****** 

As his eyes rested on these things, a sudden 



vivid likeness passed before him, of a child 
whom he had held in his arms on the passage 
across that very Channel, one cold time, when 
the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. 
The likeness passed away, say, like a breath 
along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind 
her, on the frame of which a hospital procession 
of negro Cupids, several headless, and all crip- 
ples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea 
fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender 
— and he made his formal bow to Miss Ma- 
nette. — Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4. 

APARTMENT-A cozy. 

It was a prettily furnished room, with a piano, 
and some lively furniture in red and green, and 
some flowers. It seemed to be all old nooks 
and corners ; and in every nook and corner 
there was some queer little table, or cupboard, 
or book-case, or seat, or something or other, 
that made me think there was not such another 
good comer in the room ; until I looked at the 
next one, and found it equal to it, if not better. 
David Copperfield, Chap. 15. 

APARTMENT— Its grandenr in decay. 

It was spacious enough in all conscience, 
occupying the whole depth of the house, and 
having at either end a great bay-window, as 
large as many modern rooms ; in which some 
few panes of stained glass, emblazoned with 
fragments of armorial bearings, though cracked, 
and patched, and shattered, yet remained • 
attesting, by their presence, that the former 
owner had made the very light subservient to 
his state, and pressed the sun itself into his 
list of flatterers ; bidding it, when it shone into 
his chamber, reflect the badges of his ancient 
family, and take new hues and colors from 
their pride. 

But those were old days, and now every little 
ray came and went as it would ; telling the 
plain, bare, searching truth. Although the best 
room of the inn, it had the melancholy aspect 
of grandeur in decay, and was much too vast 
for comfort. Rich, rustling hangings, waving 
on the walls ; and, better far, the rustling of 
youth and beauty's dress ; the light of women's 
eyes, outshining the tapers and their own rich 
jewels ; the sound of gentle tongues, and music, 
and the tread of maiden feet, had once been 
there, and filled it with delight. But they 
wei-e gone, and with them all its gladness. It 
was no longer a home ; children were never 
born and bred there ; the fireside had become 
mercenary — a something to be bought and sold 
— a very courtezan : let who would die, or sit 
beside, or leave it, it was still the same — it 
missed nobody, cared for nobody, had equal 
warmth and smiles for all. God help the man 
whose heart ever changes with the world, as an 
old mansion when it becomes an inn. 

No effort had been made to furnish this 
chilly waste, but before the broad chimney a 
colony of chairs and tables had been planted 
on a square of carpet, flanked by a ghostly 
screen, enriched with figures, grinning and gro- 
tesque. — Barnaby Riidge, Chap. 10. 

APARTMENT— And famltiire. 

I thought I had never seen such a large 
room as that into which they showed me. It 
had five windows, with dark-red curtains that 



APARTMENT 



20 



APARTMENT 



would have absorbed the light of a general 
illumination ; and there were complications of 
drapery at the top of the curtains, that went 
wandering about the wall in a most extraordi- 
nary manner. I asked for a smaller room, and 
they told me there was no smaller room. They 
could screen me in, however, the landlord said. 
They brought a great old japanned screen, 
with natives (Japanese, I suppose), engaged in 
a yariety of idiotic pursuits, all over it ; and 
left me roasting whole before an immense fire. 

My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, 
up a great staircase, at the end of a long gal- 
lery ; and nobody knows what a misery this is 
to a bashful man who would rather not meet 
people on the stairs. It was the grimmest 
room I have ever had the nightmare in ; and 
all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed 
to the two old silver candlesticks, was tall, 
high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted. Below, 
in my sitting-room, if I looked round my screen, 
the wind rushed at me like a mad bull ; if I 
stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to 
the color of a new brick. The chimney-piece 
was veiy high, and there was a bad glass — ^what 
I may call a wavy glass — above it, which, when 
I stood up, just showed me my anterior phre- 
nological developments — and these never look 
well, in any subject, cut short off at the eye- 
brow. If I stood with my back to the fire, a 
gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the 
screen insisted on being looked at ; and, in its 
dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten cur- 
tains of the five windows went twisting and 
creeping about, like a nest of gigantic worms. 

I suppose that what I observe in myself 
must be observed by some other men of simi- 
lar character in themselves ; therefore I am em- 
boldened to mention, that, when I travel, I 
never arrive at a place but I immediately want 
to go away from it. — The Holly Tree. 

APARTMENT— The hangring-s of an. 

A mouldering reception-room, where the fad- 
ed hangings, of a sad sea-green, had worn and 
withered until they looked as if they might 
have claimed kindred with the waifs of sea- 
weed drifting under the windows, or clinging 
to the walls, and weeping for their imprisoned 
relations. — Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6. 

APARTMENT. 

The lady whom they had come to see, if she 
were the present occupant of the house, appear- 
ed to have taken up her quarters there, as she 
might have established herself in an Eastern 
caravanserai. A small square of carpet in the 
middle of the room, a few articles of furniture 
that evidently did not belong to the room, and 
a disorder of trunks and travelling articles, 
formed the whole of her surroundings. Under 
some former regular inhabitant, the stifling lit- 
tle apartment had broken out into a pier-glass 
and a gilt table ; but the gilding was as faded 
as last year's flowers, and the glass was so 
clouded that it seemed to hold in magic pres- 
ervation all the fogs and bad weather it had 
ever reflected. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap 27 

APARTMENTS-The ghostly air of. 

There was a ghostly air about these uninhab- 
ited chambers in the Temple, and attending 



every circumstance of Tom's employment there, 
which had a strange charm in it. Every morn- 
ing, when he shut his door at Islington, he turned 
his face towards an atmosphere of unaccounta- 
ble fascination, as surely as he turned it to the 
London smoke ; and from that moment, it 
thickened round and round him all day long, 
until the time arrived for going home again, 
and leaving it, like a motionless cloud, behind. 

It seemed to Tom, every morning, that he ap- 
proached this ghostly mist, and became envelop- 
ed in it, by the easiest succession of degrees 
imaginable. Passing from the roar and rat- 
tle of the streets into the quiet court-yards of 
the Temple, was the first preparation. Every 
echo of his footsteps sounded to him like a 
sound from the old walls and pavements, want- 
ing language to relate the histories of the dim, 
dismal rooms ; to tell him what lost documents 
were decaying in forgotten corners of the shut- 
up cellars, from whose lattices such mouldy 
sighs came breathing forth as he went past ; to 
whisper of dark bins of rare old wine, bricked 
up in vaults among the old foundations of the 
Halls ; or mutter in a lower tone yet darker le- 
gends of the cross-legged knights, whose mar- 
ble effigies were in the church. With the first 
planting of his foot upon the staircase of his 
dusty office, all these mysteries increased ; un- 
til, ascending step by step, as Tom ascended, 
they attained their full growth in the solitary 
labors of the day. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40. 

APARTMENT— A mouldy. 

Certain wintiy branches of candles on the 
high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber ; 
or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly 
troubled its darkness. It was spacious, and I 
dare say had once been handsome, but every dis- 
cernible thing in it was covered with dust and 
mould, and dropping to pieces. The most 
prominent object was a long table with a table- 
cloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in 
preparation when the house and the clocks 
all stopped together. An epergne or centre- 
piece of some kind was in the middle of this 
cloth ; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs 
that its form was quite undistinguishable ; and, 
as I looked along the yellow expanse out of 
which I remember its seeming to grow, like \ 
a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders i 
with blotchy bodies running home to it, and 
running out from it, as if some circumstance of 
the greatest public importance had just trans- 
pired in the spider community. 

Great Expectations, Chap, il 

APARTMENT— To let ; its advantag-es. 

" I believe, sir," said Richard Swiveller, tak- 
ing his pen out of his mouth, " that you desire 
to look at these apartments. They are very 
charming apartments, sir. They command an 
uninterrupted view of— of over the way, and 
they are within one minute's walk of— of the 
corner of the street. There is exceedingly mild 
porter, sir, in the immediate vicinity, and the 
contingent advantages are extraordinary." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 34. 

APARTMENT— A snugr. 

" An uncommon snug little box, this," said 
Mr. Lenville, stepping into the front room, and 



APARTMENT 



21 



APARTMENT 



taking his hat off before he could get in at all. 
" Pernicious snug." 

" For a man at all particular in such matters, 
it might be a trifle too snug," said Nicholas ; 
" for, although it is, undoubtedly, a great con- 
venience to be able to reach anything you want 
from the ceiling or the floor, or either side of 
the room, without having to move from your 
chair, still these advantages can only be had in 
an apartment of the most limited size." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 24. 

APARTMENT— Of a Suicide. 

The air of the room is almost bad enough to 
have extinguished it, if he had not. It is a 
small room, nearly black with soot, and grease, 
and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, 
pinched at the middle as if Poverty had grip- 
ped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the cor- 
ner by the chimney, stand a deal table and a 
broken desk ; a wilderness marked with a rain 
of ink. In another corner, a ragged old port- 
manteau on one of the two chairs, serves for 
cabinet or wardrobe ; no larger one is needed, 
for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. 
The floor is bare ; except that one old mat, 
trodden to shreds of rope-yarn, lies perishing 
upon the hearth. No curtain veils the darkness 
of the night, but the discolored shutters are 
drawn together ; and through the two gaunt 
holes pierced in them, famine might be staring 
in — the Banshee of the man upon the bed. 

For, on a low bed opposite the fire — a confu- 
sion of dirty patch-work, lean-ribbed ticking, 
and coarse sacking — the lawyer, hesitating just 
within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, 
dressed in shirt and trousers, with bare feet. He 
has a yellow look in the spectral darkness of a 
candle that has guttered down, until the whole 
length of its wick (still burning) has doubled 
over, and left a tower of winding-sheet above 
it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whis- 
kers and his beard — the latter, ragged too, and 
grown, like the scum and mist around him, in 
neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul 
and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive 
what fumes those are which most oppress the 
senses in it ; but through the general sickliness 
and faintness, and the odor of stale tobacco, 
there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, 
vapid taste of opium. 

" Hallo, my friend ! " he cries, and strikes his 
iron candlestick against the door. 

He thinks he has awakened his friend. He 
lies a little turned away, but his eyes are surely 
open. 

" Hallo, my friend ! " he cries again. " Hallo ! 
Hallo ! " 

As he rattles on the door, the candle which 
has drooped so long, goes out, and leaves him 
in the dark ; with the gaunt eyes in the shutters 
staring down upon the bed. 

Bleak House, Chap. 10. 

APARTMENTS — The associations of 
empty. 

" Rooms get an awful look about them when 
they are fitted up, like these, for one person you 
are used to see in them, and that person is away 
under any shadow ; let alone being God knows 
where." 

He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow 
the great final one — so empty rooms, bereft of 



a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what 
your room and what mine must one day be. My 
Lady's state has a hollow look, thus gloomy and 
abandoned ; and in the inner apartment, where 
Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisi- 
tion, the traces of her dresses and her orna- 
ments, even the mirrors accustomed to reflect 
them when they were a portion of herself, have 
a desolate and vacant air. 

Bleak House, Chap. 58. 

APARTMENT— The Growlery of Jamdyce. 

" Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jamdyce. 
" This, you must know, is the Growlery. When 
I am out of humor, I come and growl here." 

" You must be here very seldom, sir," said I. 

" O, you don't know me ! " he returned. 

" When I am deceived or disappointed in — the 

wind, and it's Easterly, I take refuge here. The 

Growlery is the best-used room in the house ! " 

Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

APARTMENT— in a cosy tavern. 

It was one of those unaccountable little 
rooms which are never seen anywhere but in a 
tavern, and are supposed to have got into tav-' 
ems by reason of the facilities afforded to the 
architect for getting drunk while engaged in 
their construction. It had more corners in it 
than the brain of an obstinate man ; was full 
of mad closets, into which nothing could be put 
that was not specially invented and made for 
that purpose ; had mysterious shelvings and 
bulk-heads, and indications of staircases in the 
ceiling ; and was elaborately provided with a 
bell that rung in the room itself, about two feet 
from the handle, and had no connection what- 
ever with any other part of the establishment. 
It was a little below the pavement, and abutted 
close upon it ; so that passengers grated against 
the window-panes with their buttons, and 
scraped it with their baskets ; and fearful boys 
suddenly coming between a thoughtful guest 
and the light, derided him ; or put out their 
tongues as if he were a physician ; or made 
white knobs on the ends of their noses by flat- 
tening the same against the glass, and vanished 
awfully, like spectres. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 35. 

APARTMENT-Mr. Fips' office. 

In a very dark passage on the first floor, 
oddly situated at the back of a house, they 
found a little blear-eyed glass door up in one 
corner, with Mr. Fips painted on it in charac- 
ters which were meant to be transparent. There 
was also a wicked old sideboard hiding in the 
gloom hard by, meditating designs upon the 
ribs of visitors ; and an old mat worn into lat- 
tice work, which, being useless as a mat (even 
if anybody could have seen it, which was im- 
possible), had for many years directed its in- 
dustry into another channel, and regularly 
tripped up every one of Mr. Fips' clients. 

Martin Chtizzlewit, Chap. 39. 

APARTMENT— A model bedroom. 

It was none of your frivolous and preposter- 
ously bright bedrooms, where nobody can close 
an eye with any kind of propriety or decent re- 
gard to the associations of ideas ; but it was a 
good, dull, leaden, drowsy place, where every 
article of furniture reminded you that you came 



APARTMENT 



22 



ARGUMENT 



there to sleep, and that you were expected to 
go to sleep. There was no wakeful reflection 
of the fire there, as in your modern chambers, 
which upon the darkest nights have a watchful 
consciousness of French polish ; the old Span- 
ish mahogany winked at it now and then, as a 
dozing cat or dog might, nothing more. The 
very size, and shape, and hopeless immovability 
of the bedstead and wardrobe, and, in a minor 
degree, of even the chairs and tables, provoked 
sleep ; they were plainly apoplectic, and dis- 
posed to snore. 

There were no staring portraits to remon- 
strate with you for being lazy ; no round-eyed 
birds upon the curtains, disgustingly wide- 
awake, and insufferably prying. The thick 
neutral hangings, and the dark blinds, and the 
heavy heap of bed-clothes, were all designed to 
hold in sleep, and act as non-conductors to the 
day and getting up. Even the old stuffed fox 
upon the top of the wardrobe was devoid of 
any spark of vigilance, for his glass eye had 
fallen out, and he slumbered as he stood. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3. 

APARTMENT-A solitary. 

An air of retreat and solitude hung about the 
rooms, and about their inhabitant. He was 
much worn, and so were they. Their sloping 
ceilings, cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and 
heavy wooden bins and beams, slowly moulder- 
ing withal, had a prisonous look, and he had 
the haggard face of a prisoner. Yet the sun- 
light shone in at the ugly garret window, which 
had a penthouse to itself thrust out among the 
tiles ; and on the cracked and smoke-black- 
ened parapet beyond, some of the deluded 
sparrows of the place rheumatically hopped, 
like little feathered cripples who had left their 
crutches in their nests ; and there was a play 
of living leaves at hand that changed the air, 
and made an imperfect sort of music in it that 
would have been melody in the country. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 17. 

APARTMENTS — The loneliness of Law 
Inns. 

It is to be remarked of chambers in general, 
that they must have been built for chambers, to 
have the right kind of loneliness. You may 
make a great dwelling-house veiy lonely, by iso- 
lating suites of rooms, and calling them cham- 
bers, but you cannot make the true kind of lone- 
liness. In dwelling-houses there have been 
family festivals ; children have grown in them, 
girls have bloomed into women in them, court- 
ships and marriages have taken place in them. 
True chambers never were young, childish, 
maidenly ; never had dolls in them, or rocking- 
horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or little 
coffins. Let Gray's Inn identify the child who 
first touched hands and hearts with Robinson 
Crusoe in any one of its many " sets," and 
that child's little statue, in white marble with a 
golden inscription, shall be at its service, at my 
cost and charge, as a drinking-fountain for the 
spirit, to freshen its thirsty square. Let Lin- 
coln's produce from all its houses a twentieth 
of the procession derivable from any dwelling- 
house, one-twentieth of its age, of fair young 
brides who married for love and hope, not set- 
tlements, and all the Vice-Chanceliors shall 



thenceforward be kept in nosegays for nothing, 1 

on application to the writer hereof. ,lJ 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14. I| 

APPETITES— The advice of Squeers. 

" That's right," said Squeers, calmly getting ' 
on with his breakfast ; " keep ready till I tell 
you to begin. Subdue your appetites, my dears, 
and you've conquered human natur. This is 
the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr. 
Nickleby," said the schoolmaster, turning to 
Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very 
full of beef and toast. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 5. 



APPRENTICESHIP— of Oliver Twist. 

Oliver roused himself, and made his best obei 
sance. He had been wondering, with his 
eyes fixed on the magistrates* powder, whether 
all boards were born with that white stuff on 
their heads, and were boards from thenceforth 
on that account. 

" Well," said the old gentleman, " I suppose 
he's fond of chimney-sweeping ? " 

" He doats on it, your worship," replied 
Bumble, giving Oliver a sly pinch, to intimate 
that he had better not say he didn't. 

" And he will be a sweep, will he ? " inquired 
the old gentleman. 

" If we was to bind him to any other trade 
to-morrow, he'd run away simultaneous, your 
worship," replied Bumble. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 3. 

ARCHITECT-His designs. 

Mr. Pecksniff was surrounded by open books, 
and was glancing from volume to volume, with 
a black-lead pencil in his mouth, and a pair of 
compasses in his hand, at a vast number of 
mathematical diagrams, of such extraordinary- 
shapes that they looked like designs for fire- 
works. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5. 

ARGUMENT— A gift of Nature. 

" — If," said John Willet, turning his eyes 
from the ceiling to the face of his interrupter, 
and uttering the monosyllable in capitals, to ap- 
prise him that he had put in his oar, as the vul- 
gar say, with unbecoming and irreverent haste: 
"If, sir, Natur has fixed upon me the gift of 
argeyment, why should I not own to it, and rath- 
er glory in the same ? Yes, sir, I am a tough 
customer that way. You are right, sir. My 
toughness has been proved, sir, in this room 
many and many a time, as I think you know : 
and if you don't know," added John, putting 
his pipe in his mouth again, " so much the bet- 
ter, for I an't proud, and am not going to tell you," 

" For the matter o' that, Phil ! " observed 
Mr. Willet, blowing a long, thin, spiral cloud of 
smoke out of the corner of his mouth, and 
staring at it abstractedly as it floated away; " for 
the matter o' that, Phil, argeyment is a gift of 
Natur. If Natur has gifted a man with pow- 
ers of argeyment, a man has the right to make 
the best of 'em, and has not a right to stand 
on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted ; 
for that is a turning of his back on Natur, a 
flouting of her, a slighting of her precious 
caskets, and a proving of one's self to be a 
swine that isn't worth her scattering pearls be- 
fore." — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. i. 




. wi/sfaj;; --p;.-^^^-;» 



Kate Nickleby sitting to Miss LaCree 



EVY. 



23 



ARISTOCRACY 



ART AND NATURE 



ARISTOCRACY-A Sign of. 

" There's something in his appearance quite 
—dear, dear, what's that word again ? " 

*' What word ? " inquired Mr. Lillyvick. 

" Why — dear me, how stupid I am," replied 
Miss Petowker, hesitating. " What do you call 
it when Lords break off door-knockers, and 
beat policemen, and play at coaches with other 
people's money, and all that sort of thing ? " 

"Aristocratic?" suggested the collector. 

" Ah ! aristocratic," replied Miss Petowker ; 
" something very aristocratic about him, isn't 
there ? " — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 15. 

ARITHMETIC. 

As figures are catching, a kind of cyphering 
measles broke out in that locality, under the 
influence of which the whole Yard was light- 
headed. — Little Dotrity Book II., Chap. 32. 

AROMA. 

" A young Simoon of ham." 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 27. 

AROMA— Of a punch. 

The latter perfume, with the fostering aid of 
boiling water and lemon-peel, diffused itself 
throughout the room, and became so highly 
concentrated around the warm fireside, that the 
wind passing over the house-roof must have 
rushed off charged with a delicious whiff of it, 
after buzzing like a great bee at that particular 
chimney-pot. — Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 4. 

AROMA— Of wine. 

" Now, Mrs. Gamp, what's your n^v^^'i" 
The lady in question was by this time in the 
dooiway, curtseying to Mrs. Mould. At the 
same moment a peculiar fragrance was borne 
upon the breeze, as if a passing fairy had hic- 
coughed, and had previously been to a wine- 
vault. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 25. 

ART— Miss La Creevy's difficulties of. 

" Ah ! The difficulties of Art, my dear, are 
great." 

" They must be, I have no doubt," said Kate, 
humofing her good-natured little friend. 

" They are beyond anything you can form 
the faintest conception of," replied Miss La 
Creevy. "What with bringing out eyes with 
all one's power, and keeping down noses with 
all one's force, and adding to heads, and taking 
away teeth altogether, you have no idea of the 
trouble one little miniature is." 

" The remuneration can scarcely repay you," 
said Kate. 

" Why, it does not, and that's the truth," an- 
swered Miss La Creevy ; " and then people are 
so dissatisfied and unreasonable, that, nine 
times out of ten, there's no pleasure in painting 
them. Sometimes they say, ' Oh, how very 
serious you have made me look. Miss La 
Creevy ! ' and at others, * La, Miss La Creevy, 
how very smirking !' when the very essence of 
a good portrait is, that it must be either seri- 
ous or smirking, or it's no portrait at all." 

" Indeed ! " said Kate, laughing. 

" Certainly, my dear ; because the sitters are 
always either the one or the other," replied Miss 
La Creevy. " Look at the Royal Academy ! 
All those beautiful shiny portraits of gentlemen 
in black velvet waistcoats, with their fists 



doubled up on round tables, or marble slabs, 
are serious, you know ; and all the ladies who 
are playing with little parasols, or little dogs, 
or little children — it's the same rule in art, only 
varying the objects — are smirking. In fact," 
said Miss La Ci'eevy, sinking her voice to a 
confidential whisper, "there are only two styles 
of portrait painting, the serious and the smirk ; 
and we always use the serious for professional 
people (except actors sometimes), and the smirk 
for private ladies and gentlemen, who don't 
care so much about looking clever." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10. 

ART— Family Picttires. 

" If you have seen the picture-gallery of any 
one old family, you will remember how the 
same face and figure — often the fairest and 
slightest of them all — come upon you in differ- 
ent generations ; and how you trace the same 
sweet girl through a long line of portraits — 
never growing old or changing — the Good 
Angel of the race — abiding by them in all re • 
verses — redeeming all their sins." 

Old Cuiiosity Shop, Chap. 69. 

ART— A top-heavy portrait. 

Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait again. 
The artist had given it a head that would have 
been, in an intellectual point of view, top-heavy 
for Shakespeare. — Little Dorrit, Chap. 24. 

ART AND NATURE-A criticism. 

At the head of the collections in the palaces 
of Rome, the Vatican, of course, with its treas- 
ures of art, its enormous galleries, and stair- 
cases, and suites upon suites of immense cham- 
bers, ranks highest and stands foremost. Many 
most noble statues, and wonderful pictures, are 
there ; nor is it heresy to say that there is a 
considerable amount of rubbish there, too. 
When any old piece of sculpture dug out of the 
ground, finds a place in a gallery because it is 
old, and without any reference to its intrinsic 
merits ; and finds admirers by the hundred, be- 
cause it is there, and for no other reason on 
earth — there will be no lack of objects, very in- 
different in the plain eyesight of any one who 
employs so vulgar a property, when he may 
wear the spectacles of Cant for less than noth- 
ing, and establish himself as a man of taste for 
the mere trouble of putting them on. 

I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I can- 
not leave my natural perception of what is nat- 
ural and true at a palace-door, in Italy or else- 
where, as I should leave my shoes if I were 
travelling in the East. I cannot forget that 
there are certain expressions of face, natural to 
certain passions, and as unchangeable in their 
nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an 
eagle. I cannot dismiss from my certain know- 
ledge such common-place facts as the ordinary 
proportions of men's arms, and legs, and heads ; 
and when I meet with performances that do 
violence to these experiences and recollections, 
no matter where they may be, I cannot honestly 
admire them, and think it best to say so ; in 
spite of high critical advice that we should 
sometimes feign an admiration, though we have 
it not. 

Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I 
see a Jolly Young Waterman representing a 
cherubim, or a Barclay and Perkins's Drayman 



ART 



ARTIST 



depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to com- 
mend or admire in the performance, however 
great its reputed Painter. Neither am I partial 
to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and 
bassoons, for the edification of sprawling monks, 
apparently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur 
Tonsons of galleries. Saint Francis and Saint 
Sebastian ; both of whom I submit should have 
very uncommon and rare merits, as works of 
art, to justify their compound multiplication by 
Italian Painters. 

» iK 4K * * * 

When I observe heads inferior to the subject, 
in pictures of merit, in Italian galleries, I do 
not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I 
have a suspicion that these great men, who 
were, of necessity, very much in the hands of 
monks and priests, painted monks and priests a 
great deal too often. I frequently see, in pic- 
tures of real power, heads quite below the story 
and the painter : and I invariably observe that 
those heads are of the Convent stamp, and have 
their counterparts among the Convent inmates 
of this hour ; so, I have settled with myself 
that, in such cases, the lameness was not with 
the painter, but with the vanity and ignorance 
of certain of his employers, who would be apos- 
tles — on canvas, at all events. 

The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's 
statues ; the wonderful gravity and repose of 
many of the ancient works in sculpture, both 
in the Capitol and the Vatican ; and the strength 
and fire of many others, are, in their difi'erent 
ways, beyond all reach of words. They are 
especially imiiressive and delightful, after the 
works of Pernini and his disciples, in which 
the churches of Rome, from St. Peter's down- 
ward, abound ; and which are, I verily believe, 
the most detestable class of productions in the 
wide world. I would infinitely rather (as mere 
works of art) look upon the three deities of the 
Past, the Present, and the Future, in the Chi- 
nese Collection, than upon the best of these 
breezy maniacs ; whose every fold of drapery 
is blown inside out ; whose smallest vein, or 
artery, is as big as an ordinary forefinger ; 
whose hair is like a nest of lively snakes ; and 
whose attitudes put all other extravagance to 
shame. Insomuch that I do honestly believe, 
there can be no place in the world where such 
intoleral)le abortions, begotten of the sculptor's 
chisel, are to be found in such profusion as in 
Rome. — Pictures from Italy. 

ART- Italian pictures ; Beatrice di Cenci. 

In the private palaces, pictures are seen to 
the best advantage. There are seldom so many 
in one place that the attention need become 
distracted, or the eye confused. You see them 
very leisurely ; and are rarely interrupted by a 
crowd of people. There are portmits innumer- 
able, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Vandyke: 
heatls by Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo 
Dolci : various subjects by Correggio, and Mu- 
rillo, and Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and 
Spagnoletto— many of which it would be difti- 
cult, indeed, to praise too highly, or to praise 
enough ; such is their tenderness and grace, 
tJieir noble elevation, purity, and beauty. 

The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in' the Pa- 
kizzo Perberini, is a picture almost impossible 
to be forgotten. Through the transcendent 
sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a 



something shining out, that haunts me. I see 
it now, as I see this paper, or my pen. The 
head is loosely draped in white ; the light hair 
falling down below the linen folds. She has 
turned suddenly towards you ; and there is an 
expression in the eyes— although they are very 
tender and gentle — as if the wildness of a mo- 
mentary terror, or distraction, had been strug- 
gled with and overcome that instant : and 
nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful 
sorrow, and a desolate earthly helplessness re- 
mained. Some stories say that Guido painted 
it the night before her execution ; some other 
stories, that he painted it from memory, after 
having seen her on her way to the scaffold. I 
am willing to believe that, as you see her on his 
canvas, so she turned towards him, in the 
crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and 
stamped upon his mind a look which he has 
stamped on mine as though I had stood beside 
him in the concourse. The guilty palace of 
the Cenci — blighting a whole quarter of the 
town, as it stands withering away by grains — 
had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, 
and at its black, blind windows, and flitting up 
and down its dreary stairs, and growing out of 
the darkness of its ghostly galleries. The Plis- 
tory is written in the Painting ; written in the 
dying girl's face, by Nature's own hand. And 
oh ! how in that one touch she puts to flight 
(instead of making kin) the puny world that 
claim to be related to her, in right of poor con- 
ventional forgeries ! — Pictures from Italy. 

ART— Family pictures— Skimpole's descrip- 
tion of. 
There was a Sir Somebody Dedlock, with a 
battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke, flashes 
of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed 
fort, all in full action between his horse's two 
hind legs; showing, he supposed, how little a 
Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race 
he represented as having evidently been, in life, 
what he called "stuffed people," — a large col- 
lection, glassy eyed, set up in the most ap- 
proved manner on their various twigs and 
perches, very correct, perfectly free from ani- 
mation, and always in glass cases. 

Bleak House, Chap. 37. 

ART— Pictures in Italian churches. 

It is miserable to see great works of art — 
something of the Souls of Painters — perishing 
and fading away, like human forms. This Ca- 
thedral is odorous with the rotting of Correg- 
gio's frescoes in the Cupola. Heaven knows 
how beautiful they may have been at one time. 
Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now ; 
but such a labyrinth of arms and legs : such 
heaps of fore-shortened limbs, entangled and 
involved and juvnbled together, no operative 
surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in his wild- 
est delirium. — Pictures from Italy. 

ARTIST- An amateur (Gowan). 

lie appeared to be an artist by profession, 
and to have been at Rome some time ; yet he 
had a slight, careless, amateur way with him — 
a perceptible limp, both in his devotion to art 
and his attainments. 

****** 

His genius, during his earlier manhood, was 
of that exclusively agricultural character which 



ASHES 



25 



AUCTION SALE 



applies itself to tb« cult^vatior o^ wil'^ oat? 
A: last h_ had s^eclared that he would become a 
Painter ; partly because he had always had an 
idle knack that way, and partly to grieve the 
souls of the Barnacles-in-chief who had not pro- 
vided for him. So it had come to pass succes- 
sively, first, that several distinguished ladies 
had been frightfully shocked : then, that port- 
folios of his performances had been handed 
about o' nights, and declared with ecstacy to be 
perfect Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect pheno- 
mena ; then, that Lord Decimus had bought his 
picture, and had asked the President and Coun- 
cil to dinner at a blow, and had said, with his 
own magnificent gravity, " Do you know, there 
appears to me to be really immense merit in that 
work?" and, in short, that people of condition 
had absolutely taken pains to bring him into 
fashion. But, somehow, it had all failed. The 
•prejudiced public had stood out against it ob- 
stinately. They had determined not to admire 
Lord Decimus's picture. They had detemiined 
to believe that in every service, except their 
own, a man must qualify himself, by striving, 
early and late, and by working heart and soul, 
might and main. So now Mr. Gowan, like that 
worn-out old coffin which never was Mahomet's 
nor anybody else's, hung midway between two 
points ; jaundiced and jealous as to the one he 
had left ; jaundiced and jealous as to the other 
he couldn't reach. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 17. 

ASHES— of a home. 

The ashes of the commonest fire are melan- 
choly things, for in them there is an image of 
death and ruin — of something that has been 
bright, and is but dull, cold, dreary dust — with 
which our nature forces us to sympathise. How 
much more sad the crumbled embers of a home ; 
the casting down of that great altar, where the 
worst among us sometimes perform the worship 
of the heart ; and where the best have offered up 
such sacrifices, and done such deeds of heroism, 
as, chronicled, would put the proudest temples 
of old Time, with all their vaunting annals, to 
the blush. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 81. 

ASPERITY— The expression of. 

In a hard way, and in an uncertain way that 
fluctuated between patronage and putting down, 
the sprinkling from a watering-pot and hy- 
draulic pressure, Mrs. Clennam showed an in- 
terest in this dependant. As there are degrees 
of hardness in the hardest metal, and shades of 
color in black itself, so, even in the asperity of 
Mrs. Clennam's demeanor towards all the rest of 
humanity and towards little Dorrit, there was a 
fine gradation. — Little Don-it, Book /., Chap. 5. 

ASSOCIATION-The influence of. 

Whether people, by dint of sitting together 
in the same place and the same relative posi- 
tions, and doing exactly the same things for a 
great many years, acquire a sixth sense, or some 
unknown power of influencing each other which 
serves them in its stead, is a question for philos- 
ophy to settle. But certain it is that old John 
Willet, Mr. Parkes, and Mr. Cobb, were one 
and all firmly of opinion that they were very 
jolly companions — rather choice spirits than 
otherwise ; that they looked at each other every 
now and then as if there were a perpetual in- 



terchange nf ideas going on among them ; that 
no man considered himself or his neighbor by 
any means silent ; and that each of them nod- 
ded occasionally when he caught the eye of an- 
other, as if he would say, " You have expressed 
yourself extremely well, sir, in relation to that 
sentiment, and I quite agree with you." 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33. 

ASTHMA— The want of breath. 

" I smoke on srub and water myself," said 
Mr. Omer, taking up his glass, "because it's 
considered softening to the passages, by which 
this troublesome breath of mine gets into ac- 
tion. But, Lord bless you," said Mr. Omer, 
huskily, " it ain't the passages that's out of or- 
der ! ' Give me breath enough,' says I to my 
daughter Minnie, 'and /'U find passages, my 
dear I ' " — David Copperfield, Chap. 30. 

AUCTION SALE— of Dombey's furrdture. 

After a few days, strange people began to 
call at the house, and to make appointments 
with one another in the dining-room, as if they 
lived there. Especially, there is a gentleman, 
of a Mosaic Arabian cast of countenance, with 
a very massive watch-guard, who whistles in the 
drawing-room, and while he is waiting for the 
other gentleman, who always has pen and ink 
in his pocket, asks Mr. Towlinson (by the easy 
name of "Old Cock,") if he happens to know 
what the figure of them crimson and gold 
hangings might have been, when new bought. 
The callers and appointments in the dining- 
room become more numerous every day, and 
every gentleman seems to have pen and ink in 
his pocket, and to have some occasion to use it. 
At last it is said that there is going to be a 
Sale ; and then more people arrive, with pen 
and ink in their pockets, commanding a de- 
tachment of men with carpet-caps, who imme- 
diately begin to pull up the carpets, and knock 
the furniture about, and to print off thousands 
of impressions of their shoes upon the hall and 

staircase. 

****** 

The men in the carpet-caps go on tumbling 
the furniture about ; and the gentlemen with 
the pens and ink make out inventories of it, 
and sit upon pieces of furniture never made to 
be sat upon, and eat bread and cheese from the 
public-house on other pieces of furniture never 
made to be eaten on, and seem to have a de- 
light in appropriating precious articles to strange 
uses. Chaotic combinations of furniture also 
take place. Mattresses and bedding appear 
in the dining-room ; the glass and china get 
into the conservatory ; the great dinner service 
is set out in heaps on the long divan in the 
large drawing-room ; and the slair-wires. made 
into fasces, decorate the marble chimney- 
pieces. Finally, a rug, with a printed bill upon 
it, is hung out from the balcony : and a simi- 
lar appendage graces either side of the hall 
door. 

Then, all day long, there is a retinue of moul- 
dy gigs and chaise-carts in the street ; and 
herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, 
over-nin the house, sounding the ]>late-glass 
mirrors with their knuckles, striking discordant 
octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet fore- 
fingers over the pictures, breathing on the blades 
of the best dinner-knives, punching the squabs 



AUGUST 



AUSTERITY 



of chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touz- 
ling the feather beds, opening and shutting all the 
drawers, balancing the silver spoons and forks, 
looking into the very threads of the drapery 
and linen, and disparaging everything. There 
is not a secret place in the whole house. Fluffy 
and snuffy strangers stare into the kitchen- 
range as curiously as into the attic clothes- 
press. Stout men with napless hats on, look 
out of the bedroom windows, and cut jokes 
with friends in the street. Quiet, calculating 
spirits withdraw into the dressing-rooms, with 
catalogues, and make marginal notes thereon, 
with stumps of pencils. Two brokers invade 
the very fire-escape, and take a panoramic sur- 
vey of the neighborhood from the top of the 
house. The swarm, and buzz, and going up 
and down, endure for days. The Capital 
Modern Household Furniture, etc., is on view. 

Then there is a palisade of tables made in 
the best drawing-room ; and on the capital, 
french-polished, extending, telescopic range of 
Spanish mahogany dining-tables with turned 
legs, the pulpit of the Auctioneer is erected ; 
and the herds of shabby vainpires, Jew and 
Christian, the strangers fluffy and snuffy, and 
the stout men with the napless hats, congre- 
gate about it and sit upon everything within 
reach, mantel-pieces included, and begin to bid. 
Hot, humming, and dusty are the rooms all day ; 
and — high above the heat, hum, and dust — the 
head and shoulders, voice and hammer, of the 
Auctioneer, are ever at work. The m'en in the 
carpet-caps get flustered and vicious with tum- 
bling the Lots about, and still the Lots are 
goi"g) going, gone ; still coming on. Some- 
times there is joking and a general roar. This 
lasts all day and three days following. The 
Capital Modern Household Furniture, etc., is 
on sale. 

Then the mouldy gigs and chaise-carts re- 
appear ; and with them come spring-vans and 
wagons, and an army of porters with knots. 
All day long, the men with carpet-caps are 
screwing at screw-drivers and bed-winches, or 
staggering by the dozen together on the stair- 
case under heavy burdens, or upheaving perfect 
rocks of Spanish mahogany, best rosewood, or 
plate-glass, into the gigs and chaise-carts, vans 
and wagons. All sorts of vehicles of burden 
are in attendance, from a tilted wagon to a 
wheelbarrow. Poor Paul's little bedstead is 
carried off in a donkey-tandem. For nearly a 
whole week, the Capital Modern Household 
Furniture, etc., is in course of removal. 

At last it is all gone. Nothing is left about 
the house but scattered leaves of catalogues, 
littered scraps of straw and hay, and a battery of 
pewter pots beh'"nd the hall-door. The men 
with the carpet-caps gather up their screw- 
drivers and bed-winches into bags, shoulder 
them, and walk off". One of the pen and ink 
gentlemen goes over the house as a last atten- 
tion ; sticking up bills in the windows respecting 
the lease of this desirable family mansion, and 
shutting the shutters. At length he follows the 
men with the carpet-caps. None of the invad- 
ers remain. The house is a ruin, and the rats 
fly from \\..—Dojnbey dr" Son^ Chap. 59. 

AUGUST-Nattire in. 

There is no month in the whole year, in 
which nature wears a more beautiful appearance 



than in the month of August. Spring has many 
beauties, and May is a fresh and blooming 
month, but the chai-ms of this time of year are 
enhanced by their contrast with the winter sea- 
son. August has no such advantage. It comes 
when we remember nothing but clear skies, 
green fields, and sweet-smelling flowers — when 
the recollection of snow, and ice, and bleak winds 
has faded from our minds as completely as they 
have disappeared from the earth — and yet what a 
pleasant time it is ! Orchards and corn-fields 
ring with the hum of labor ; trees bend beneath 
the thick clusters of rich fruit which bow their 
branches to the ground ; and the corn, piled in 
graceful sheaves, or waving in every light 
breath that sweeps above it, as if it wooed the 
sickle, tinges the landscape with a golden hue. 
A mellow softness appears to hang over the 
whole earth. — Pickwick Papers^ Chap. 16. 

AUSTERITY— Its chilling- influence. 

The dignified old gentleman turned out to 
be Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking, who had been 
maintained by the Circumlocution Office for 
many years as a representative of the Britannic 
Majesty abroad. This noble Refrigerator had 
iced several European courts in his time, and 
had done it with such complete success that 
the very name of Englishman yet struck cold to 
the stomachs of foreigners who had the distin- 
guished honor of remembering him, at a dis- 
tance of a quarter of a century. 

He was now in retirement, and hence (in a 
ponderous white cravat, like a stiff snow-drift) 
was so obliging as to shade the dinner. There 
was a whisper of the pervading Bohemian char- 
acter in the nomadic nature of the service, and 
its curious races of plates and dishes : but the 
noble Refrigerator, infinitely better than plate 
or porcelain, made it superb. He shaded the 
dinner, cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and 
blighted the vegetables. 

There was only one other person in the 
room : a microscopically small footboy, who 
waited on the malevolent man who hadn't got 
into the Post-Office. Even this youth, if his 
jacket could have been unbuttoned and his 
heart laid bare, would have been seen, as a dis- 
tant adherent of the Barnacle family, already to 
aspire to a situation under government. 

Little Dojrit, Book /., Chap. 26. 

****** 

In the course of a couple of hours the noble 
Refrigerator, at no time less than a hundred 
years behind the period, got about five cen- 
turies in arrear, and delivered solemn political 
oracles appropriate to that epoch. He finished 
by freezing a cup of tea for his own drinking, 
and retiring at his lowest temperature. 

Chap. 26. 
****** 

The dinner and dessert being three hours' 
long, the bashful member cooled in the shadow 
of Lord Decimus faster than he warmed with 
food and drink, and had but a chilly time of it. 
Lord Decimus, like a tall tower in a flat coun- 
try, seemed to project himself across the table- 
cloth, hide the light from the honorable mem- 
ber, cool the honorable member's marrow, and 
give him a woful idea of distance. When he 
asked this unfortunate travellei to take wine, 
he encompassed his faltering steps with the 
gloomiest of shades ; and when he said. " Your 



AUSTERITY 



27 



AUTHOR 



health, srir ! " all around him was barrenness 
and desolation. 

At length Lord Decimus, with a coffee-cup 
in his hand, began to hover about among the 
pictures, and to cause an interesting speculation 
to arise in all minds as to the probabilities of 
his ceasing to hover, and enabling the smaller 
birds to flutter up-stairs ; which could not be 
done until he had urged his noble pinions in 
that direction. After some delay, and several 
stretches of his wings, which came to nothing, 
he soared to the drawing-rooms. 

Book II., Chap. 12. 

AUSTERITY-of Mr. Dombey. 

It happened to be an iron-gray autumnal day, 
with a shrewd east wind blowing — a day in 
keeping with the proceedings. Mr. Dombey 
represented in himself the wind, the shade, and 
the autumn of the christening. He stood in his 
library to receive the company, as hard and 
cold as the weather ; and when he looked out 
through the glass room, at the trees in the little 
garden, their brown and yellow leaves came 
fluttering down, as if he blighted them. 

Dombey and Sony Chap. 5. 

AUSTERITY— in politeness. 

" How do you do, sir?" said Chick. 

He gave Mr. Dombey his hand, as if he fear- 
ed it might electrify him. Mr. Dombey took 
it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such 
clammy substance, and immediately returned 
it to him with exalted politeness. 

Dombey and Son^ Chap. 5. 

AUSTERITY— The selfisliness of. 

In all his life, he had never made a friend. 
His cold and distant nature had neither sought 
one, nor found one. And now, when that na- 
ture concentrated its whole force so strongly on 
a partial scheme of parental interest and ambi- 
tion, it seemed as if its icy current, instead of 
being released by this influence, and running 
clear and free, had thawed for but an instant to 
admit its burden, and then frozen with it into 
one unyielding block. 

Dombey and Son, Chap. 5. 

AUSTERITY— Its influence on youth. 

" I have no will. That is to say," he colored 
a little, " next to none that I can put in action 
now. Trained by main force ; broken, not 
bent ; heavily ironed with an object on which 
I was never consulted and which was never 
mine ; shipped away to the other end of the 
world before I was of age, and exiled there un- 
til my father's death there, a year ago ; always 
grinding in a mill I always hated ; what is to 
be expected from me in middle life ? Will, 
purpose, hope? All those lights were extin- 
guished before I could sound the words." 

" Light 'em up again !" said Mr. Meagles. 

" Ah ! Easily said. I am the son, Mr. 
Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am 
the only child of parents who weighed, meas- 
ured, and priced everything ; for whom what 
could not be weighed, measured, and priced, 
had no existence. Strict people, as the phrase 
is, professors of a stern religion, their very re- 
ligion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sym- 
pathies that were never their own, offered up 
as a part of a bargain for the security of their 



possessions. Austere faces, inexorable disci- 
pline, penance in this world and terror in the 
next — nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and 
the void in my cowed heart everywhere — this 
was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word 
as to apply it to such a beginning of life." 

Little Dofrity Book /., Chap. 2. 

AUSTERITY IN REIilGION-Mrs. Clen- 
nam's. 

Woe to the suppliant, if such a one there 
were or ever had been, who had any concession 
to look for in the inexorable face at the cabinet ! 
Woe to the defaulter whose appeal lay to the 
tribunal where those severe eyes presided ! 
Great need had the rigid woman of her mysti- 
cal religion, veiled in gloom and darkness, with 
lightnings of cursing, vengeance, and destruc- 
tion, flashing through the sable clouds. For- 
give us our debts as we forgive our debtors, was 
a prayer too poor in spirit for her. Smite thou 
my debtors, Lord, wither them, crush them ; do 
Thou as I would do, and thou shalt have my 
worship : this was the impious tower of stone 
she built up to scale Heaven. 

Little Dorrity Book /., Chap. 5. 

AUTHOR— His loss of imag-inary friends. 

It is the fate of most men who mingle with 
the world, and attain even the prime of life, to 
make many real friends, and lose them in the 
course of nature. It is the fate of all authors 
or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and 
lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the 
full extent of their misfortunes ; for they are 
required to furnish an account of them besides. 
Pickwicky Chap. 57. 

AUTHOR— Mr. Dick, the mad. 

" I wish you'd go up stairs," said my aunt, as 
she threaded her needle, " and give my compli- 
ments to Mr. Dick, and I'll be glad to knovr 
how he gets on with his Memorial." 

I went up stairs with my message ; thinking, 
as I went, that if Mr. Dick had been working 
at his Memorial long, at the same rate as I had 
seen him working at it, through the open door, 
when I came down, he was probably getting on 
very well indeed. I found him still driving at 
it with a long pen, and his head almost laid 
upon the paper. He was so intent upon it, 
that I had ample leisure to observe the large 
paper kite in a corner, the confusion of bundles 
of manuscript, the number of pens, and, above 
all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed to 
have in, in half-gallon jars, by the dozen), before 
he observed my being present. 

•' Ha ! Phoebus !" said Mr. Dick, laying down 
his pen. " How does the world go? I'll tell 
you what," he added in a lower tone, " I 
shouldn't wish it to be mentioned, but it's a — " 
here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close 
to my ear — " It's a mad world. Mad as Bed- 
lam, boy !" said Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a 
round box on the table, and laugliing heartily. 

Without presuming to give my opinion on 
this question, I delivered my message. 

" Well," said Mr. Dick, in answer, " my com- 
pliments to her, and I — I believe I have made 
a start, I think I have made a start," said Mr. 
Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and 
casting anything but a confiilent look at his 
manuscript. "You have been to school?" 



AUTHOR, MAD 



AUTUMN SCENERY 



*' Yes, sir," I answered : •' for a short time." 

" Do you recollect the date,'' said Mr. Dick, 
look.ng efiTiiesth at mc and takint, ap his pen 
to note it down. " when King Charles the First 
had his head cut oft?" 

I said I believed it happened in the year six- 
teen hundred and forty-nine. 

" Well," returned Mr. Dick, scratching his 
ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me, 
" so the books say ; but I don't see how that 
can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how 
could the people about him have made that mis- 
take of putting some of the trouble out of his 
head, after it was taken off, into ?ntne?" 
****** 

In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick 
had been for upwards of ten years endeavoring 
to keep King Charles the First out of the Me- 
morial ; but he had been constantly getting into 
it, and was there now. 

David Copperfield^ Chap. 14. 

AUTHOR, MAD— Mr. Dick's diffusion of 
facts. 

I was going away, when he directed my atten- 
tion to the kite. 

'• What do you think of that for a kite T he 
said. 

I answered that it was a beautiful one. I 
should think it must have been as much as seven 
feet high. 

" I made it. We'll go and fly it, you and I," 
said Mr. Dick. " Do you see this ?" 

He showed me that it was covered with man- 
uscript, very closely and laboriously written ; 
but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines, 
I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles 
the First's head again, in one or two places. 

" There's plenty of string," said Mr. Dick, 
" and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long 
way. That's my manner of diffusing 'em. I 
don't know where they may come down. It's 
according to circumstances, and the wind, and 
so forth ; but I take my chances of that." 

David Copperfieldy Chap. 14. 

AUTHORESS— Mrs. Hominy, an American. 

Mrs. Hominy was a philosopher and an au- 
thoress, and consequently had a pretty strong 
digestion ; but this coarse, this indecorous 
phrase, was almost too much for her. For a 
gentleman sitting alone with a lady — although 
the door was open — to talk about a naked eye ! 

A long interval elapsed before even she, 
woman of masculine and towering intellect 
though she was, could call up fortitude enough 
to resume the conversation. But Mrs. Hominy 
was a traveller. Mrs. Hominy was a writer of 
reviews and analytical disquisitions. Mrs. Hom- 
iny had had her letters from abroad, beginning 
•' My ever dearest blank," and signed " The 
Mother of the Modern Gracchi " (meaning the 
married Miss Hominy), regularly printed in a 
public journal, with all the indignation in capi- 
tals, and all the sarcasm in italics. Mrs. Homi- 
ny had looked on foreign countries with the eye 
of a perfect republican hot from the model 
oven ; and Mrs. Hominy could talk (or write) 
about them by the hour together. So Mrs. Hom- 
iny at last came down on Martin heavily, and as 
he was fast asleep, she had it all her own way, 
and bruised him to her heart's content. 



Martin by degrees became so far awake, thai 
he had a sense of a terrible oppression on his 
mind ; an Impel feet dieam that he had laurder- 
ed a particular friend, and couldn't get rid of 
the body. When his eyes opened it was staring 
him full in the face. There was the horrible Hom- 
iny, talking deep truths in a melodious snuffle, 
and pouring forth her mental endowments to 
such an extent that the Major's bitterest ene- 
my, hearing her, would have forgiven him 
from the bottom of his heart. Martin might 
have done something desperate if the gong had 
not sounded for supper ; but sound it did most 
opportunely ; and having stationed Mrs. Hom- 
iny at the upper end of the table, he took refuge 
at the lower end himself ; whence, after a hasty 
meal, he stole away, while the lady was yet 
busied with dried beef and a saucer-full of 
pickled fixings. 

It would be difficult to give an adequate idea 
of Mrs. Hominy's freshness next day, or of the 
avidity with which she went headlong into mor- 
al philosophy, at breakfast. Some little addi- 
tional degree of asperity, perhaps, was visible 
in her features, but not more than the pickles 
would have naturally produced. All that day 
she clung to Martin. She sat beside him while 
he received his friends (for there was another 
Reception yet more numerous than the former), 
propounded theories and answered imaginary ob- 
jections, so that Martin really began to think 
he must be dreaming, and speaking for two ; 
she quoted interminable passages from cer- 
tain essays on government, written by herself ; 
used the Major's pocket-handkerchief as if the 
snuffle were a temporary malady, of which she 
was determined to rid herself by some means or 
other ; and, in short, was such a remarkable 
companion, that Martin quite settled it between 
himself and his conscience, that in any new set- 
tlement it would be absolutely necessary to 
have such a person knocked on the head for the 
general peace of society. 

Martin ChuzzlcTitif, Chap. 22. 

AUTUMN SCENERY. 

It was a warm autumn afternoon, and there 
had been heavy rain. The sun burst suddenly 
from among the clouds ; and the old battle- 
ground, sparkling brilliantly and cheerfully at 
sight of it in one green place, flashed a respon- 
sive welcome there, which spread along the 
country side as if a joyful beacon had been 
lighted up, and answered from a thousand sta- 
tions. 

How beautiful the landscape kindling in the 
light, and that luxuriant influence passing on 
like a celestial presence, brightening everything ! 
The wood, a sombre mass before, revealed its 
varied tints of yellow, green, brown, red ; its 
different forms of trees, with raindrops glitter- 
ing on their leaves and twinkling as they fell. 
The verdant meadow-land, bright and glowing, 
seemed as if it had been blind, a minute since, 
and now had found a sense of sight whercAvith 
to look up at the shining sky. Cornfields, hedge- 
rows, fences, homesteads, the clustered roofs, 
the steeple of the church, the stream, the water- 
mill, all sprang out of the gloomy darkness 
smiling. Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised 
their drooping heads, fresh scents arose from 
the invigorated ground ; the blue expanse above 
extended and diffused itself ; already the sun's 



AUTUJytN 



29 



AVARICE 



slanting rays pierced mortally the sullen bank 
of cloud that lingered in its flip^ht ; and a rain- 
bow, spirit ot all the colors tnat aaorned the 
earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its 
triumphant glory. — Battle of Life, Chap. 3. 

ATJTUMN-Wind at twUight. 

Not only is the day waning, but the year. 
The low sun is fiery and yet cold behind the 
monastery ruin, and the Virginia creeper on the 
Cathedral wall has showered half its deep-red 
leaves down on the pavement. There has been 
rain this afternoon, and a wintry shudder goes 
among the little pools on the cracked, uneven 
flag-stones, and through the giant elm-trees as 
they shed a gust of tears. Their fallen leaves 
lie strewn thickly about. Some of these leaves, 
in a timid rush, seek sanctuary within the low- 
arched Cathedral door. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 2. 

AUTUMN— Natiire in. 

It was pretty late in the autumn of the year, 
when the declining sun, struggling through the 
mist which had obscured it all day, looked 
brightly down upon a little Wiltshire village, 
within an easy journey of the fair old town of 
Salisbury. 

Like a sudden flash of memory or spirit kin- 
dling up the mind of an old man, it shed a 
glory upon the scene, in which its departed 
youth and freshness seemed to live again. The 
wet grass sparkled in the light ; the scanty 
patches of verdure in the hedges — where a few 
green twigs yet stood together bravely, resisting 
to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and 
early frosts — took heart and brightened up ; the 
stream which had been dull and sullen all day 
long, broke out into a cheerful smile ; the birds 
began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, 
as though the hopeful creatures half believed 
that winter had gone by, and spring had come 
already. The vane upon the tapering spire of 
the old church glistened from its lofty station in 
sympathy with the general gladness ; and from 
the ivy-shaded windows such gleams of light 
shone back upon the glowing sky, that it seemed 
as if the quiet buildings were the hoarding- 
place of twenty summers, and all their ruddi- 
ness and warmth were stored within. 

Even those tokens of the season which em- 
phatically whispered of the coming winter, 
graced the landscape, and, for the moment, 
tinged its livelier features with no oppressive air 
of sadness. The fallen leaves, with which the 
ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fra- 
grance, and subduing all harsh sounds of dis- 
tant feet and wheels, created a repose in gentle 
unison with the light scattering of seed hither 
and thither by the distant husbandman, and 
with the noiseless passage of the plough as it 
turned up the rich brown earth, and wrought a 
graceful pattern in the stubbled fields. On the 
motionless branches of some trees, autumn ber- 
ries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in 
those fabled orchards where the fruits were jew- 
els ; others, stripped of all their garniture, 
stood, each the centre of its little heap of bright 
red leaves, watching their slow decay ; others 
again, still wearing theirs, had them all crunched 
and crackled up, as though they had been burnt ; 
about the stems of some were piled, in ruddy 
mounds, the apples they had borne that year ; 



while others (hardy evergreens this class) 
=howed som^^what stern and r;loom" in t^eir 
vigor, as charged by nature with the admonition 
that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous 
favorites she grants the longest term of life. 
Still, athwart their darker boughs, the sunbeams 
struck out paths of deeper gold ; and the red 
light, mantling in among their swarthy branches, 
used them as foils to set its brightness off, and 
aid the lustre of the dying day. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

AUTUMN— The voices of nature. 

On a healthy autumn day, the Marshalsea 
prisoner, weak, but otherwise restored, sat 
listening to a voice that read to him. On a 
healthy autumn day ; when the golden fields 
had been reaped and ploughed again, when the 
summer fruits had ripened and waned, when 
the green perspectives of hops had been laid 
loM'- by the busy pickers, when the apples clus- 
tering in the orchards were russet, and the ber- 
ries of the mountain ash were crimson among 
the yellowing foliage. Already, in the woods, 
glimpses of the hardy winter that was coming, 
were to be caught through unaccustomed open- 
ings among the boughs, where the prospect 
shone defined and clear, free from the bloom 
of the drowsy summer weather, which had rest- 
ed on it as the bloom lies on the plum. So, from 
the sea-shore the ocean was no longer to be 
seen lying asleep in the heat, but its thousand 
sparkling eyes were open, and its whole breadth 
was in joyful animation, from the cool sand on 
the beach to the little sails on the horizon, 
drifting away like autumn-tinted leaves that 
had drifted from the trees. 

Changeless and barren, looking ignorantly at 
all the seasons with its fixed, pinched face of 
poverty and care, the prison had not a touch 
of any of these beauties on it. Blossom what 
would, its bricks and bars bore uniformly the 
same dead crop. Yet Clennam, listening to the 
voice as it read to him, heard in it all that great 
Nature was doing, heard in it all the soothing 
songs she sings to man. At no Mother's knee 
but hers had he ever dwelt in his youth on 
hopeful promises, on playful fancies, on the 
harvests of tenderness and humility that lie 
hidden in the early-fostered seeds of the im- 
agination ; on the oaks of retreat from blight- 
ing winds, that have the germs of their strong 
roots in nursery acorns. But, in the tones of 
the voice that read to him, there were memo- 
ries of an old feeling of such things, and echoes 
of every merciful and loving whisper that had 
ever stolen to him in his life. 

Little Don-it, Chap, 34. 

AVARICE— The miser. 

A little further on, a hard-featured old man 
with a deeply wrinkled face, was intently pe- 
rusing a lengthy will, with the aid of a pair of 
horn spectacles ; occasionally pausing from his 
task, and slily noting down some brief memo- 
randum of the bequests contained in it. Every 
wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp 
keen eyes, told of avarice and cunning. His 
clothes were nearly threadbare, but it was easy 
to see that he wore them from choice and not 
from necessity ; all his looks and gestures, 
down to the very small pinches of snufif which 
he every now and tlien took from a little tio 



AVARICE 



30 



BABY 



canister, told of wealth, and penury, and 
Jivarice. — Scenes, Chap. 8. 

AVARICE— Fledg-eby, th.e young miser. 

"Whether this young gentleman (for he was 
but three-and-twenty) combined with the miserly 
vice of an old man any of the open-handed 
vices of a young one, was a moot point ; so 
very honorably did he keep his own counsel. 
He was sensible of the value of appearances as 
an investment, and liked to dress well ; but he 
drove a bargain for every moveable about him, 
from the coat on his back to the china on his 
breakfast-table ; and every bargain, by repre- 
senting somebody's ruin or somebody's loss, 
acquired a peculiar charm for him. It was a 
part of his avarice to take, within narrow 
bounds, long odds at races ; if he won, he 
drove harder bargains ; if he lost, he half 
starved himself until next time. Why money 
should be so pi-ecious to an Ass too dull and 
mean to exchange it for any other satisfaction, 
is strange : but there is no animal so sure to 
get laden with it as the Ass who sees nothing 
written on the face of the earth and sky but the 
three letters L, S. D. — not Luxury, Sensuality, 
Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but 
the three dry letters. Your concentrated Fox is 
seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in 
money-breeding. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 5. 

AVARICE AND CUNNING. 

There is a simplicity of cunning no less than 
a simplicity of innocence ; and in all matters 
where a lively faith in knavery and meanness 
was required as the ground-work of belief, Mr. 
Jonas was one of the most credulous of men. 
His ignorance, which was stupendous, may be 
taken into account, if the reader pleases, sep- 
arately. 

This fine young man had all the inclination 
to be a profligate of the first water, and only 
lacked the one good trait in the common cata- 
logue of debauched vices — open-handedness — 
to be a notable vagabond. But there his grip- 
ing and penurious habits stepped in ; and as 
one poison will sometimes neutralize another, 
when wholesome remedies would not avail, so 
he was restrained by a bad passion from quaf- 
fing his full measure of evil, when virtue might 
have sought to hold him back in vain. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II. 

AVARICE— And heartlessness. 

The education of Mr. Jonas had been con- 
ducted from his cradle on the strictest princi- 
ples of the main chance. The very first word 
he learnt to spell was "gain," and the second 
(when he got into two syllables), "money." 
But for two results, which were not clearly 
foreseen perhaps by his watchful parent in the 
beginning, his training may be said to have 
been unexceptionable. One of these flaws was, 
that having been long taught by his father to 
overreach everybody, he had imperceptibly 
acquired a love of overreaching that venerable 
monitor himself. The other, that from his early 
habits of considering everything as a question 
of property, he had gradually come to look 
with impatience on his parent, as a certain 
amount of personal estate, which had no right 
whatever to be going at large, but ought to be 



secured in that particular description of iron 
safe which is commonly called a coffin, and 
banked in the grave. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 8. 

A"WAKE— liyingr. 

" My uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and his 
nightcap drawn almost down to his nose. His 
fancy was already wandering, and began to 
mingle up the present scene with the crater of 
Vesuvius, the French Opera, the Coliseum at 
Rome, Dolly's Chop-house in London, and all 
the farrago of noted places with which the 
brain of a traveller is crammed ; in a word, 
he was just falling asleep." 

Thus, that delightful writer, Washington 
Irving, in his Tales of a Traveller. But, it 
happened to me the other night to be lying, 
not with my eyes half closed, but with my eyes 
wide open ; not with my nightcap drawn almost 
down to my nose, for on sanitary principles I 
never wear a nightcap : but with my hair 
pitchforked and touzled all over the pillow ; 
not just falling asleep by any means, but glar- 
ingly, persistently, and obstinately broad 
awake. Perhaps, with no scientific intention or 
invention, I was illustrating the theory of the 
Duality of the Brain ; perhaps one part of my 
brain, being wakeful, sat up to watch the other 
part, which was sleepy. Be that as it may, 
something in me was as desirous to go to sleep 
as it possibly could be, but something else in 
me would not go to sleep, and was as obstinate 
as George the Third. 

Lying Awake. Reprinted Pieces. 

AWE. 

That solemn feeling with which we contem- 
plate the work of ages that have become but 
drops of water in the great ocean of eternity. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 52. 



B 



BABY— Its martyrdom— Mr. Meeks's pro- 
test. 

The voice of Nature cries aloud in behalf of 
Augustus George, my infant son. It is for him 
that I wish to utter a few plaintive household 
words. I am not at all angry ; I am mild — but 
miserable. 

I wish to know why, when my child, Augus- 
tus George, was expected in our circle, a provi- 
sion of pins was made, as if the little stranger 
was a criminal who was to be put to the torture 
immediately on his arrival, instead of a holy 
babe ? I wish to know why haste was made to 
stick those pins all over his innocent form, in 
every direction? I wish to be informed why 
light and air are excluded from Augustus George, 
like poisons? Why, I ask, is my unoffending 
infant so hedged into a basket-bedstead, with 
dimity and calico, with miniature sheets and 
blankets, that I can only hear him snuffle (and 
no wonder !) deep down under the pink hood 
of a little bathing-machine, and can never pe- 
ruse even so much of his lineaments as his nose. 

Was I expected to be the father of a French 
Roll, that the brushes of AU Nations were laid 



BABY 



31 



BABY 



in, to rasp Augustus George ? Am I to be told 
that his sensitive skin was ever intended by Na- 
ture to have rashes brought out upon it, by the 
premature and incessant use of those formida- 
ble little instruments ? 

Is my son a Nutmeg, that he is to be grated 
on the stiff edges of sharp frills? Am I the 
parent of a Muslin boy, that his yielding sur- 
face is to be crimped and small-plaited ? Or is 
my child composed of Paper or of Linen, tliat 
impressions of the finer getting-up art, prac- 
tised by the laundress, are to be printed off, all 
over his soft arms and legs, as I constantly ob- 
serve them ? The starch enters his soul ; who 
can wonder that he cries ? 

Was Augustus George intended to have 
limbs, or to be born a Torso ? I presume that 
limbs were the intention, as they are the usual 
practice. Then, why are my poor child's limbs 
fettered and tied up? Am I to be told that 
there is any analogy between Augustus George 
Meek and Jack Sheppard ? 

Analyse Castor Oil at any Institution of 
Chemistry that may be agreed upon, and inform 
me what resemblance, in taste, it bears to that 
natural provision which it is at once the pride 
and duty of Maria Jane to administer to Au- 
gustus George ! Yet I charge Mrs. Prodgit 
(aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with system- 
atically forcing Castor Oil on my innocent son, 
from the first hour of his birth. When that 
medicine, in its efficient action, causes internal 
disturbance to Augustus George, I charge Mrs. 
Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with 
insanely and inconsistently administering opium 
to allay the storm she has raised ! What is the 
meaning of this ? 

If the days of Egyptian Mummies are past, 
how dare Mrs. Prodgit require, for the use of 
my son, an amount of flannel and linen that 
would carpet my humble roof? Do I wonder 
that she requires it ? No ! This morning, 
within an hour, I beheld this agonising sight. 
I beheld my son — Augustus George — in Mrs. 
Prodgit's hands, and on Mrs. Prodgit's knee, 
being dressed. He was at the moment, com- 
paratively speaking, in a state of nature : hav- 
ing nothing on but an extremely short shirt, 
remarkably disproportionate to the length of 
his usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. 
Prodgit's lap, on the floor, was a long narrow 
roller or bandage — I should say of several yards 
in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit tightly 
roll the body of my unoffending infant, turning 
him over and over, now presenting his uncon- 
scious face upwards, now the back of his bald 
head, until the unnatural feat was accomplished, 
and the bandage secured by a pin, which I have 
every reason to believe entered the body of my 
only child. In this tourniquet he passes the 
present phase of his existence. Can I know it 
and smile ? 

I fear I have been betrayed into expressing 
myself warmly, but I feel deeply. Not for my- 
self ; for Augustus George. I dare not inter- 
fere. Will any one ? Will any publication ? 
Any doctor ? Any parent? Anybody? I do 
not complain that Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abet- 
ted by Mrs. Bigby) entirely alienates Maria 
Jane's affections from me, and interposes an 
impassable barrier between us. 1 do not com- 
plain of being made of no account. I do not 
want to be of anv account. But, Augustus 



George is a production of Nature (I cannot 
think otherwise), and I claim that he should be 
treated with some remote reference to Nature. 
In my opinion, Mrs. Prodgit is, from first to 
last, a convention and a superstition. 

Births — Mrs. Meek. — Repyhited Pieces. 

BABY— Description of a. 

One of those little carved representations 
that one sometimes sees blowing a trumpet on 
a tombstone ! — Tales, Bloomsbujy Christening. 

A weazen little baby, with a heavy head that 
it couldn't hold up, and two weak, staring eyes, 
with which it seemed to be always wondering 
why it had ever been born. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 22. 

BABY— His welcome of pins. 

The fatherless little stranger was welcomed by 
some grosses of prophetic pins in a drawer up- 
stairs, to a world not at all excited on the sub- 
ject of his arrival. — David Copperjield, Chap. I. 

BABY TALK. 

A mechanical power of reproducing scraps 
of current conversation for the delectation of 
the baby, with all the sense struck out of them, 
and all the nouns changed into the plural num- 
ber. — Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 

B ABY-The birth of a. 

There are certain polite forms and ceremo- 
nies which must be observed in civilized life, or 
mankind relapse into their original barbarism. 
No genteel lady was ever yet confined — indeed, 
no genteel confinement can possibly take place 
— without the accompanying symbol of a muf- 
fled knocker. Mrs. Kenwigs was a lady of 
some pretensions to gentility ; Mrs. Kenwigs 
was confined. And, therefore, Mr. Kenwigs 
tied up the silent knocker on the premises in a 
white kid glove. 

" I'm not quite certain, neither," said Mr. 
Kenwigs, arranging his shirt-collar, and walk- 
ing slowly up-stairs, " whether, as it's a boy, I 
won't have it in the papers." 

Pondering upon the advisability of this step, 
and the sensation it was likely to create in the 
neighborhood, Mr. Kenwigs betook himself to 
the sitting-room, where various extremely 
diminutive articles of clothing were airing on 
a horse before the fire, and Mr. Lumbey, the 
doctor, was dandling the baby — that is, the old 
baby — not the new one. 

" It's a fine boy, Mr. Kenwigs," said Mr. Lum- 
bey, the doctor. 

" You consider him a fine boy, do you, sir ? " 
returned Mr. Kenwigs. 

" It's the finest boy I ever saw in all my life," 
said the doctor. " I never saw such a baby." 

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and fur- 
nishes a complete answer to those who contend 
for the gradual degeneration of the human 
Species, that every baby born into the world i* 
a finer one than the last. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 36. 

BABY— Cutting- teeth. 

It was a peculiarity of this baby to be 
always cutting teeth. Wliether they never came, 
or whether they came and went away again, is 
not in evidence ; but it had certainly cut 



BABY 



BABY 



enough, on the showing of Mrs. Tetterby, to 
make ? hand-^ome '^entaJ provi'^ion for the "ign 
of the Bull and Mouth. All sorts of objects 
were impressed for the rubbing of its gums, 
notwithstanding that it always carried, dang- 
ling at its waist (which was immediately under 
its chin), a bone ring, large enough to have rep- 
resented the rosary of a young nun. Knife- 
handles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking- 
sticks selected from the stock, the fingers of 
the family in general, but especially of John- 
ny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles of doors, 
and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were 
among the commonest instruments indiscrimi- 
nately applied for this baby's relief. The 
amount of electricity that must have been 
rubbed out of it in a week, is not to be calcu- 
lated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said " it was 
coming through, and then the child would be 
herself ; " and still it never did come through, 
and the child continued to be somebody else. 
Christinas Stories, The Haunted Man, Chap. 3. 

BABY— A patient. 

A poor little baby — such a tiny old-faced 
mite, with a countenance that seemed to be 
scarcely anything but cap-bordei", and a little 
lean, long-fingered hand, always clenched under 
its chin. It would lie in this attitude all day, 
with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering 
(as I used to imagine) how it came to be so 
small and weak. Whenever it was moved it 
cried ; but at all other times it was so patient, 
that the sole desire of its life appeared to be, 
to lie quiet, and think. It had curious little 
dark veins in its face, and curious little 
dark marks under its eyes, like faint remem- 
brances of poor Caddy's inky days ; and al- 
together, to those who were not used to it, it 
was quite a piteous little sight. 

BleaJi House, Chap. 50. 

BABY— Annotmceraent of a. 

As he bent his face to hers, she raised hers to 
meet it, and laid her little right hand on his 
eyes, and kept it there. 

" Do you remember, John, on the day we 
were married, Pa's speaking of the ships that 
might be sailing towards us from the unknown 
seas ? " 

" Perfectly, my darling ! " 

" I think among them there is 

a ship upon the ocean bringing to 

you and me a little baby, John." 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 5. 

BABY-" Dot's." 

" I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John. I 
don't like it," said Mrs. Peerybingle, pouting in 
a way that clearly showed she did like it, very 
w much. 

" Why, what else are you ! " returned John, 
looking down upon her with a smile, and giving 
her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and 
arm could give. " A dot and " — here he glanc- 
ed at the baby — " a dot and carry — I won't say 
it, for fear I should spoil it ; but I was very 
near a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer." 

He was often near to something or other very 
clever, by his own account : this lumbering, 
slow, honest John ; this John, so heavy, but so 
light of spirit ; so rough upon the surface, but 
so gentle at the core ; so dull without, so quick 



within ; so stolid, but so good ! Oh, Mother Na- 
ture, g"ve th^ chilr" -en Ihe truo poetr> of he£:rt 
that hid itself in this poor Carrier's breast — ^he 
was but a Carrier, by the way — and we can 
bear to have them talking prose, and leading 
lives of prose ; and bear to bless thee for their 
company. 

It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little 
figure, and her baby in her arms — a very doll of 
a baby — glancing with a coquettish thoughtful- 
ness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little 
head just enough on one side to let it rest in an 
odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling 
and agreeable manner, on the great rugged 
figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see 
him, with his tender awkwardness, endeavoring 
to adapt his rude support to her slight need, 
and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff 
not inappropriate to her blooming youth. It 
was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy, 
waiting in the background for the baby, took 
special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) 
of this grouping ; and stood with her mouth 
and eyes wide open, and her head thrust for- 
ward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it 
less agreeable to observe \\.o\\ John the Carrier, 
reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid 
baby, checked his hand when on the point of 
touching the infant, as if he thought he might 
crack it ; and bending down, surveyed it fi'om 
a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride, 
such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed 
to show, if he found himself, one day, the 
father of a young canary. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap, i, 

BABY— A Moloch of a. 

Another little boy — the biggest there, but 
still little — was tottering to and fro, bent on 
one side, and considerably affected in his 
knees by the weight of a large baby, which he 
was supposed, by a fiction that obtains some- 
times in sanguine families, to be hushing to 
sleep. But oh ! the inexhaustible regions of 
contemplation and watchfulness into which this 
baby's eyes were then only beginning to com- 
pose themselves to stare, over his unconscious 
shoulder I 

It was a very Moloch of a baby, on whose 
insatiate altar the whole existence of this par- 
ticular young brother was offered up a daily 
sacrifice. Its personality may be said to have 
consisted in its never being quiet, in any one 
place, for five consecutive minutes, and never 
going to sleep when required. " Tetterby's 
baby," was as well known in the neighborhood 
as the postman or the pot-boy. It roved from 
door-step to door-step, in the arms of little 
Johnny Tetterby, and lagged heavily at the 
rear of troops of juveniles who followed the Tum- 
blers or the Monkey, and came up, all on one 
side, a little too late for everything that was 
attractive, from Monday morning until Satur- 
day night. Wherever childhood congregated to 
play, there was little Moloch making Johnny 
fag and toil. Wherever Johnny desired to 
stay, little Moloch became fractious, and would 
not remain. Whenever Johnny wanted to go 
out, Moloch was asleep, and must be watched. 
Whenever Johnny wanted to stay at home, 
Moloch was awake, and must be taken out. 
Yet Johnny was verily persuaded that it was a 
faultless baby, without its peer in the realm of 



BACHELORS 



BACHELOR BAGSTOCK 



England ; and was quite content to catch meek 
glimpses of things in general from behind its 
skirts, or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to 
go staggering about with it like a very little 
porter with a very large parcel, which was not 
directed to anybody, and could never be deliv- 
ered anywhere. 
Christtnas Stories. The Haunted Man, Chap. 2. 

BACHELORS— In society. 

These are generally old fellows with white 
heads and red faces, addicted to port wine and 
Hessian boots, who from some cause, real or 
imaginary — generally the former, the excellent 
reason being that they are rich, and their rela- 
tions poor — grow suspicious of everybody, and 
do the misanthropical in chambers, taking great 
delight in thinking themselves unhappy, and 
making everybody they come near, miserable. 
You may see such men as these, anywhere ; you 
will know them at coffee-houses by their discon- 
tented exclamations and the luxury of their din- 
ners ; at theatres, by their always sitting in the 
same place and looking with a jaundiced eye on 
all the young people near them ; at church, by 
the pomposity with which they enter, and the 
loud tone in which they repeat the responses ; 
at parties, by their getting cross at whist and 
hating music. An old fellow of this kind will 
have his chambers splendidly furnished, and 
collect books, plate, and pictures about him in 
profusion ; not so much for his own gratification 
as to be superior to those who have the desire, 
but not the means, to compete with him. He 
belongs to two or three clubs, and is envied, and 
flattered, and hated by the members of them 
all. Sometimes he will be appealed to by a 
poor relation — a married nephew perhaps — for 
some little assistance : and then he will declaim 
with honest indignation on the improvidence of 
young married people, the worthlessness of a 
wife, the insolence of having a family, the atro- 
city of getting into debt with a hundred and 
twenty-five pounds a-year, and other unpardon- 
able crimes ; winding up his exhortations with 
a complacent review of his own conduct, and a 
delicate allusion to parochial relief. He dies, 
some day after dinner, of apoplexy, having be- 
queathed his property to a Public Society, and 
the Institution erects a tablet to his memory, 
expressive of their admiration of his Christian 
conduct in this world, and their comfortable 
conviction of his happiness in the next. 

{Characters), Sketches, Chap, i. 

BACHELOR— A crusty. 

Mr. Nicodemus Dumps, or, as his. acquaint- 
ance called him, " long Dumps," was a bachelor, 
six feet high, and fifty years old ; cross, cadav- 
erous, odd, and ill-natured. He was never 
happy but when he was miserable ; and always 
miserable when he had the best reason to be 
happy. The only real comfort of his existence 
was to make everybody about him wretched — 
then he might be truly said to enjoy life. He 
was afflicted with a situation in the Bank worth 
five hundred a year, and he rented a "first- 
floor furnished," at Pentonviile, which he origi- 
nally took because it commanded a dismal 
prospect of an adjacent churchyard. He was 
familiar with the face of every tombstone, and 
the burial service seemed to excite his strongest 
sympathy. His friends said he was surly — he 

3 



insisted he was nervous ; they thought him a 
lucky dog, but he protested that he was " the 
most unfortunate man in the world." Cold as 
he was, and wretched as he declared himself to 
be, he was not wholly unsusceptible of attach- 
ments. He revered the memory of Hoyle, as 
he was himself an admirable and imperturbable 
whist-player, and he chuckled with delight at a 
fretful and impatient adversary. He adored 
King Herod for his massacre of the innocents ; 
and if he hated one thing more than another, it 
was a child. However, he could hardly be said 
to hate anything in particular, because he dis- 
liked everything in general ; but perhaps his 
greatest antipathies were cabs, old women, doors 
that would not shut, musical amateurs, and om- 
nibus cads. He subscribed to the " Society for 
the Suppression of Vice," for the pleasure of 
putting a stop to any harmless amusements : and 
he contributed largely towards the support of 
two itinerant Methodist parsons, in the amiable 
hope that if circumstances rendered any people 
happy in this world, they might perchance be 
rendered miserable by fears for the next. 

Sketches, Bloomsbury Christening, 

BACHELOR— A miserable creature. 

" A bachelor is a miserable wretch, sir," said 
Mr. Lillyvick. 

" Is he ? " asked Nicholas. 

"He is," rejoined the collector. "I have 
lived in the world for nigh sixty year, and I 
ought to know what it is." 

" You ought to know, certainly," thought 
Nicholas ; " but whether you do or not, is 
another question." 

" If a bachelor happens to have saved a little 
matter of money," said Mr. Lillyvick, " his sis- 
ters and brothers, and nephews and nieces, look 
to that money, and not to him ; even if, by be- 
ing a public character, he is the head of the 
family, or, as it may be, the main from which all 
the other little branches are turned on, they still 
wish him dead all the while, and get low-spir- 
ited every time they see him looking in good 
health, because they want to come into his lit- 
tle property. You see that ? " 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 25. 

BACHELOR— Major Bagstock. 

Although Major Bagstock had arrived at 
what is called in polite literature, the grand 
meridian of life, and was proceeding on his 
journey down-hill with Imrdly any throat, and 
a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flap- 
ped elephantine ears, and his eyes and com- 
plexion in the state of artificial excitement 
already mentioned, he was mightily proud of 
awakening an interest in Miss Tox, and tick- 
led his vanity with the fiction that she was a 
splendid woman, who had her eye on him. 
This he had several times hinted at the club : 
in connection with little jocularities, of which 
old Joe Bagstock, old Joey Bagstock, old J. 
Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was 
the perpetual theme : it being, as it were, the 
Major's stronghold and donjon-keep of light 
humor, to be on the most familiar terms with 
his own name. 

'• Joey B., Sir," the Major would say, with a 
flourish of his wnlking-stick, " is worth a dozen 
of you. If you had a few more of the Bag- 
stock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the 



BAGSTOCK 



34 



BAIili 



worse for it. Old Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a 
wife even now, if he was on the look-out ; but 
he's hard-hearted. Sir, is Joe — he's tough. Sir, 
tough, and de-vilish sly ! " After such a dec- 
laration wheezing sounds would be heard ; and 
the Major's blue would deepen into purple, 
while his eyes strained and started convul- 
sively. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 7. 

BAGSTOCK— The saying-s of Major. 

"An old campaigner, Sir," said the Major, 
" a smoke-dried, sun-burnt, used-up, invalided 
old dog of a Major, Sir, was not afraid of being 
condemned for his whim by a man like Mr. 
Dombey." 

****** 

" My little friend here, Sir, will certify for 
Joseph Bagstock that he is a thorough-going, 
downright, plain-spoken, old Trump, Sir, and 
nothing more." 

****** 

" None but the tough fellows could live, 
Sir, at Sandhurst. We put each other to the 
torture there, Sir. We roasted the new fel- 
lows at a slow fire, and hung 'em out of a three 
pair of stairs window, with their heads down- 
wards. Joseph Bagstock, Sir, was held out of 
the window by the heels of his boots, for thir- 
teen minutes by the college clock." 

The Major might have appealed to his coun- 
tenance in corroboration of this story. It cer- 
tainly looked as if he had hung out a little too 
long. 

" But it made us what we were. Sir," said the 
Major, settling his shirt frill. "We were iron. 
Sir, and it forged us." 

Dombey 6^ Son, Clixip. 10. 

BAIiCONTES— An Italian street. 

The Corso is a street a mile long ; a street 
of shops, and palaces, and private houses, some- 
times opening into a broad piazza. There are 
verandas and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, 
to almost every house — not on one story alone, 
but often to one room or another on every story 
— put there in general with so little, order or 
regularity, that if, year after year, and season 
after season, it had rained balconies, hailed bal- 
conies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they 
could scarcely have come into existence in a 
more disorderly manner. — Pictures from Italy. 

BALLOONIST-A. 

" Mr. Green is a steady hand. Sir, and there's 
no fear about him." 

" Fear ! " said the little man : " isn't it a love- 
ly thing to see him and his wife a going up in 
one balloon, and his own son and his wife a 
jostling up against them in another, and all of 
them going twenty or thirty miles in three 
hours or so, and then coming back in pochay- 
ses ? I don't know where this here science is to 
stop, mind you ; that's what bothers me." 

{Scenes), Sketches, Chap. 14. 

BATiTi— A fkncy dress. 

The preparations were on the most delightful 
scale ; fully realising the prophetic Pott's antici- 
pations about the gorgeousness of Eastern 
Fairyland, and at once affoiJing a sufficient 
contradiction to the malignant statements of 
the reptile Independent. The grounds were 



more than an acre and a quarter in extent, and 
they were filled with people ! Never was such 
a blaze of beauty, and fashion, and literature. 
There was the young lady who " did " the poe- 
try in the Eatanswill Gazette, in the garb of a 
sultana, leaning upon the arm of the young 
gentleman who " did " the review department, 
and who was appropriately habited in a field 
marshal's uniform — the boots excepted. There 
were hosts of these geniuses, and any reasorx- 
able person would have thought it honor enough 
to meet them. But more than these, there were 
half a dozen lions from London — authors, real 
authors, who had written whole books, and 
printed them afterwards — and here you might 
see *em, walking about, like ordinary men, 
smiling, and talking — aye, and talking pretty 
considerable nonsense too, no doubt with the 
benign intention of rendering themselves intel- 
ligible to the common people about them. 
Moreover, there was a band of music in paste- 
board caps ; four something-ean singers in the 
costume of their country, and a dozen hired 
waiters in the costume of their country — and 
very dirty costume too. And above all, there 
was Mrs. Leo Hunter in the character of Mi- 
nerva, receiving the company, and overflow- 
ing with pride and gratification at the notion 
of having called such distinguished individuals 
together. — Pickwick, Chap. 15. 

BAXLS— Spangles by daylight. 

What can be prettier than spangles ! It may 
be objected that they are not adapted to the 
daylight, but ever}'body knows that they would 
glitter if there were lamps ; and nothing can be 
clearer than that if people give fancy balls in 
the day-time, and the dresses do not show quite 
as well as they would by night, the fault lies 
solely with the people who give the fancy balls, 
and is in no wise chargeable on the spangles. 
Pickwick Papers, Chap. 15. 

BALL— A fashionable. 

" This is a ball night," said the M. C, again 
taking Mr. Pickwick's hand, as he rose to go. 
" The ball-nights in Ba — th are moments 
snatched from Paradise ; rendered bewitching 
by music, beauty, elegance, fashion, etiquette, 
and — and — above all, by the absence of trades- 
people, who are quite inconsistent with Para- 
dise ; and who have an amalgamation of them- 
selves at the Guildhall every fortnight, which is, 
to say the least, remarkable." 

****** 

In the ball-room, the long card-room, the 
octagonal card-room, the staircases, and the pas- 
sages, the hum of many voices, and the sound 
of many feet, were perfectly bewildering. 
Dresses rustled, feathers waved, lights shone, 
and jewels sparkled. There was the music — 
not of the quadrille band, for it had not yet 
commenced ; but the music of soft tiny foot- 
steps, with now and then a clear merry laugh — 
low and gentle, but very pleasant to hear in a 
female voice, whether in Bath or elsewhere. 
Brilliant eyes, lighted up with pleasurable ex- 
pectation, gleamed from every side ; and look 
where you would, some exquisite form glided 
gracefully through the throng, and was no sooner 
lost, than it was replaced by another as dainty 
and bewitching. 



BANK 



85 



BANK OFFICIALS 



In the tea-room, and hovering round the card- 
tables, were a vast number of queer old ladies 
and decrepid old gentlemen, discussing all the 
small talk and scandal of the day, with a relish 
and gusto which sufficiently bespoke the inten- 
sity of the pleasure they derived 'from the occu- 
pation. Mingled with these groups, were three 
or four matchmaking mammas, appearing to be 
wholly absorbed by the conversation in which 
they were taking part, but failing not from time 
to time to cast an anxious sidelong glance upon 
their daughters, who, remembering the maternal 
injunction to make the best use of their youth, 
had already commenced incipient flirtations in 
the mislaying of scarves, putting on gloves, set- 
ting down cups, and so forth ; slight matters ap- 
parently, but which may be turned to surpris- 
ingly good account by expert practitioners. 

Lounging near the doors, and in remote cor- 
ners, were various knots of silly young men, 
displaying various varieties of puppyism and 
stupidity ; amusing all sensible people near 
them with their folly and conceit ; and happily 
thinking themselves the objects of general ad- 
miration. A wise and merciful dispensation 
which no good man will quarrel with. 

And lastly, seated on some of the back 
benches, where they had already taken up their 
positions for the evening, were divers unmarried 
ladies past their grand climacteric, who, not 
dancing because there were no partners for 
them, and not playing cards lest they should be 
set down as irretrievably single, were in the 
favorable situation of being able to abuse every- 
body without reflecting on themselves. In 
short, they could abuse everybody, because ev- 
erybody was there. It was a scene of gaiety, 
glitter, and show ; of richly-dressed people, 
handsome mirrors, chalked floors, girandoles, 
and wax-candles ; and in all parts of the scene, 
gliding from spot to spot in silent softness, bow- 
ing obsequiously to this party, nodding famil- 
iarly to that, and smiling complacently on all, 
was the sprucely-attired person of Angelo Cy- 
rus Bantam, Esquire, Master of the Ceremonies. 
Pickwick Papers, Chap, 35. 

BANK— An old-fashioned. 

Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was on old- 
fashioned place, even in the year one thousand 
seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, 
very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It 
was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the 
moral attribute that the partners in the House 
were proud of its smallness, proud of its dark- 
ness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incom- 
modiousness. They were even boastful of its 
eminence in those particulars, and were fired 
by an express conviction that, if it were less 
objectionable, it would be less respectable. 
This was no passive belief, but an active weap- 
on which they flashed at more convenient places 
of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no 
elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tell- 
son's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and 
Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might ; but 
Tellson's, thank Heaven ! — 

Any one of these partners would have disin- 
herited his son on the question of rebuilding 
Tellson's. In this respect the House was much 
on a par with the Country ; which did very of- 
ten disinherit its sons for suggesting improve- 
ments in laws and customs that had long been 



highly objectionable, but were only the more 
respectable. 

Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was 
the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. 
After bursting open a door of idiotic obstina- 
cy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into 
Tellson's down two steps, and came to your 
senses in a miserable little shop, with two little 
counters, where the oldest of men made your 
cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they 
examined your signature by the dingiest of win- 
dows, which were always under a shower-bath 
of mud from Fleet Street, and which were 
made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, 
and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your 
business necessitated your seeing " the House," 
you were put into a species of Condemned 
Hold at the back, where you meditated on a 
misspent life, until the House came with its 
hands in its pockets, and you could hardly 
blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money 
came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden 
drawers, particles of which flew up your nose 
and down your throat when they were opened 
and shut. Your bank notes had a musty odor, 
as if they were fast decomposing into rags 
again. Your plate was stowed away among 
the neighboring cesspools, and evil communi- 
cations corrupted its good polish in a day or 
two. Your deeds got into extemporized strong- 
rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fret- 
ted all the fat out of their parchments into the 
banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of fam- 
ily papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, 
that always had a great dining-table in it and 
never had a dinner, and where, even in the year 
one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the 
first letters written to you by your old love, or 
by your little children, were but newly released 
from the horror of being ogled through the 
windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar 
with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy 
of Abyssinia or Ashantee. 

***** 

Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and 
hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried 
on the business gravely. When they took a 
young man into Tellson's London house, they 
hid him somewhere till he was old. They 
kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he 
had the full Tellson flavor and blue-mould up- 
on him. Then only was he permitted to be 
seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and 
casting his breeches and gaiters into the gene- 
ral weight of the establishment. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. I. 

BANK OFFICIALS-Their indlviduaUty. 

He pushed open the door with the weak rat- 
tle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, 
got past the two ancient cashiers, and shoulder- 
ed himself into the musty back closet where 
Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, 
with perpendicular iron bars to his window as 
if that were ruled for figures too, and every- 
thing under the clouds were a sum. 

" Halloa !" said Mr Stryver. " How do you 
do ? I hope you are well 1" 

It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he al- 
ways seemed too big for any place, or space. 
He was so much too big for Tellson's, that old 
clerks in distant corners looked up with looks 
of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them 



BAITKHTTPTCY 



BARKIS IS WlliliiW." 



against the wall. The House itself, magnificently 
reading the paper quite in the far-off perspec- 
tive, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head 
had been butted into its responsible waist- 
coat. 

The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone 
of the voice he would recommend under the 
circumstances, " How do you do, Mr. Stryver ? 
How do you do, sir ?" and shook hands. There 
was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking 
hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tell- 
son's who shook hands with a customer when 
the House pervaded the air. He shook in a 
self-abnegating way, as one who shook for 
Tellson and Co. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book IT, Chap. 12. 

BANKRUPTCY. 

The Inquest was over, the letter was public, 
the Bank was broken, the other model struc- 
tures of straw had taken fire and were turned 
to smoke. The admired piratical ship had 
blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships 
of all rates, and boats of all sizes ; and on the 
deep was nothing but ruin : nothing but burn- 
ing hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self- 
exploded tearing friends and neighbors to 
pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy 
spars and going down every minute, spent 
swimmers, floating dead, and sharks. 

Little Dorrit, Chap. 26. 

BANKRUPTCY— The world's idea of. 

Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey 
and Son had stopped, and next night there was 
a List of Bankrupts published, headed by that 
name. 

The world was very busy now, in sooth, and 
had a deal to say. It was an innocently credu- 
lous and a much ill-used world. It was a world 
in which there was no other sort of bankruptcy 
whatever. There were no conspicuous people 
in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of 
religion, patriotism, virtue, honor. There was 
no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in 
circulation, on which anybody lived pretty 
handsomely, promising to pay great sums of 
goodness with no effects. There were no 
short - comings anywhere, in anything but 
money. The world was very angry indeed : 
and the people especially, who, in a worse 
world, might have been supposed to be bank- 
rupt traders themselves in shows and pretences, 
were observed to be mightily indignant. 

Dombey and Son, Chap. 58. 

BAR-ROOM -The Six JoUy Fellowship 
Porters. 

The bar of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters 
was a bar to soften the human breast. The 
available space in it was not much larger than 
a hackney-coach : but no one could have wish- 
ed the bar bigger, that space was so girt in by 
corpulent little casks, and by cordial-bottles 
radiant with fictitious grapes in bunches, and 
by lemons in nets, and by biscuits in baskets, 
and by the polite beer-pulls that made low 
bows when customers were served with beer, 
and by the cheese in a snug comer, and by the 
landlady's own small table in a snugger comer 
near the fire, with the cloth everlastingly laid. 
Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 6. 



BAR-ROOM— The Maypole. 

All bars are snug places, but the Maypole's 
was the very snuggest, cosiest, and completest 
bar, that ever the wit of man devised. Such 
amazing bottles in old oaken pigeon-holes ; such 
gleaming tanl^ards dangling from pegs at about 
the same inclination as thirsty men would hold 
them to their lips ; such sturdy little Dutch 
kegs ranged in rows on shelves ; so many 
lemons hanging in separate nets, and forming 
the fragrant grove already mentioned in this 
chronicle, suggestive, with goodly loaves of 
snowy sugar stowed away hard by, of punch, 
idealized beyond all mortal knowledge ; such 
closets, such presses, such drawers full of pipes, 
such places for putting things away in hollow 
window-seats, all crammed to the throat with 
eatables, drinkables, or savory condiments ; 
lastly, and to crown all, as typical of the im- 
mense resources of the establishment, and its 
defiances to all visitors to cut and come again, 
such a stupendous cheese ! 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 19. 

BAR-ROOM— A mob in John "Willit's. 

Yes. Here was the bar — the bar that the 
boldest never entered without special invitation 
— the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed 
ground : here it was, crammed with men, clubs, 
sticks, torches, pistols ; filled with a deafening 
noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings ; chang- 
ed all at once into a bear-garden, a madhouse, 
an infernal temple ; men darting in and out, 
by door and window, smashing the glass, turn- 
ing the taps, drinking liquor out of China 
punchbowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking 
private and personal pipes, cutting down the 
sacred grove of lemons, hacking and hewing at 
the celebrated cheese, breaking open inviolable 
drawers, putting things in their pockets which 
didn't belong to them, dividing his own money 
before his own eyes, wantonly wasting, break- 
ing, pulling down, and tearing up ; nothing 
quiet, nothing private ; men everywhere 
above, below, overhead, in the bedrooms, in 
the kitchen, in the yard, in the stables — clam- 
bering in at windows when there were doors 
wide open ; dropping out of windows when the 
stairs were handy ; leaping over the banisters 
into chasms of passages : new faces and figures 
presenting themselves every instant — some yell- 
ing, some singing, some fighting, some break- 
ing glass and crockery, some laying the dust with 
the liquor they couldn't drink, some ringing the 
bells till they pulled them down, others beating 
them with pokers till they beat them into frag- 
ments: more men still — more, more, more — 
swarming on like insects : noise, smoke, light, 
darkness, frolic, anger, laughter, groans, plun- 
der, fear, and ruin ! 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap, 54. 

"BARKIS IS WTLLIN." 

He being of a phlegmatic temperament, and 
not at all conversational — I offered him a cake 
as a mark of attention, which he ate at one 
gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which 
made no more impression on his big face than 
it would have done on an elephant's. 

" Did she make 'em, now ? " said Mr. Barkis, 
always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on 
the footboard of the cart with an arm on each 
knee. 



BABKIS 



87 



BASHFULNESS 



" Peggotty, do you mean, sir ? " 

"Ah !" said Mr. Barkis. "Her." 

" Yes. She makes all our pastry and does all 
our cooking." 

" Do she though ? " said Mr. Barkis. 

He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but 
he didn't whistle. He sat looking at the horse's 
ears, as if he saw something new there ; and 
sat so for a considerable time. By-and-by, he 
said : 

" No sweethearts, I b'lieve ? " 

" Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis ? " For 
I thought he wanted something else to eat, and 
had pointedly alluded to that description of re- 
freshment. 

" Hearts," said Mr. Barkis. ** Sweethearts ; 
no person walks with her? " 

"With Peggotty?" 

" Ah ! '' he said. " Her." 

" Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart." 

"Didn't she, though?" said Mr. Barkis. 

Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and 
again he didn't whistle, but sat looking at the 
horse's ears. 

" So she makes," said Mr. Barkis, after a long 
interval of reflection, " all the apple parsties, 
and doos all the cooking, do she ? " 

I replied that such was the fact. 

" Well. I'll tell you what," said Mr. Barkis. 
" P'raps you might be writin' to her? " 

" I shall certainly write to her," I rejoined. 

" Ah ! " he said, slowly turning his eyes to- 
wards me. " Well ! If you was writin' to her, 
p'raps you'd recollect to say that Barkis was 
willin' ; would you?" 

" That Barkis was willing," I repeated inno- 
cently. " Is that all the message ? " 

" Ye-es," he said, considering. " Ye-es. 
Barkis is willin'." 

" But you will be at Blunderstone again to- 
morrow, Mr. Barkis," I said, faltering a little at 
the idea of my being far away from it then, 
" and could give your own message so much 
better." 

As he repudiated this suggestion, however, 
with a jerk of his head, and once more con- 
firmed his previous request by saying, with pro- 
found gravity, "Barkis is willin'. That's the 
message," I readily undertook its transmission. 
While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel 
at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a 
sheet of paper and an inkstand and wrote a 
note to Peggotty, which ran thus : " My dear 
Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is 
willing. My love to mamma. Yours affec- 
tionately. P. S. He says he particularly wants 
you to know — Barkis is willin! y 

David Copperfield, Chap. 5. 



"When a man says he's willin'," said Mr. 
Barkis, turning his glance slowly on me again ; 
" it's as much as to say, that man's a waitin' for 
a answer." 

"Well, Mr. Barkis?" 

"Well," said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes 
back to his horse's ears ; " that man's been a 
waitin' for a answer ever since." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 8. 

BARKIS-" It's true as taxes is." 

As he lay in bed, face upward, and so covered, 
with that exception, that he seemed to be noth- 



ing but a face — like a conventional cherubim- 
he looked the queerest object I ever beheld. 

" What name was it as I wrote up in the cart, 
sir ? " said Mr. Barkis, with a slow rheumatic 
smile. 

" Ah ! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks 
about that matter, hadn't we ? " 

" I was willin' a long time, sir ! " said Mr. 
Barkis. 

" A long time," said I. 

"And I don't regret it," said Mr. Barkis. 
" Do you remember what you told me once, 
about her making all the apple parsties and do- 
ing all the cooking ? " 

" Yes. very well," I returned. 

" It was as true," said Mr. Barkis, " as turnips 
is. It was as true," said Mr. Barkis, nodding 
his nightcap, which was his only means of em- 
phasis, " as taxes is. And nothing's truer than 
\h.^xa.y — David Copper/ieldy Chap. 21. 

BARKIS— The death of. 

" Barkis, my dear ! " said Peggotty, almost 
cheerfully, bending over him, while her brother 
and I stood at the bed's foot. " Here's my dear 
boy — my dear boy, Master Davy, who brought 
us together, Barkis ! That you sent messages 
by, you know ! Won't you speak to Master 
Davy ? " 

He was as mute and senseless as the box 
from which his form derived the only expression 
it had. 

" He's a going out with the tide," said Mr. 
Peggotty to me, behind his hand. 

My eyes were dim, and so were Mr. Peggot- 
ty's ; but I repeated in a whisper, " With the 
tide?" 

" People can't die, along the coast," said Mr. 
Peggotty, " except when the tide's pretty nigh 
out. They can't be born, unless its pretty nigh 
in — not properly born, till flood. He's a going 
out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, 
slack water half-an-hour. If he lives 'till it 
turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and 
go out with the next tide." 

We remained there, watching him, a long 
time — hours. What mysterious influence my 
presence had upon him in that state of his 
senses, I shall not pretend to say ; but when he 
at last began to wander feebly, it is certain he 
was muttering about driving me to school. 

" He's coming to himself," said Peggotty. 

Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered 
with much awe and reverence, " They are both 
a going out fast." 

" Barkis, my dear ! " said Peggotty. 

" C. P. Barkis," he cried faintly. " No better 
woman anywhere ! " 

" Look ! Here's Master Davy ! " said Peg- 
gotty. For he now opened his eyes. 

I was on the point of asking him if he knew 
me, when he tried to stretch out his arm, and 
said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile : 

" Barkis is willin' ! " 

And, it being low water, he went out with the 
tide.— David Copperfeld, Chap. 30. 

BASHFULNESS^-of Mr. Toots. 

"How d'ye do. Miss Dombey?" s?<|p^r> 
Toots. " I'm very well, I thank you ; hov^ro 
you ? " 

Mr. Toots — than whom there were few bet- 
ter fellows in the world, though there may have 



BATTLE-FIELD 



BATTLE-FIELD 



been one or two brighter spirits — had labori- 
ously invented this long burst of discourse with 
the view of relieving the feelings both of Flor- 
ence and himself. But, finding that he had 
run through his property, as it were, in an in- 
judicious manner, by squandering the whole 
before taking a chair, or before Florence had 
uttered a word, or before he had well got in at 
the door, he deemed it advisable to begin 
again. 

"How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?" said Mr. 
Toots. •' I'm very well, I thank you ; how are 
you ? " 

Florence gave him her hand, and said she 
was very well. 

" I'm very well, indeed," said Mr. Toots, 
taking a chair. " Very well, indeed, I am. 
I don't remember," said Mr. Toots, after re- 
flecting a little, " that I was ever better, thank 
you." 

" It's very kind of you to come," said Flor- 
ence, taking up her work. " I am very glad 
to see you." 

Mr. Toots responded with a chuckle. Think- 
ing that might be too lively, he corrected it with 
a sigh. Thinking that might be too melan- 
choly, he corrected it with a chuckle. Not 
thoroughly pleasing himself with either mode 
of reply, he breathed hard. 

Dombey and Son, Chap. i8. 



So shy was Mr. Toots on such occasions, and 
so flurried ! But Lady Skettles entering at the 
moment, Mr. Toots was suddenly seized with a 
passion for asking her how she did, and hoping 
she was very well ; nor could Mr. Toots by any 
possibility leave off" shaking hands with her, 
until Sir Bamet appeared : to whom he imme- 
diately clung with the tenacity of desperation. 

" We are losing, to-day. Toots,'* said Sir 
Bamet, turning towards Florence, " the light 
of our house, I assure you." 

" Oh, it's of no conseq 1 mean yes, to be 

sure," faltered the embarrassed Toots. " Good 
morning ! " — Dombey and Son, Chap. 28. 

BATTLE-FIELD- An old. 

Once upon a time, it matters little when, and 
in stalwart England, it matters little where, a 
fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a 
long summer day when the waving grass was 
green. Many a wild flower formed by the 
Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for 
the dew, felt its enamelled cup filled high 
with blood that day, and shrinking dropped. 
Many an insect deriving its delicate color from 
harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew 
that day by dying men, and marked its fright- 
ened way with an unnatural track. The paint- 
ed butterfly took blood into the air upon the 
edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The 
trodden ground became a. quagmire, whence, 
from sullen pools collected in the prints of 
human feet and horses' hoofs, the one prevail- 
ing hue still lowered and glimmered at the 
sun. 

Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the 
sights the moon beheld upon that field, when, 
coming up above the black line of distant rising 
ground, softened and blurred at the edge by 
trees, she rose into the sky and looked upon 
the plain, strewn with upturned faces that had 



once at mothers' breasts sought mothers' eyes, 
or slumbered happily. Heaven keep us from a 
knowledge of the secrets whispered afterwards 
upon the tainted wind that blew across the 
scene of that day's work and that night's death 
and suffering ! Many a lonely moon was 
bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star 
kept mournful watch upon it, and many a wind 
from every quarter of the earth blew over it, be- 
fore the traces of the fight were worn away. 

They lurked and lingered for a long time, 
but survived in little things ; for Nature, far 
above the evil passions of men, soon recovered 
her serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle- 
ground as she had done before, when it was 
innocent. The larks sang high above it ; the 
swallows skimmed and dipped and flitted to 
and fro ; the shadows of the flying clouds pur- 
sued each other swiftly, over grass and corn and 
turnip-field and wood, and over roof and church- 
spire in the nestling town among the trees, 
away into the bright distance on the borders 
of the sky and earth, where the red sunsets 
faded. Crops were sown, and grew up, and 
were gathered in : the stream that had been 
crimsoned, turned a water-mill ; men whistled 
at the plough ; gleaners and haymakers were 
seen in quiet groups at work ; sheep and oxen 
pastured ; boys whooped and called, in fields, 
to scare away the birds ; smoke rose from cot- 
tage chimneys ; sabbath bells rang peacefully ; 
old people lived and died ; the timid creatures 
of the field, and simple flowers of the bush and 
garden, grew and withered in their destined 
terms ; and all upon the fierce and bloody 
battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands 
had been killed in the great fight. 

But there were deep green patches in the 
growing corn at first, that people looked at 
awfully. Year after year they reappeared ; and 
it was known that underneath those fertile 
spots, heaps of men and horses lay buried, in- 
discriminately, enriching the ground. The 
husbandmen who ploughed those places shrunk 
from the great worms abounding there ; and 
the sheaves they yielded were, for many a long 
year, called the Battle Sheaves, and set apart ; 
and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be 
among the last load at a Harvest Home. For 
a long time, every furrow that was turned re- 
vealed some fragments of the fight. For a long 
time there were wounded trees upon the battle- 
ground ; and scraps of hacked and broken fence 
and wall, where deadly struggles had been 
made ; and trampled parts where not a leaf or 
blade would grow. For a long time no village 
girl would dress her hair or bosom with the 
sweetest flower from that field of death : and 
after many a year had come and gone, the ber- 
ries growing there were still believed to leave 
too deep a stain upon the hand that plucked 
them. 

The Seasons in their course, however, though 
they passed as lightly as the summer clouds 
themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time, 
even these remains of the old conflict, and 
wore away such legendary traces of it -as the 
neighboring people carried in their minds, un- 
til they dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly 
remembered round the winter fire, and waning 
every year. Where the wild flowers and berries 
had so long remained upon the stem untouch- 
ed, gardens arose, and houses were built, and 



BEATTTY 



BED-ROOM 



children played at battles on the turf. The 
wounded trees had long ago made Christmas 
logs, and blazed and roared away. The deep 
green patches were no greener now than the 
memory of those who lay in dust below. The 
ploughshare still turned up from time to time 
some rusty bits of metal, but it was hard to say 
what use they had ever served, and those who 
found them wondered and disputed. An old 
dinted corslet, and a helmet, had been hanging 
in the church so long, that the same weak, half- 
blind old man who tried in vain to make them 
out above the whitewashed arch, had marvelled 
at them as a baby. If the host slain upon the 
field could have been for a moment reanimated 
in the forms in which they fell, each upon the 
spot that was the bed of his untimely death, 
gashed and ghastly soldiers would have stared 
in, hundreds deep, at household door and win- 
dow ; and would have risen on the hearths of 
quiet homes ; and would have been the garner- 
ed store of barns and granaries ; and would 
have started up between the cradled infant and 
its nurse ; and would have floated with the 
stream, and whirled round on the mill, and 
crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow, 
and piled the rickyard high with dying men. 
So altered was the battle-ground, where thou- 
sands upon thousands had been killed in the 
great fight. — Battle of Life, Chap. i. 

BEAUTY— A ffrinning: sktdl beneath. 

" I am not a man to be moved by a pretty 
face," muttered Ralph sternly. " There is a 
grinning skull beneath it, and men like me, 
who look and work below the surface, see that, 
and not its delicate covering." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 31. 

BED— *'An out-an-outer." 

Mr. Weller proceeded to inquire which 
was the individual bedstead that Mr. Roker 
had so flatteringly described as an out-an-outer 
to sleep in. 

" That's it," replied Mr. Roker. pointing to a 
very rusty one in a corner. "It would make 
any one go to sleep, that bedstead would, wheth- 
er they wanted to or not." 

" I should think," said Sam, eyeing the piece 
of furniture in question with a look of exces- 
sive disgust, " I should think poppies was noth- 
ing to it." 

" Nothing at all," said Mr. Roker. 

" And I s'pose," said Sam, with a sidelong; 
glance at his master, as if to see whether there 
were any symptoms of his determination being 
shaken by what passed, " I s'pose the other 
genTmen as sleeps here, are gen'l'men ?" 

" Nothing but it," said Mr. Roker. " One of 
'em takes his twelve pints of ale a-day, and 
never leaves off smoking even at his meals." 

" He must be a first-rater," said Sam. 

" A I," replied Mr. Roker. 

Nothing daunted, even by this intelligence, 
Mr. Pickwick smilingly announced his detei- 
mination to test the powers of the narcotic 
bedstead for that night. 

Pickwick Papers, Chap. 41. 

BED-BOOM— Fickwlok in the wrongr. 

Having carefully drawn the curtains of his 
bed on the outside, Mr. Pickwick sat down on 
the rush-bottomed chair, and leisurely divested 



himself of his shoes and gaiters. He then took 
off" and folded up his coat, waistcoat, and neck- 
cloth, and slowly drawing on his tasseled night- 
cap, secured it firmly on his head, by tying 
beneath his chin the strings which he always 
had attached to that article of dress. It was at 
this moment that the absurdity of his recent be- 
wilderment struck upon his mind. Throwing 
himself back in the rush-bottomed chair, Mr. 
Pickwick laughed to himself so heartily, that it 
would have been quite delightful to any man 
of well-constituted mind to have watched the 
smiles that expanded his amiable features as 
they shone forth fi-om beneath the night-cap. 

" It is the best idea," said Mr. Pickwick to 
himself, smiling till he almost cracked the 
night-cap strings : " it is the best idea, my los- 
ing myself in this place, and wandering about 
those staircases, that I ever heard of Droll, 
droll, very droll." Here Mr. Pickwick smiled 
again, a broader smile than before, and was 
about to continue the process of undressing, 
in the best possible humor, when he was sud- 
denly stopped by a most unexpected interrup- 
tion ; to wit, the entrance into the room of some 
person with a candle, who, after locking the 
door, advanced to the dressing-table, and set 
down the light upon it. 

The smile that played on Mr. Pickwick's fea- 
tures was instantaneously lost in a look of the 
most unbounded and wonder-stricken surprise. 
The person, whoever it was, had come in so 
suddenly and with so little noise, that Mr. 
Pickwick had had no time to call out, or oppose 
their entrance. Who could it be? A rob- 
ber ? Some evil-minded person who had seen 
him come up-stairs with a handsome watch in 
his hand, perhaps. What was he to do ! 

The only way in which Mr. Pickwick could 
catch a glimpse of his mysterious visitor with 
the least danger of being seen himself, was by 
creeping on to the bed, and peeping out from 
between the curtains on the opposite side. 
To this manoeuvre he accordingly resorted. 
Keeping the curtains carefully closed with his 
hand, so that nothing more of him could be 
seen than his face and night-cap, and putting 
on his spectacles, he mustered up courage, and 
looked out. 

Mr. Pickwick almost fainted with horror and 
dismay. Standing before the dressing-glass 
was a middle-aged lady, in yellow curl-papers, 
busily engaged in brushing what ladies call 
their "back hair." However the unconscious 
middle-aged lady came into that room, it was 
quite clear that she contemplated remaining 
there for the night ; for she had brought a 
rushlight and shade with her, which, with 
praiseworthy precaution against fire, she had 
stationed in a basin on the floor, where it was 
glimmering away, like a gigantic light-house in 
a particularly small piece of water. 

" Bless my soul," thought Mr. Pickwick, 
" what a dreadful thing ! " 

" Hem ! " said the lady ; and in went Mr. 
Pickwick's head with automaton-like rapidity. 

" I never met with anything so awful as this," 
thought poor Mr. Pickwick, the cold perspira- 
tion starting in drops upon his night-cap. 
" Never. This is fearful." 

It was quite impossible to resist the urgent 
desire to see what was going forward. So out 
went Mr. Pickwick's head again. The prospect 



BED-ROOM 



40 



BED-ROOM 



was worse than before. The middle-aged lady 
had finished arranging her hair : had carefully 
enveloped it in a muslin night-cap with a small 
plaited border ; and was gazing pensively on the 
fire. 

" This matter is growing alarming," reasoned 
Mr. Pickwick with himself. " I can't allow 
things to go on in this way. By the self-pos- 
session of that lady it is clear to me that I must 
have come into the wrong room. If I call out 
she'll alarm the house ; but if I remain here the 
consequences will be still more frightful." 

Mr. Pickwick, it is quite unnecessary to say, 
was one of the most modest and delicate-mind- 
ed of mortals. The very idea of exhibiting his 
night-cap to a lady overpowered him, but he 
had tied those confounded strings in a knot, and 
do what he would, he couldn't get it off. The 
disclosure must be made. There was only one 
other way of doing it. He shrunk behind the 
curtains, and called out very loudly : 

*' Ha — hum ! " 

That the lady started at this unexpected 
sound was evident, by her falling up against 
the rush-light shade ; that she persuaded her- 
self it must have been the effect of imagination 
was equally clear, for when Mr. Pickwick, under 
the impression that she had fainted away stone- 
dead from fright, ventured to peep out again, 
she was gazing pensively on the fire as before. 

" Most extraordinary female this," thought 
Mr. Pickwick, popping in again. "Ha — 
hum ! '* 

These last sounds, so like those in which, as 
legends inform us, the ferocious giant Blunder- 
bore was in the habit of expressing his opinion 
that it was time to lay the cloth, were too dis- 
tinctly audible to be again mistaken for the 
workings of fancy. 

" Gracious Heaven ! " said the middle-aged 
lady, " what is that ? " 

" It's — it's — only a gentleman, Ma'am," said 
Mr. Pickwick from behind the curtains. 
^ " A gentleman ! " said the lady, with a ter- 
rific scream. 

" It's all over ! " thought INIr. Pickwick. 

" A strange man ! " shrieked the . lady. 
Another instant and the house would be alarm- 
ed. Her garments rustled as she rushed to- 
wards the door. 

" Ma'am," said Mr. Pickwick, thrusting out 
his liead, in the extremity of his desperation, 
" Ma'am ! " 

Now, although Mr. Pickwick was not actuated 
by any definite object in putting out his head, 
it was instantaneously productive of a good 
effect. The lady, as we have already stated, 
was near the door. She must pass it, to reach 
the staircase, and she would most undoubtedly 
have done so by this time, had not the sudden 
apparition of Mr. Pickwick's night-cap driven 
her back into the remotest comer of the apart- 
ment, where she stood staring wildly at Mr. 
Pickwick, while Mr. Pickwick in his turn 
stared wildly at her. 

" Wretch," said the lady, covering her eyes 
with her hands, " what do you want here ? " 

" Nothing, Ma'am ; nothing, whatever. 
Ma'am ; " said Mr. Pickwick earnestly. 

" Nothing ! " said the lady, looking up. 

" Nothing, Ma'am, upon my honor," said Mr. 
Pickwick, nodding his head so energetically 
that the tassel of his night-cap danced again. 



" I am almost ready to sink. Ma'am, beneath 
the confusion of addressing a lady in my night- 
cap (here the lady hastily snatched off hers), 
but I can't get it off. Ma'am (here Mr. Pickwick 
gave it a tremendous tug, in proof of the state- 
ment). It is evident to me, Ma'am, now, that 
I have mistaken this bed-room for my own. I 
had not been here five minutes, Ma'am, when 
you suddenly entered it." 

" If this improbable story be really true, 
sir," said the lady, sobbing violently, " you will 
leave it instantly." 

" I will. Ma'am, with the greatest pleasure," 
replied Mr. Pickwick. 

" Instantly, sir," said the lady. 

" Certainly, Ma'am," interposed Mr. Pick 
wick very quickly. " Certainly, Ma'am. I — I — 
am very sorry. Ma'am," said Mr. Pickwick, 
making his appearance at the bottom of the 
bed, " to have been the innocent occasion of 
this alarm and emotion ; deeply sorry, Ma'am." 

The lady pointed to the door. One ex- 
cellent quality of Mr. Pickwick's character was 
beautifully displayed at this moment, under the 
most trying circumstances. Although he had 
hastily put on his hat over his night-cap, after 
the manner of the old patrol ; although he car- 
ried his shoes and gaiters in his hand, and his 
coat arid waistcoat over his arm, nothing 
could subdue his native politeness. 

" I am exceedingly sorry, Ma'am," said Mr. 
Pickwick, bowing very low. 

" If you are, sir, you will at once leave the 
room," said the lady. 

" Immediately, Ma'am ; this instant, Ma'am," 
said Mr. Pickwick, opening the door, and drop- 
ping both his shoes with a crash in so doing. 

" I trust, Ma'am," resumed Mr. Pickwick, 
gathering up his shoes, and turning round to 
bow again : " I trust. Ma'am, that my unblem- 
ished character, and the devoted respect I en- 
tertain for your sex, will plead as some slight 
excuse for this — " But before Mr. Pickwick could 
conclude the sentence the lady had thrust him 
into the passage, and locked and bolted the 
door behind him. 

" Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, suddenly appear- 
ing before him, "where's my bedroom?" 

Mr. Weller stared at his master with the 
most emphatic surprise ; and it was not until 
the question had been repeated three several 
times, that he turned round, and led the way to 
the long-sought apartment. 

" Sam," said Mr. Pickwick as he got into bed, 
" I have made one of the most extraordinary 
mistakes to-night, that ever were heard of" 

"Wery likely, sir," replied Mr. Weller drily. 

" But of this I am determined, Sam," said 
Mr. Pickwick ; " that if I v^^ere to stop in this 
house for six months, I would never trust my- 
self about it, alone, again." 

" That's the wery prudentest resolution as 
you could come to, sir," replied Mr. Weller. 
" You rayther want somebody to look arter you, 
sir, wen your judgment goes out a wisitin'." 

" What do you mean by that, Sam ? " said 
Mr. Pickwick. He raised himself in bed and 
extended his hand, as if he were about to say 
something more ; but suddenly checking him- 
self, turned round, and bade his valet " Good 
night." 

" Good night, sir," replied Mr. Weller. He 




Pickwick in the Wrong Bedroom. 



40 



BEDSTEAD 



41 



BEaaARS 



paused when he got outside the door — shook 
his head — walked on — stopped — snuffed the 
candle — shook his head ae;ain — and finally pro- 
ceeded slowly to his chamber, appai'ently buried 
in the profoundest meditation. 

Pickwick, Chap, 22. 

BEDSTEAD— A despotic monster. 

It was a sort of vault on the ground-floor at 
the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post 
bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, 
putting one of his arbitrary legs into the fire- 
place and another into the door-way, and squeez- 
ing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a 
Divinely Righteous manner. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 45. 

BEDSTEADS— The characteristics of. 

A turn-up bedstead is a blunt, honest piece 
of furniture ; it may be slightly disguised with 
a sham drawer ; and sometimes a mad attempt 
is even made to pass it off for a book-case ; or- 
nament it as you will, however, the turn-up 
bedstead seems to defy disguise, and to insist 
on having it distinctly understood that he is a 
turn-up bedstead, and nothing else — that he is 
indispensably necessary, and that, being so use- 
ful, he disdains to be ornamental. 

How different is the demeanor of a sofa bed- 
stead ! Ashamed of its real use, it strives to 
appear an article of luxury and gentility — an 
attempt in which it miserably fails. It has 
neither the respectability of a sofa, nor the vir- 
tues of a bed ; every man who keeps a sofa 
bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wil- 
ful and designing fraud — we question whether 
you could insult him more than by insinuating 
that you entertain the least suspicion of its real 
use. — Scenes, Chap. 21. 

BEES— As models of industry. 

Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast 
as he had been over-night. There was honey 
on the table, and it led him into a discourse 
about Bees. He had no objection to honey, he 
said (and I should think he had not, for he 
seemed to like it), but he protested against the 
overweening assumptions of Bees. He didn't at 
all see why the busy Bee should be proposed as 
a model to him ; he supposed the Bee liked to 
make honey, or he wouldn't do it — nobody 
asked him. It was not necessary for the Bee 
to make such a merit of his tastes. If every 
confectioner went buzzing about the world, 
banging against everything that came in his 
way, and egotistically calling upon everybody 
to take notice that he was going to his work 
and must not be interrupted, the world would 
be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after 
all, it was a ridiculous position, to be smoked 
out of your fortune with brimstone, as soon as 
you had made it. You would have a very mean 
opinion of a Manchester man, if he spun cot- 
ton for no other purpose. He must say he 
thought a Drone the embodiment of a plea- 
santer and wiser idea. The Drone said, un- 
affectedly, " You will excuse me ; I really can- 
not attend to tne shop ! I find myself in a 
world in which there is so much to see, and so 
short a time to see it in, that I must take the 
liberty of looking about me, and begging to be 
provided for by somebody who doesn't want to 
took about him." This appeared to Mr. Skim- 



pole to be the Drone philosophy, and he 
thought it a very good philosophy — always sup- 
posing the Drone to be willing to be on good 
terms with the Bee : which, so far as he knew, 
the easy fellow always was, if the consequential 
creature would only let him, and not be so con- 
ceited about his honey \— Bleak House, Chap. 3. 

BEES— Their example a humbug. 

" But there's nothing like work. Look at 
the bees." 

" I beg your pardon," returned Eugene, with 
a reluctant smile, " but you will excuse my 
mentioning that I always protest against being 
referred to the bees." 

"Do you?" said Boffin. 

" I object on principle," said Eugene, " as a 
biped " 

" As a what? " asked Mr. Boffin. 

" As a two-footed creature ; — I object on 
principle, as a two-footed creature, to being 
constantly referred to insects and four-footed 
creatures. I object to being required to model 
my proceedings according to the proceedings 
of the bee, or the dog, or the spider, or the 
camel. I fully admit that the camel, for in- 
stance, is an excessively temperate person ; hut 
he has several stomachs to entertain himself 
with, and I have only one. Besides, I am not 
fitted up with a convenient cool cellar to keep 
my drink in," 

" But I said, you know," urged Boffin, rather 
at a loss for an answer, " the bee." 

" Exactly. And may I represent to you that 
it's injudicious to say the bee ? for the whole 
case is assumed. Conceding for a moment that 
there is any analogy between a bee and a man 
in a shirt and pantaloons (which I deny), and 
that it is settled that the man is to learn from 
the bee (which I also deny), the question still 
remains, what is he to learn? To imitate? 
Or to avoid? When your friends the bees 
worry themselves to that highly fluttered ex- 
tent about their sovereign, and become per- 
fectly distracted touching the slightest mon- 
archical movement, are we men to learn the 
greatness of Tuft-hunting, or the littleness of 
the Court Circular? I am not clear, Mr. Boffin, 
but that the hive may be satirical." 

" At all events, they work," said Mr. Boffin. 

" Ye-es," returned Eugene, disparagingly, 
" they work ; but don't you think they overdo it ? 
They work so much more than they need — they 
make so much more than they can eat — they 
are so incessantly boring and buzzing at their 
one idea till Death comes upon them — that 
don't you think they overdo it ? And are 
human laborers to have no holidays, because of 
the bees ? And am I never to have change of 
air, because the bees don't? Mr. Boffin, I 
think honey excellent at breakfast ; but, regard- 
ed in the light of my conventional schoolmaster 
and moralist, I protest against the tyrannical 
humbug of your friend the bee." 

Our Mutual Fiiend, Chap. 8. 

BEGGARS— in Italian churches. 

There is a very interesting subterranean 
church here ; the roof supported by marble pil- 
lars, behind each of which there seemed to be 
at least one beggar in ambush : to say nothing 
of the tombs and secluded altars. From every 



BEGQABS 



42 



BEGGAHS 



one of these lurking-places, such crowds of 
phantom-looking men and women, leading 
other men and women with twisted limbs, or 
chattering jaws, or paralytic gestures, or idiotic 
heads, or some other sad infirmity, came hob- 
bling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in 
the cathedral above had been suddenly anima- 
ted, and had retired to this lower church, they 
could hardly have made a greater confusion, or 
exhibited a more confounding display of arms 
and legs. — Pictures from Italy. 

BEGGARS— Italian. 

A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they 
are ! All beggars ; but that's nothing. Look 
at them as they gather round. Some aie too 
indolent to come down-stairs, or are too wise- 
ly mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, to venture ; 
so stretch out their lean hands from upper win- 
dows, and howl ; others come flocking about 
us, fighting and jostling one another, and de- 
manding, incessantly, charity for the love of 
God, charity for the love of the Blessed Vir- 
gin, charity for the love of all the Saints. A 
group of miserable children, almost naked, 
screaming forth the same petition, discover 
that they can see themselves reflected in the 
varnish of the carriage, and begin to dance 
and make grimaces, that they may have the 
pleasure of seeing their antics repeated in this 
mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking 
one of them who drowns his clamorous de- 
mand for charity, observes his angry counter- 
part in the panel, stops short, and thrusting out 
his tongue, begins to wag his head and chat- 
ter. The shrill cry raised at this, awakens half 
a dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowsy 
brown cloaks, who are lying on the church- 
steps with pots and pans for sale. These, 
scrambling up, approach, and beg defiantly. " I 
am hungry. Give me something. Listen to 
me, Signor. I am hungry ! " Then, a ghastly 
old woman, fearful of being too late, comes 
hobbling down the street, stretching out one 
hand, and scratching herself all the way with 
the other, and screaming, long before she can 
be heard, "Charity, charity! I'll go and pray 
for you directly, beautiful lady, if you'll give 
me charity ! " Lastly, the members of a broth- 
erhood for burying the dead— hideously mask- 
ed, and attired in shabby black robes, white at 
the skirts, with the splashes of many muddy 
winters, escorted by a dirty priest, and a con- 
genial cross-bearer — come hurrying past. Sur- 
rounded by this motley concourse, we move out 
of Fondi ; bad bright eyes glaring at us, out of 
the darkness of every crazy tenement, like 
glistening fragments of its filth and putrefac- 
tion. — Pictures from Italy. 

BEGGARS— of society : the 

But there are, besides, the individual beg- 
gars ; and how does the heart of the Secretary 
fail him when he has to cope with them! And 
they must be coped with to some extent, be- 
cause they all enclose documents (they call their 
scraps documents ; but they are, as to papers 
deserving the name, what minced veal is to a 
calf), the non-return of which would be their 
ruin. That is to say, they are utterly ruined 
now, but they would be more utterly ruined 
then. Among these correspondents are several 
daugliters of general ofiicers, long accustomed 



to every luxury of life (except spelling), who 
little thought, when their gallant fathers wagea 
war in the Peninsula, that they would ever have 
to appeal to those whom Providence, in its 
inscrutable wisdom, has blessed with untold 
gold, and from among whom they select the 
name of Nicodemus Bofiin, Esquire, for a' 
maiden efi'ort in this wise, understanding that 
he has such a heart as never was. The Secre- 
tary learns, too, that confidence between man 
and wife would seem to obtain but rarely when 
virtue is in distress, so numerous are the wives 
who take up their pens to ask Mr. Boffin for 
money without the knowledge of their devoted 
husbands, who would never permit it ; while, 
on the other hand, so numerous are the hus 
bands who take up their pens to ask Mr. Boffin 
for money without the knowledge of their d€>- 
voted wives, who would instantly go out of their 
senses if they had the least suspicion of the 
circumstance. There are the inspired beggars, 
too. These were sitting, only yesterday even- 
ing, musing over a fragment of candle which 
must soon go out and leave them in the dark 
for the rest of their nights, when surely some 
Angel whispered the name of Nicodemus Bof- 
fin, Esquire, to their souls, imparting rays of 
hope, nay, confidence, to which they had long 
been strangers ! Akin to these are the sugges- 
tively-befriended beggars. They were partak- 
ing of a cold potato and water by the flick- 
ering and gloomy light of a lucifer-match, in 
their lodgings (rent considerably in arrear, and 
heartless landlady threatening expulsion " like 
a dog " into the streets), when a gifted friend 
happening to look in, said, " Write immediate- 
ly to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire," and would 
take no denial. There are the nobly indepen- 
dent beggax-s too. These, in the days of their 
abundance, ever regarded gold as dross, and 
have not yet got over that only impediment in 
the way of their amassing wealth, but they 
want no dross from Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire ; 
No, Mr. Boffin ; the world may term it pride, 
paltry pride if you will, but they wouldn't take 
it if you offered it ; a loan, sir — for fourteen 
weeks to the day, interest calculated at the rate 
of five per cent, per annum, to be bestowed 
upon any charitable institution you may name 
— is all they want of you, and if you have the 
meanness to refuse it, count on being despised 
by these great spirits. There are the beggars 
of punctual business habits too. These will 
make an end of themselves at a quarter to one 
P. M. on Tuesday, if no Post-office order is in 
the interim received from Nicodemus Boffin, 
Esquire ; arriving after a quarter to one P, M. 
on Tuesday, it need not be sent, as they will 
then (having made an exact memorandum of 
the heartless circumstances) be " cold in death." 
There are the beggars on horseback too, in an- 
other sense from the sense of the proverb. These 
are mounted and ready to start on the highway to 
affluence. The goal is before them, the road is 
in the best condition, their spurs are on, the 
steed is willing, but at the last moment, for 
want of some special thing — a clock, a violin, 
an astronomical telescope, an electrifying ma- 
chine — they must dismount for ever, unless they 
receive its equivalent in money from Nicode- 
mus Boffin, Esquire. I^ess given to detail are 
the beggars who make sporting ventures. 
These, usually to be addressed in reply under 



BEQGING-IiETTER WRITEB 



43 



BELLS 



initials at a country post-office, inquire in femi- 
nine hands, Dare one who cannot disclose her- 
self to Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, but whose 
name might startle him were it revealed, solicit 
the immediate advance of two hundred pounds 
from unexpected riches exercising their noblest 
privilege in the trust of a common humanity ? 
Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 17. 

BEGGINa-LETTER WRITER-The. 

I ought to know something of the Beg- 
ging-Letter Writer. He has beseiged my door, 
at all hours of the day and night; he has fought 
my servant ; he has lain in ambush for me, go- 
ing out and coming in ; he has followed me out 
of town into the country ; he has appeared at 
provincial hotels, where I have been staying for 
only a few hours ; he has written to me from 
immense distances, when I have been out of 
England. He has fallen sick ; he has died, and 
been buried ; he has come to life again, and 
again departed from this transitory scene ; he 
has been his own son, his own mother, his own 
baby, his idiot brother, his uncle, his aunt, his 
aged grandfather. He has wanted a great coat, 
to go to India in ; a pound to set him up in life 
for ever ; a pair of boots, to take him to the 
coast of China ; a hat, to get him into a per- 
manent situation under Government. He has 
frequently been exactly seven-and-sixpence 
short of independence. He has had such open- 
ings at Liverpool — posts of great trust and con- 
fidence in merchants' houses, which nothing but 
seven-and-sixpence was wanting to him to se- 
cure — that I wonder he is not Mayor of that 
flourishing town at the present moment. 

The natural phenomena of which he has been 
the victim, are of a most astounding nature. 
He has had two children, who have never grown 
up ; who have never had anything to cover them 
at night ; who have been continually driving 
him mad, by asking in vain for food ; who have 
never come out of fevers and measles- (which, I 
suppose, has accounted for his fuming his let- 
ters with tobacco smoke as a disinfectant) ; who 
have never changed in the least degree, through 
fourteen long revolving years. As to his wife, 
what that suffering woman has undergone, no- 
body knows. She has always been in an inter- 
esting situation thx-ough the same long period, 
and has never been confined yet. His devotion 
to her has been unceasing. He has never cared 
for himself ; he could have perished — he would 
rather, in short — but was it not his Christian 
duty as a man, a husband, and a father, to write 
begging letters when he looked at her? (He 
has usually remarked that he would call in the 
evening for an answer to this question.) 

He has been the sport of the strangest mis- 
fortunes. What his brother has done to him 
would have broken anybody else's heart. His 
brother went into business with him, and ran 
away with the money ; his brother got him to 
be security for an immense sum, and left him to 
pay it ; his brother would have given him em- 
ployment to the tune of hundreds a year, if he 
would have consented to write letters on a Sun- 
day ; his brother enunciated principles incom- 
patible with his religious views, and he could 
not (in consequence) permit his brother to pro- 
vide for him. His landlord has never shown a 
spark of human feeling. When he put in that 
execution I don't know, but he has never taken 



it out. The broker's man has grown gray in 
possession. They will have to bury him some 
day. 

He has been attached to every conceivable 
pursuit. He has been in the army, in the navy, 
in the church, in the law ; connected with the 
press, the fine arts, public institutions, every de- 
scription and grade of business. He has been 
brought up as a gentleman : he has been at 
every college in Oxford and Cambridge ; he 
can quote Latin in his letters (but generally 
mis-spells some minor English word) ; he can 
tell you what Shakespeare says about begging, 
better than you know it. It is to be observed, 
that in the midst of his afflictions he always 
reads the newspapers ; and rounds off his ap- 
peals with some allusion, that may be supposed 
to be in my way, to the popular subject of the 
hour. 

His life presents a series of inconsistencies. 
Sometimes he has never written such a letter 
before. He blushes with shame. That is the 
first time ; that shall be the last. Don't answer 
it, and let it be understood that, then, he will 
kill himself quietly. Sometimes (and more fre- 
quently) he has written a few such letters. Then 
he encloses the answers, with an intimation that 
they are of inestimable value to him, and a re- 
quest that they may be carefully returned. He 
is fond of enclosing something — verses, letters, 
pawnbrokers' duplicates, anything to necessitate 
an answer. He is very severe upon *' the pam- 
pered minion of fortune," who refused him the 
half-sovereign referred to in the enclosure 
number two — but he knows me better. 

He writes in a variety of styles ; sometimes 
in low spirits ; sometimes quite jocosely. When 
he is in low spirits, he writes down-hill, and 
repeats words — these little indications being 
expressive of the perturbation of his mind. 
When he is more vivacious, he is frank with 
me ; he is quite the agreeable rattle. I know 
what human nature is — who better ? Well ! 
He had a little money once, and he ran through 
it — as many men have done before him. He 
finds his old friends turn away from him now — 
many men have done that before him, too ! 
Shall he tell me why he writes to me ? Be- 
cause he has no kind of claim upon me. He 
puts it on that ground, plainly ; and begs to 
ask for the loan (as I know human nature) of 
two sovereigns, to be repaid next Tuesday six 
weeks, before twelve at noon. 

^ * 4c 4: * ♦ 

The poor never write these letters. Nothing 
could be more unlike their habits. The writers 
are public robbers ; and we who support them 
are parties to their depredations. They trade 
upon every circumstance within their know- 
ledge that affects us, public or private, joyful or 
sorrowful ; they pervert the lessons of our lives ; 
they change what ought to be our strength and 
virtue, into weakness and encouragement of 
vice. There is a plain remedy, and it is in our 
own hands. We must resolve, at any sacrifice 
of feeling, to be deaf to such appeals, and crush 
the trade. — Reprinted Pieces. 

BELLS— The associations of Sunday. 

It was Sunday evening in London, gloomy, 
close, and stale. Maddening church bells of 
all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, crack- 
ed and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and 



BELLS 



44 



BELL 



mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in 
a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of 
the people who were condemned to look at 
them out of windows, in dire despondency. In 
every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and 
down almost every turning, some doleful bell 
was throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague 
were in the city and the dead-carts were going 
round. Everything was bolted and barred that 
could by possibility furnish relief to an over- 
worked people. No pictures, no unfamiliar an- 
imals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or 
artificial wonders of the ancient world — all 
taboo with that enlightened strictness that the 
ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum 
might have supposed themselves at home again. 
Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. 
Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. 
Nothing to change the brooding mind, or 
raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do, 
but to compare the monotony of his seventh day 
with the monotony of his six days, think what a 
weary life he led, and make the best of it — or 
the worst, according to the probabilities. 
****** 

Mr. Arthur Clennam sat in the window of 
the coffee-house on Ludgate Hill, counting one 
of the neighboring bells, making sentences and 
burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself, 
and wondering how many sick people it might 
be the death of in the course of a year. As the 
hour approached, its changes of measure made 
,it more and more exasperating. At the quar- 
ter, it went off into a condition of deadly lively 
importunity, urging the populace in a voluble 
manner to Come to church, Come to church. 
Come to church ! At the ten minutes, it be- 
came aware that the congregation would be 
scanty, and slowly hammered out in low spirits. 
They won't come, they wont come, they won!t 
come I At the five minutes it abandoned hope, 
and shook every house in the neighborhood for 
three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing 
per second, as a groan of despair. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 3. 

BELLS— Grown worldly. 

Since the time of noble Whittington, fair 
flower of merchants, bells have come to have 
less sympathy with humankind. They only 
ring for money and on state occasions. Wan- 
derers have increased in number ; ships leave 
the Thames for distant regions, carrying from 
stem to stern no other cargo ; the bells are si- 
lent ; they ring out no entreaties or regrets ; 
they are used to it and have grown worldly. 
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 31. 

BELL— The voice of the alarm,. 

This time Mr. Willet indicated it correctly. 
The man was hurrying to the door, when sud- 
denly there came towards them, on the wind, 
the loud and rapid tolling of an alarm bell, 
and then a bright and vivid glare streamed up, 
which illumined, not only the whole chamber, 
but all the country. 

It was not the sudden change from darkness 
to this dreadful light, it was not the sound of 
distant shrieks and shouts of triumph, it was 
not this dread invasion of the serenity and 
peace of night, that drove the man back as 
though a thunderbolt had struck him. It was 
the Bell. If the ghastliest shape the human 



mind has ever pictured in its wildest dreams 
had risen up before him, he could not have stag- 
gered backward from its touch, as he did from 
the first sound of that loud iron voice. With 
eyes that started from his head, his limbs con- 
vulsed, his face most horrible to see, he raised, 
one arm high up into the air, and holding some- 
thing visionary, back and down, with his other 
hand, drove at it as though he held a knife and 
stabbed it to the heart. He clutched his hair, 
and stopped his ears, and travelled madly round 
and round ; then gave a frightful cry, and with 
it rushed away: still, still, the Bell tolled on 
and seemed to follow him — louder and louder, 
hotter and hotter yet. The glare grew bright- 
er, the roar of voices deeper ; the crash of 
heavy bodies falling, shook the air ; bright 
streams of sparks rose up into the sky ; but 
louder than them all — rising faster far, to Heav- 
en — a million times more fierce and furious — 
pouring forth dreadful secrets after its long si- 
lence — speaking the language of the dead — the 
Bell— the Bell ! 

What hunt of spectres could surpass that 
dread pursuit and flight ! Had there been a 
legion of them on his track, he could have bet- 
ter borne it. They would have had a begin- 
ning and an end, but here all space Avas ftill. 
The oiJe pursuing voice was everywhere : it 
sounded in the earth, the air ; shook the long 
grass, and howled among the trembling trees. 
The echoes caught it up, the owls hooted as it 
flew upon the breeze, the nightingale was silent 
and hid herself among the thickest boughs : it 
seemed to goad and urge the angry fire, and 
lash it into madness ; everything was steeped in 
one prevailing red ; the glow was everywhere ; 
nature was drenched in blood : still the remorse- 
less crying of that awful voice — the Bell — the 
Bell! 

It ceased ; but not in his ears. The knell 
was at his heart. No work of man had ever 
voice like that which sounded there, and warn- 
ed him that it cried unceasingly to Heaven. 
Who could hear that bell, and not know what 
it said ! There was murder in its every note — 
cruel, relentless, savage murder — the murder of 
a confiding man, by one who held his every 
trust. Its ringing summoned phantoms from 
their graves. What face was that, in which a 
friendly smile changed to a look of half incred- 
ulous horror, which stiffened for a moment into 
one of pain, then changed again into an im- 
ploring glance at Heaven, and so fell idly 
down with upturned eyes, like the dead stags 
he had often peeped at when a little child, 
shrinking and shuddering — there was a dread- 
ful thing to think of now ! — and clinging to an 
apron as he looked ! He sank upon the ground, 
and grovelling down as if he would dig himself 
a place to hide in, covered his face and ears ; 
but no, no, no — a hundred walls and roofs of 
brass would not shut out that bell, for in it 
spoke the wrathful voice of God, and from that 
voice, the whole wide universe could not afford 
a refuge 1 — Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 55. 

BELL Its vibrations. 

The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff 
old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge 
out of a Gothic window in the wall, became in- 
visible, and struck the hours and quarters in the 
clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as 



BEIiLS 



45 



BEIiliS 



if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up 
there. — Christmas Carol, Stave i. 

BELLS— ChTirch. 

So many bells are ringing, when I stand un- 
decided at a street comer, that every sheep in 
the ecclesiastical fold might be a bell-wether. 
The discordance is fearful. My state of inde- 
cisioh is referable to, and about equally divisi- 
ble among, four great churches, which are all 
within sight and sound — all within the space of 
a few square yards. As I stand at the street 
corner, I don't see as many as four people at 
once going to church, though I see as many as 
four churches with their steeples clamoring for 
Y'^o'gile.— Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 9. 

BELLS— At midnig-ht. 

When a church clock strikes on houseless 
ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first 
mistaken for company, and hailed as such. But 
as the spreading circles of vibration, which you 
may perceive at such a time with great clearness, 
go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards 
widening perhaps (as the philosopher has sug- 
gested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified, 
and the sense of loneliness is profounder. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13. 

BELL— The last stroke of the year. 

We have scarcely written the last word of 
the previous sentence, when the first stroke of 
twelve peals from the neighboring churches. 
There certainly — we must confess it — is some- 
thing awful in the sound. Strictly speaking, it 
may not be more impressive now than at any 
other time ; for the hours steal as swiftly on at 
other periods, and their flight is little heeded. 
But we measure man's life by years, and it is a 
solemn knell that warns us we have passed an- 
other of the landmarks which stand between us 
and the grave. Disguise it as we may, the re- 
flection will force itself on our minds, that when 
the next bell announces the arrival of a new 
year, we may be insensible alike of the timely 
warning we have so often neglected, and of all 
the warm feelings that glow within us now. 

Sketches {Characters), Chap. 3. 

BELLS— The Chimes. 

High up in the steeple of an old church, far 
above the light and murmur of the town and 
far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the 
wild and dreary place at night : and high up in 
the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes 
I tell of. 

They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries 
ago, these Bells had been baptized by bishops : 
so many centuries ago, that the register of their 
baptism was lost long, long before the memory 
of man, and no one knew their names. They 
had had their Godfathers and Godmothers, these 
Bells (for my own part, by the way, I would 
rather incur the responsibility of being God- 
father to a Bell than a Boy), and had had 
their silver mugs no doubt, besides. But Time 
had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry 
the Eighth had melted down their mugs ; and 
they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the 
church tower. 

Not speechless, though. Far from it. They 
had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these 
Bells ; and far and wide they might be heard 



upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were 
they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the 
wind, moreover ; for, fighting gallantly against 
it when it took an adverse whim, they would 
pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear 
right royally ; and bent on being heard, on 
stormy nights, by some poor mother watching 
a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband 
was at sea, they had been sometimes known to 
beat a blustering Nor' Wester ; aye, " all to 
fits," as Toby Veck said — 

****** 

For, being but a simple man, he invested them 
with a strange and solemn character. They 
were so mysterious, often heard and never seen ; 
so high up, so far off", so full of such deep strong 
melody, that he regarded them with a species 
of awe : and sometimes when he looked up at 
the dark, arched windows in the tower, he half 
expected to be beckoned to by something which 
was not a Bell, and yet what he heard so often 
sounding in the Chimes. 

****** 

As he was stooping to sit down, the Chimes 
rang. 

" Amen ! " said Trotty, pulling off" his hat 
and looking up towards them. 

" Amen to the Bells, father?" cried Meg. 

" They broke in like a grace, my dear," said 
Trotty, taking his seat. " They'd say a good 
one, I am sure, if they could. Many's the kind 
thing they say to me." 

" The Bells do, father ! " laughed Meg, as 
she set the basin, and a knife and fork before 
him. " Well ! " 

"Seem to, my Pet," said Trotty, falling to 
with great vigor. " And where's the difference ? 
If I hear 'em, what does it matter whether they 
speak it or not ? Why bless you, my dear," 
said Toby, pointing at the tower with his fork, 
and becoming more animated under the influ- 
ence of dinner, " how often have I heard them 
bells say, ' Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good 
heart, Toby ! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a 
good heart, Toby ! ' A million times ? More !" 

" Well, I never ! " cried Meg. 

She had, though — over and over again. For 
it was Toby's constant topic. 

" When things is very bad," said Trotty ; 
"very bad indeed, I mean ; almost at the worst ; 
then it's * Toby Veck, TolDy Veck, job coming 
soon, Toby! Toby Veck, Toby Veck, job 
coming soon, Toby ! ' That way." 

Christmas Stories, Chimes, Chap. i. 

BELLS— The Fairies of the. 

Awake, and standing on his feet upon the 
boards where he had lately lain, he saw this 
Goblin Sight. 

He saw the tower, whither his charmed foot- 
steps had brought him, swarming with dwarf 
phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the Bells. 
He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring 
from the Bells without a pause. He saw them 
round him on the ground ; above him in the air, 
clambering from him, by the ropes belov/ ; look- 
ing down upon him, from the massive iron- 
girded beams ; peeping in upon him, through 
the chinks and loopholes in the walls ; spreading 
away and away from him in enlarging circles, as 
the water ripples give place to a huge stone 
that suddenly comes plashing in among them. 
He saw them, of all aspects and all shapes. He 



BENEVOLENCE 



46 



BETSEY TROTWOOD 



saw them ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely 
formed. He saw them young, he saw them old, 
he saw them kind, he saw them cruel, he saw 
them merry, he saw them grim ; he saw them 
dance, and heard them sing ; he saw them tear 
their hair, and heard them howl. He saw the 
air thick with them. He saw them come and 
go, incessantly. He saw them riding down- 
ward, soaring upward, sailing off afar, perching 
near at hand, all restless and all violently active. 
Stone, and brick, and slate, and tile, became 
transparent to him as to them. He saw them in 
the houses, busy at the sleepers' beds. He saw 
them soothing people in their dreams ; he saw 
them beating them with knotted whips ; he saw 
them yelling in their ears ; he saw them playing 
softest music on their pillows ; he saw them 
cheering some with the songs of birds and the 
perfume of flowers ; he saw them flashing awful 
faces on the troubled rest of others, from en- 
chanted mirrors which they carried in their 
hands. 

He saw these creatures, not only among sleep- 
ing men, but waking also, active in pursuits 
irreconcileable with one another, and possessing 
or assuming natures the most opposite. He saw 
one buckling on innumerable wings to increase 
his speed ; another loading himself with chains 
and weights, to retard his. He saw some put- 
ting the hands of clocks forward, some putting 
the hands of clocks backward, some endeavor- 
ing to stop the clock entirely. He saw them 
representing, here a marriage ceremony, there a 
funeral ; in this chamber an election, in that a 
ball ; he saw, everywhere, restless and untiring 
motion. 

Bewildered by the host of shifting and extra- 
ordinary figures, as well as by the uproar of the 
Bells, which all this while were ringing, Trotty 
clung to a wooden pillar for support, and turned 
his white face here and there, in mute and 
stunned astonishment. 

As he gazed, the Chimes stopped. 
****** 

Then and not before, did Trotty see in every 
Bell a bearded figure of the bulk and stature of 
the Bell — incomprehensibly, a figure and the 
Bell itself Gigantic, grave, and darkly watch- 
ful of him as he stood rooted to the ground. 

Mysterious and awful figures ! Resting on 
nothing : poised in the night air of the tower, 
with their draped and hooded heads merged in 
the dim roof; motionless and shadowy. Shadowy 
and dark, although he saw them by some light 
belonging to themselves — none else was there — 
each with its muflled hand upon its goblin 
mouth. — Christmas Stories, Chap. 3. 

BENEVOLENCE— Kingr Lear an ExempU- 

flcation of. 

"A very prepossessing old gentleman, Mr. 
Richard — charming countenance, sir — extremely 
calm — benevolence in every feature, sir. He 
quite realizes my idea of King Lear, as he ap- 
peared when in possession of his kingdom, Mr. 
Richard — the jame good humor, the same white 
hair and partial baldness, the same liability to 
be imposed upon. Ah ! A sweet subject for 
contemplation, sir, very sweet ! " 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 57. 

BETSEY TROTWOOD and Ittrs. Crupp. 
My aunt had obtained a signal victory over 



Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing the first 
pitcher she planted on the stairs out of the 
window, and protecting, in person, up and down 
the staircase, a supernumerary whom she en* 
gaged from the outer world. These vigorous 
measures struck such terror to the breast of Mrs. 
Crupp, that she subsided into her own kitchen, 
under the impression that my aunt was mad. 
My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs. 
Crupp's opinion and everybody else's, and 
rather favoring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. 
Crupp, of late the bold, became within a few days 
so faint-hearted, that, rather than encounter my 
aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavor to 
hide her portly form behind doors — leaving 
visible, however, a wide margin of flannel petti- 
coat — or would shrink into dark corners. This 
gave my aunt such unspeakable satisfaction, that 
I believe she took a delight in prowling up and 
down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the 
top of her head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was 
likely to be in the way. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 37. 

BETSEY TROTWOOD and Uriah Heep. 

" Deuce take the man ! " said my aunt 
sternly, " what's he about ? Don't be galvanic, 
sir ! " 

" I ask your pardon, Miss Trotwood," re- 
turned Uriah ; " I'm aware you're nervous." 

" Go along with you, sir ! " said my aunt, 
anything but appeased. " Don't presume to 
say so ! I am nothing of the sort. If you're 
an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you're 
a man, control your limbs, sir ! Good God ! " 
said my aunt, with great indignation, " I am not 
going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out 
of my senses ! " 

Mr. Heep was rather abashed, as most people 
might have been, by this explosion ; which de- 
rived great additional force from the indignant 
manner in which my aunt afterwards moved in 
her chair, and shook her head as if she were 
making snaps or bounces at him. 

David Copperjield, Chap, 35. 

BETSEY TROTWOOD— "Janet I Donkeys I " 

My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but 
by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexi- 
bility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and 
carriage, amply sufficient to account for the 
effect she had made upon a gentle creature like 
my mother ; but her features were rather hand- 
some than otherwise, though unbending and 
austere. I particularly noticed that she had a 
very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was 
grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under 
what I believe would be called a mob-cap ; I 
mean a cap, much more common then than now, 
with side-pieces fastening under the chin. Her 
dress was of a lavender color, and perfectly 
neat, but scantily made, as if she desired to be 
as little encumbered as possible. I remember 
that I thought it, in form, more like a riding 
habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than 
anything else. She wore at her side a gentle- 
man's gold watch, if I might judge from its 
size and make, with an appropriate chain and 
seals ; she had some linen at her throat not un- 
like a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like 
little shirt wristbands. 

****** 

Janet had gone away to get the bath ready 



BIBLE 



47 



BIRDS 



when my aunt, to my great alarm, became in 
one moment rigid with indignation, and had 
hardly voice to cry out, " Janet ! Donkeys ! " 

Upon which, Janet came running up the 
stairs as if the house were in flames, darted out 
on a little piece of green in front, and warned 
off two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had 
presumed to set hoof upon it ; while my aunt, 
rushing out of the house, seized the bridle of a 
third animal laden with a bestriding child, 
turned him, led him forth from those sacred 
precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky 
urchin in attendance who had dared to profane 
that hallowed ground. 

To this hour I don't know whether my aunt 
had any lawful right of way over that patch of 
green ; but she had settled it in her own mind 
that she had, and it was all the same to her. 
The one great outrage of her life, demanding to 
be constantly avenged, was the passage of a 
donkey over that immaculate spot. In what- 
ever occupation she was engaged, however 
interesting to her the conversation in which she 
was taking part, a donkey turned the current of 
her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him 
straight. Jugs of water, and watering pots, were 
kept in secret places ready to be discharged on 
the offending boys ; sticks were laid in ambush 
behind the door ; sallies were made at all hours ; 
and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was 
an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys : 
or, perhaps, the more sagacious of the donkeys, 
understanding how the case stood, delighted 
with constitutional obstinacy in coming that 
way. I only know that there were three alarms 
before the bath was ready ; and that, on the oc- 
casion of the last and most desperate of all, I 
saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a 
sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy 
head against her own gate, before he seemed to 
comprehend what was the matter. These 
interruptions were the more ridiculous to me, 
because she was giving me broth out of a table- 
spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded her- 
self that I was actually starving, and must re- 
ceive nourishment at first in very small quan- 
tities), and, while my mouth was yet open to 
receive the spoon, she would put it back into 
the basin, cry, " Janet ! Donkeys ! " and go out 
to the assault. — David Copperfield, Chap. 13. 

BIBLE- The. 

Harriet complied and read — read the eternal 
book for all the weary and the heavy-laden ; for 
all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this 
earth — read the blessed history, in which the 
blind, lame, palsied beggar, the criminal, the 
woman stained with shame, the shunned of all 
our dainty clay, has each a portion, that no hu- 
man pride, indifference, or sophistry, through all 
the ages that this world shall last, can take 
away, or by the thousandth atom of a grain re- 
duce — read the ministry of Him who, through 
the round of human life, and all its hopes and 
griefs, from birth to death, from infancy to age, 
had sweet compassion for, and interest in, its 
every scene and stage, its every suffering and 
sorrow. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 59. 

BILL-A. 

A bill, by the by, is the most extraordinary 
locomotive engine that the genius of man ever 
produced. It would keep on running during 



the longest lifetime, without ever once stopping 
of its own accord. 

Pickwick Papers^ Chap. yi. 

BIPEDS AND aXJADRXJPEDS-The differ- 
ence. 

Quadruped lions are said to be savage only 
when they are hungry ; biped lions are rarely 
sulky longer than when their appetite for dis- 
tinction remains unappeased. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 15. 

BIRDS— The tmhappiness of cag-ed. 

In every pane of glass there was at least one 
tiny bird in a tiny bird-cage, twittering and hop- 
ping his little ballet of despair, and knocking 
his head against the roof: while one unhappy 
goldfinch who lived outside a red villa with his 
name on the door, drew the water for his own 
drinking, and mutely appealed to some good 
man to drop a farthing's worth of poison in it. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19. 

BIRDS— The traits of. 

Nothing in shy neighborhoods perplexes my 
mind more than the bad company birds keep. 
Foreign birds often get into good society, but 
British birds are inseparable from low associates. 
There is a whole street of them in St. Giles's ; 
and I always find them in poor and immoral 
neighborhoods, convenient to the public-house 
or the pawnbroker's. They seem to lead peo- 
ple into drinking, and even the man who makes 
their cages usually gets into a chronic state of 
black eye. Why is this ? Also, they will do 
things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats 
with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and 
fur caps, which they cannot be persuaded by the 
respectable orders of society to undertake. In 
a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a 
goldfinch drawing his own water, and drawing 
as much of it as if he were, in a consuming 
fever. That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and 
offered, in writing, to barter himself against old 
clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen-stuff. 
Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any 
finch ! I bought that goldfinch for money. He 
was sent home, and hung upon a nail over 
against my table. He lived outside a counter- 
feit dwelling-house, supposed (as I a'gued) to 
be a dyer's ; otherwise it would have been im- 
possible to account' for his perch sticking out of 
the garret window. From the time of his ap- 
pearance in my room, either he left off being 
thirsty — which was not in the bond — or he could 
not make up his mind to hear his little bucket 
drop back into his well when he let it go — a 
shock which in the best of times had made him 
tremble. He drew no water but by stealth and 
under the cloak of night. After an intei-val of 
futile and at length hopeless expectation, the 
merchant who had educated him was appealed 
to. The merchant was a bow-legged character, 
with a flat and cushiony nose, like the last new 
strawberry. He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and 
was of the velveteen race velveteeny. He sent 
word that he would *' look round." He looked 
round, appeared in the doorway of the room, 
and slightly cocked up his evil eye at the gold- 
finch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that bird ; 
when it was appeased, he still drew several un- 
necessary buckets of water ; and finally leaped 
about his perch, and sharpened his bill, as if he 



BIRD 



48 



BLTJNTNESS 



had been to the nearest wine-vaults and got 
drunk. — Uncom7nercial Traveller^ Chap. lo. 

BIRD— The Raven of Bamaby. 

" Halloa ! " cried a hoarse voice in his ear. 
" Halloa, halloa, halloa ! Bow wow wow. What's 
the matter here ! Hal-loa ! " 

The speaker — who made the locksmith start, 
as if he had seen some supernatural agent — was 
a large raven, who had perched upon the top of 
the easy chair, unseen by him and Edward, and 
listened with a polite attention and a most ex- 
traordinary appearance of comprehending every 
word, to all they had said up to this point ; turn- 
ing his head from one to the other, as if his 
office were to judge between them, and it were 
of the very last importance that he should not 
lose a word. 

" Look at him ! " said Varden, divided be- 
tween admiration of the bird and a kind of fear 
of him. " Was there ever such a knowing imp 
as that ! Oh, he's a dreadful fellow ! " 

The raven, with his head very much on one 
side, and his bright eye shining like a diamond, 
preserved a thoughtful silence for a few seconds, 
and then replied in a voice so hoarse and 
distant, that it seemed to come through his thick 
feathers rather than out of his mouth. 

" Halloa, halloa, halloa ! What's the matter 
here ! Keep up your spirits. Never say die. 
Bow wow wow. I'm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a 
devil. Hurrah ! " — And then, as if exulting in 
his infernal character, he began to whistle. 

" I more than half believe he speaks the 
truth. Upon my word I do," said Varden. 
" Do you see how he looks at me, as if he knew 
what I was saying ? " 

To which the bird, balancing himself on tip- 
toe, as it were, and moving his body up and 
down in a sort of grave dance, rejoined, " I'm a 
devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil ! " and flapped his 
wings against his sides as if he were bursting 
with laughter. Barnaby clapped his hands, and 
fairly rolled upon the ground in an ecstacy of 
delight. 

"Strange companions, sir," said the lock- 
smith, shaking his head and looking from one 
to the other. " The bird has all the wit." 

^ " Strange indeed ! " said Edward, holding out 
his forefinger to the raven, who, in acknow- 
ledgement of the attention, made a dive at 
it immediately with his iron bill. " Is he 
old?" 

" A mere boy, sir," replied the locksmith. " A 
hundred and twenty, or thereabouts. Call him 
down, Barnaby, my man." 

" Call him !" echoed Barnaby, sitting upright 
upon the floor, and staring vacantly at Gabriel 
as he thrust his hair back from his face. " But 
who can make him come ! He calls me, and 
makes me go where he will. He goes on before, 
and I follow. He's the master, and I'm the 
man. Is that the truth, Grip ? " 

The raven gave a short, comfortable, confi- 
dential kind of croak — a most expressive croak, 
which seemed to say, " You need'nt let these 
fellows into our secrets. We understand each 
other. It's all right " 

" / make him come ? " cried Barnaby, point- 
ing to the bird, " Him, who never goes to sleep, 
or so much as winks ! — Why, any time of night, 
you may see his eyes in my dark room, shining 
like two sparks. And every night, and all night 



too, he's broad awake, talking to himself, think- 
ing what he shall do to-morrow, where we shall 
go, and what he shall steal, and hide, and bury. 
/ make hi7n come ! Ha, ha, ha ! " 

On second thoughts, the bird appeared dis- 
posed to come of himself. After a short survey 
of the ground, and a few sidelong looks at the 
ceiling and at everybody present in turn, he 
fluttered to the floor and went to Barnaby— not 
in a hop, or walk, or run, but in a pace like that 
of a very particular gentleman with exceedingly 
tight boots on, trying to walk fast over loose 
pebbles. Then, stepping into his extended 
hand, and condescending to be held out at 
arm's length, he gave vent to a succession of 
sounds, not unlike the drawing of some eight or 
ten dozen of long corks, and again asserted his 
brimstone birth and parentage with great dis 
tinctness. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 6. 

The raven was in a highly reflective state ; 
walking up and down when he had dined, with 
an air of elderly complacency which was strongly 
suggestive of his having his hands under 
his coat-tails ; and appearing to read the 
tomb-stones with a very critical taste. Some- 
times, after a long inspection of an epitaph, he 
would strop his beak upon the grave to which 
it referred, and cry in his hoarse tones, " I'm a 
devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil ! " but whether 
he addressed his observations to any supposed 
person below, or merely threw them off as a 
general remark, is matter of uncertainty. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap, 25. 

BLINDNESS— The various degrrees of. 

" There are various degrees and kinds of 
blindness, widow. There is the connubial 
blindness, ma'am, which perhaps you may have 
observed in the course of your own experience, 
and which is a kind of wilful and self-damaging 
blindness. There is the blindness of party, 
ma'am, and public men, which is the blindness 
of a mad bull in the midst of a regiment of 
soldiers clothed in red. There is the blind con- 
fidence of youth, which is the blindness of young 
kittens, whose eyes have not yet opened on the 
world : and there is that physical blindness, 
ma'am, of which I am, contrary to my own de- 
sire, a most illustrious example. Added to these, 
ma'am, is that blindness of the intellect, of 
which we have a specimen in your interesting 
son, and which, having sometimes glimmerings 
and dawnings of the light, is scarcely to be 
trusted as a total darkness." 

Barnaby Rtidge, Chap. 45. 

BLUSTER. 

He had a certain air of being a handsome 
man — which he was not ; and a certain air of 
being a well-bred man — which he was not. It 
was mere swagger and challenge ; but in this 
particular, as in many others, blustering asser- 
tion goes for proof, half over the world. 

Little Dorrit, Book I. Chap. i. 

BLUNTNESS Fer«w Sincerity. 

Mr. Gabriel Parsons was a rich sugar-baker, 
who mistook rudeness for honesty, and abrupt 
bluntness for an open and candid manner ; 
many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sin 
cerity. — Tales, Chap. 10. 



BIRTH 



49 



BOARDING-HOUSE 



BIRTH— The Curse on Adam. 

A ceremony to which the usage of gossips has 
given that name which expresses, in two syllables, 
the curse pronounced on Adam. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19. 

BLIND— The Faces of the. 

It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, 
and see how free they are from all concealment 
of what is passing in their thoughts ; observing 
which, a man with his eyes may blush to con- 
template the mask he wears. Allowing for one 
shade of anxious expression which is never ab- 
sent from their countenances, and the like of 
which we may readily detect in our own faces 
if we try to feel our way in the dark, every idea, 
as it rises within them, is expressed with the 
lightning's speed and nature's truth. If the 
company at a rout, or drawing-room at court, 
could only for one time be as unconscious of the 
eyes upon them as blind men and women are, 
what secrets would come out, and what a worker 
of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of which we so 
much pity, would appear to be ! 

The thought occurred to me as I sat down in 
another room before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb, 
destitute of smell, and nearly so of taste — before 
a fair young creature with every human faculty 
and hope and power of goodness and affection 
enclosed within her delicate frame, and but one 
outward sense — the sense of touch. There she 
was before me ; built up, as it were, in a marble 
cell, impervious to any ray of light or particle 
of sound ; with her poor white hand peeping 
through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some 
good man for help, that an immortal soul might 
be awakened. 

Long before I looked upon her, the help had 
come. Her face was radiant with intelligence 
and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own 
hands, was bound about a head whose intellect- 
ual capacity and development were beautifully 
expressed in its graceful outline and its broad, 
open brow ; her dress, arranged by herself, was 
a pattern of neatness and simplicity ; the work 
she had knitted lay beside her ; her v/riting- 
book was on the desk she leaned upon. From 
the mournful ruin of such bereavement there had 
slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, 
grateful-hearted being. 

****** 

Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears 
and hear not ; ye who are as the hypocrites, of sad 
countenances, and disfigure your faces that ye 
may seem unto men to fast ; learn healthy cheer- 
fulness and mild contentment, from the deaf, 
and dumb, and blind ! Self-elected saints with 
gloomy brows, this sightless, careless, voiceless 
child may teach you lessons you will do well to 
follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently 
on your hearts, for there may be something in 
its healing touch akin to that of the Great 
Master, whose precepts you misconstrue, whose 
lessons you pervert, of whose charity and sym- 
pathy with all the world not one among you in his 
daily practice knows as much as many of the 
worst among those fallen sinners to whom you 
are liberal in nothing but the preachment of per- 
dition. — American Notes, Chap. 3. 

BLOOD Versus Liquid Agrgravation. 

" Ecod, you may say what you like of my 
father, then, and so I give you leave," said 



Jonas. " I think it's liquid aggravation that 
circulates through his veins, and not regular 
blood." — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 11. 

BLOOD— The Aristocracy of. 

Traddles and I were separated at table, being 
billeted in two remote corners ; he, in the glare 
of a red velvet lady : I, in the gloom of Hamlet's 
aunt. The dinner was very long, and the con- 
versation was about the Aristocracy — and Blood. 
Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she 
had a weakness, it was Blood. 

****** 

We might have been a party of Ogres, the 
conversation assumed such a sanguine com- 
plexion. 

" I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook's opin- 
ion," said Mr. Waterbrook, with his wine-glass 
at his eye. " Other things are all very well in 
their way, but give me Blood ! " 

" Oh ! There is nothing," observed Hamlet's 
aunt, "so satisfactory to one ! There is nothing 
that is so much one's beau ideal of — of all that 
sort of thing, speaking generally. There are 
some low minds (not many, I am happy to be- 
lieve, but there are some) that would prefer to 
do what / should call bow down before 
idols. Positively Idols ! Before services, intel- 
lect, and so on. But these are intangible points. 
Blood is not so. We see Blood in a nose, and 
we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and we 
say, ' There it is ! That's Blood ! ' It is an 
actual matter of fact. We point it out. It ad- 
mits of no doubt." 

The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who 
had taken Agnes down, stated the question more 
decisively yet, I thought. 

" Oh, you know, deuce take it," said this 
gentleman, looking round the board with an 
imbecile smile, "we can't forego Blood, you 
know. We must have Blood, you know. 
Some young fellows, you know, may be a 
little behind their station, perhaps, in point of 
education and behavior, and may go a little 
wrong, you know, and get themselves and other 
people mto a variety of fixes — and all that — 
but, deuce take it, it's delightful to reflect that 
they've got Blood in 'em ! Myself, I'd rather at 
any time be knocked down by a man who had 
got Blood in him, than I'd be picked up by a 
man who hadn't ! " 

David Copperjield, Chap. 25. 

BLUSH-A. 

Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes 
and down to the chin, and exhibited a most ex- 
tensive combination of colors as he confessed 
the soft impeachment. — Tales, Chap. 10. 

BOARDING-HOTJSE-Mrs. Todgrers. 

M. Todgers's Commercial Boarding-House 
was a house of that sort which is likely to be dark 
at any time ; but that morning it was especially 
dark. There was an odd smell In the passage, 
as if the concentrated essence of all the dinners 
that had been cooked in the kitchen since the 
house was built, lingered at the top of the 
kitchen stairs to that hour, and, like the Black 
Friar in Don Juan, " wouldn't be driven away." 
In particular, there was a sensation of cabbage : 
as if all the greens that had ever been boiled 
there were evergreens, and flourished in immor- 
tal strength. The parlor was wainscoted, and 



BOARDING-HOTJSE-KEEPER 



50 



BOOTS 



communicated to strangers a magnetic and in- 
stinctive consciousness of rats and mice. The 
staircase was very gloomy and very broad, v^^ith 
balustrades so thick and heavy that they vi^ould 
have served for a bridge. In a sombre corner 
on the first landing, stood a gruft" old giant of a 
clock, v^'ith a preposterous coronet of three brass 
balls on his head ; w^hom few^ had ever seen — 
none ever looked in the face — and who seemed 
to continue his heavy tick for no other reason 
than to warn heedless people from running into 
him accidentally. It had not been papered or 
painted, hadn't Todgers's, within the memory 
of man. It was very black, begrimed, and 
mouldy. And, at the top of the staircase, was 
an old, disjointed, rickety, ill-favored skylight, 
patched and mended in all kinds of ways, which 
looked distrustfully down at everything that 
passed below, and covered Todgers's up as if it 
were a sort of human cucumber-frame, and only 
people of a peculiar growth were reared there. 

M. Todgers was a lady, rather a bony and 
hard-featured lady, with a row of curls in front 
of her head, shaped like little barrels of beer ; 
and on the top of it something made of net — 
you couldn't call it a cap exactly — which looked 
like a black cobweb. She had a little basket on 
her arm, and in it a bunch of keys that jingled 
as she came. In her other hand she bore a 
flaming tallow candle, which, after surveying 
Mr, Pecksniff for one instant by its light, she 
put down upon the table, to the end that she 
might receive him with the greater cordiality. 
Mmiin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 8. 

BOARDING-HOUSE-KEEPER-Mrs. Tod- 
g'ers. 

Commercial gentlemen and gravy had tried 
Mrs. Todgers's temper ; the main chance — it 
was such a very small one in her case, that she 
might have been excused for looking sharp after 
it, lest it should entirely vanish from her sight — 
had taken a firm hold on Mrs. Todgers's atten- 
tion. But in some odd nook in Mrs. Todgers's 
breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner 
easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door, 
with " Woman" written on the spring, which, 
at a touch from Mercy's hand, had flown wide 
open, and admitted her for shelten 

When boarding-house accounts are balanced 
with all other ledgers, and the books of the 
Recording Angel are made up for ever, perhaps 
there may be seen an entry to thy credit, lean 
Mrs. Todgers, which shall make thee beautiful ! 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 37. 

BOHEMIANS— The grsrpsies of grentility. 

The venerable inhabitants of that venerable 
pile seemed, in those times, to be encamped 
there like a sort of civilized gypsies. There 
was a temporary air about their establishments, 
as if they were going away the moment they 
could get anything better ; there was also a dis- 
satisfied air about themselves, as if they took it 
very ill that they had not already got something 
much better. Genteel blinds and make-shifts 
were more or less observable as soon as their 
doors were opened ; screens not half high 
enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched 
passages, and warded off obscure corners where 
footboys slept at night with their heads among 
the knives and forks ; curtains which called 
upon you to believe that they didn't hide any- 1 



thing ; panes of glass which requested you not to 
see them ; many objects of various forms, feign- 
ing to have no connection with their guilty se- 
cret, a bed ; disguised traps in walls, which 
were clearly coal-cellars ; affectations of no 
thoroughfares, which were evidently doors to 
little kitchens. Mental reservations and artful 
mysteries grew out of these things. Callers, 
looking steadily into the eyes of their receivers, 
pretended not to smell cooking three feet off ; 
people, confronting closets accidentally left 
open, pretended not to see bottles ; visitors, 
with their heads against a partition of thin can- 
vas, and a page and a young female at high 
words on the other side, made believe to be sit- 
ting in a primeval silence. There was no end 
to the small social accommodation-bills of this 
nature which the gypsies of gentility were con- 
stantly drawing upon, and accepting for, one an- 
other. 

Some of these Bohemians were of an irritable 
temperament, as constantly soured and vexed 
by two mental trials ; the first, the consciousness 
that they had never got enough out of the pub- 
lic ; the second, the consciousness that the pub- 
lic were admitted into the building. Under the 
latter great wrong, a few suffered dreadfully — 
particularly on Sundays, when they had for 
some time expected the earth to open and swal- 
low the public up ; but which desirable event 
had not yet occurred, in consequence of some 
reprehensible laxity in the arrangements of the 
Universe, — Little Dot'? it. Book /., Chap. 26. 

BOLDNESS. 

" A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, 
my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange ! ' 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27, 

BOOKS— The readers of. 

No one who can read, ever looks at a book, 
even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot. 
Our Muttial Friend, Book I., Chap. 3. 

BOOK— Of reference. 

* * * " His Lexicon has got so dropsical 
from constant reference, that it won't shut, and 
yawns as if it really could not bear to be so 
bothered." — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 41. 

BOOKS-The lost. 

Master Humphrey's Clock, as originally con-' 
structed, became one of the lost books of thej 
earth — which, we all know, are far more precious 
than any that can be read for love or money. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. i. 

BOOTS— TIGHT— Their relation to the stom- 
ach. 

I have my doubts, too, founded on the acute 
experience acquired at this period of my life, 
whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can 
develop itself freely in any human subject which 
is always in torment from tight boots. I think 
the extremities require to be at peace before the 
stomach will conduct itself with vigor. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 28. 

BOOTS— Irreparable. 

We were going up to the house, among some I 
dark, heavy trees, when he called after my con- 
ductor, 

•'Hallo !" 



BOBES 



51 



BOWER 



We looked back, and he was standing at the 
door of a little lodge, where he lived, with a 
pair of boots in his hand. 

" Here ! The cobbler's been," he said, " since 
you've been out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can't 
mend 'em any more. He says there ain't a bit 
of the original boot left, and he wonders you 
expect it." — David Copper/ield, Chap. 5. 

BORES. 

It is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore. 
Everybody does. But, the bore whom we have 
the pleasure and honor of enumerating among 
our particular friends, is such a generic bore, and 
has so many traits (as it appears to us) in com- 
mon with the great bore family, that we are 
tempted to make him the subject of the present 
notes. May he be generally accepted ! 

Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a 
good-hearted man. He may put fifty people out 
of temper, but he keeps his own. lie preserves 
a sickly stolid smile upon his face, when other 
faces are ruffled by the perfection he has at- 
tained in his art, and has an equable voice which 
never travels out of one key or rises above one 
pitch. His manner is a manner of tranquil in- 
terest. None of his opinions are startling. 
Among his deepest-rooted convictions, it may 
be mentioned that he considers the air of Eng- 
land damp, and holds that our lively neighbors 
— he always calls the French our lively neigh- 
bors—have the advantage of us in that particu- 
lar. Nevertheless, he is unable to forget that 
John Bull is John Bull all the world over, and 
that England with all her faults is England still. 
Our bore has travelled. He could not possi- 
bly be a complete bore without having travTslled. 
He rarely speaks of his travels without intro- 
ducing, sometimes on his own plan of construc- 
tion, morsels of the language of the country — 
which he always translates. You cannot name 
to him any little remote town in France, Italy, 
Germany, or Switzerland, but he knows it well ; 
stayed there a fortnight under peculiar circum- 
stances. And, talking of that little place, per- 
haps you know a statue over an old fountain, up 
a little court, which is the second — no, the 
third — stay — yes, the third turning on the right, 
after you come out of the Post-house, going up 
the hill towards the market ? You doni know 
that statue ? Nor that fountain ? You surprise 
him ! They are not usually seen by travellers 
(most extraordinary, he has never yet met with a 
single traveller who knew them, except one Ger- 
man, the most intelligent man he ever met in his 
life !) but he thought that YOU would have been 
the man to find them out. And then he de- 
scribes them, in a circumstantial lecture half an 
hour long, generally delivered behind a door 
which is constantly being opened from the other 
side ; and implores you, if you ever revisit that 
place, now do go and look at that statue and 
fountain 1 

****** 

The instinct with which our bore finds out 
another bore, and closes with him, is amazing. 
We have seen him pick his man out of fifty 
men, in a couple of minutes. They love to go 
(which they do naturally) into a slow argument 
on a previously exhausted subject, and to con- 
tradict each other, and to wear the hearers out, 
without impairing their own perennial freshness 
as bores. It improves the good understanding 



between them, and they get together afterwards, 
and bore each other amicably. Whenever we 
see our bore behind a door with another bore, 
we know that when he comes forth, he will 
praise the other bore as one of the most intelli- 
gent men he ever met. And this bringing us to 
the close of what we had to say about, our bore, 
we are anxious to have it understood that he 
never bestowed this praise on us. 

Our Bore — Reprinted Pieces, 

BORE— A Practical. 

The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all 
other portions of my young life but himself, the 
adamantine inadaptability of the man to my 
favorite fancies and amusements, is the thing 
for which I hate him most. What right had he 
to bore his way into my Arabian Nights? Yet 
he did. He was always hinting doubts of the 
veracity of Sindbad the Sailor. If he could have 
got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, I knew he 
would have trimmed it, and lighted it, and de- 
livered a lecture over it on the qualities of 
sperm oil, with a glance at the whale-fisheries. 
He would so soon have found out — on mechan- 
ical principles — the peg in the neck of the En- 
chanted Horse, and would have turned it the 
right way in so workmanlike a manner, that the 
horse could never have got any height into the 
air, and the story couldn't have been. He 
would have proved, by map and compass, 
that there was no such kingdom as the 
delightful kingdom of Casgar, on the fron- 
tiers of Tartary. He would have caused that 
hypocritical young prig, Harry, to make 
an experiment — with the aid of a temporary 
building in the garden and a dummy — demon- 
strating that you couldn't let a choked Hunch- 
back down an eastern chimney with a cord, and 
leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the 
Sultan's purveyor. 

* * * * * * 
With the dread upon me of developing into 

a Harry, and with the further dread upon me 
of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by 
bringing down upon myself a cold shower-bath 
of explanations and experiments, I forebore en- 
lightenment in my youth, and became, as they 
say in melodramas, " the wreck you now be- 
hold." 

* * * * * * 

Thought I, with a shudder, " Mr. Barlow is a 
bore, with an immense constructive power of 
making bores. His prize specimen is a bore. 
He seeks to make a bore ot me. That Know- 
ledge is Power, I am not prepared to gainsay ; 
but, with Mr. Barlow, Knowledge is Power to 
bore." Therefore, I took refuge in the Caves 
of Ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, 
and which are still my private address. 

Mr. Barlow, Neiv Uncom. Samples. 

BOTTLES. 

* * * A shelf laden with tall Flemish drink- 
ing-glasses, and quaint bottles ; some with necks 
like so many storks, and others with square, 
Dutch-built bodies and short, fat, apoplectic 
throats. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 51. 

BOWER. 

There, was a bower at the further end, with 
honeysillS^le, jessamine, and creeping plants— one 



BOY 



52 



BOY 



of those sweet retreats which humane men erect 
for the accommodation of spiders. 

Pickwick Papers, Chap. 8. 

BO Y— Advice as to his liOdging-s. 

"Major," I says, "be cool, and advise me 
what to do with Joshua, my dead and gone Lir- 
riper's own youngest brother." " Madam," says 
the Major, " my advice is that you board and 
lodge him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome 
gratuity to the proprietor when exploded." 

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy, Chap. I. 

BOY— The Spartan. 

* * Like the Spartan boy with the fox biting 
him, which 1 hope you'll excuse my bringing up, 
for of all the tiresome boys that will go tum- 
bling into every sort of company, that boy's th^ 
tiresomest." — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 24. 

BOY— At Mugby. 

I am the boy at Mugby. That's about what / 
am. 

You don't know what I mean ? WTiat a pity ! 
But I think you do. I think you must. Look 
here. I am the Boy at what is called The Re- 
freshment-Room at Mugby Junction, and what's 
proudest boast is, that it never yet refreshed a 
mortal being. 

Up in a comer of the Down Refreshment- 
Room at Mugby Junction, in the height of twenty- 
seven cross draughts (I've often counted 'em while 
they brush the First Class hair twenty-seven 
ways), behind the bottles, among the glasses, 
bounded on the nor'west by the beer, stood 
pretty far to the right of a metallic object that's 
at times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen 
according to the nature of the last twang im- 
parted to its contents, which are the same ground- 
work, fended off from the traveller by a barrier 
of stale spongecakes erected atop of the counter, 
and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of Our 
Missis's eye — you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next 
time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything 
to drink ; you take particular notice that he'll 
try to seem not to hear you, that he'll appear in 
a absent manner to survey the Line through a 
transparent medium composed of your head 
and body, and that he won't serve you as long 
as you can possibly bear it. That's me. 

Boy at Mugby. 

BOY— A Street. 

His son began to execute commissions in a 
knowing manner, and to be of the prison, pris- 
onous, and of the street, streety. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 6. 

BOY— A Vagrant. 

His social existence had been more like that 
of an early Christian, than an innocent child 
of the nineteenth century. He had been 
stoned in the streets ; he had been over- 
thrown into gutters ; bespattered with mud ; 
violently flattened against posts. Entire strangers 
to his person had lifted his yellow cap off his 
head, and cast it to the winds. His legs had not 
only undergone verbal criticisms and revilings, 
but had been handled and pinched. That very 
morning, he had received a perfectly unsolicited 
black eye on his way to the Grinders' establish- 
ment, and had been punished for jfe. by the 



master ; a superannuated old Grinder of savage 
disposition, who had been appointed school- 
master because he didn't know anything, and 
wasn't fit for anything, and for whose ciniel cane 
all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination, 
Do7}ibey and Son, Chap. 6. 

BOY— A Depraved. 

A bundle of tatters, held together by a hand, 
in size and form almost an infant's, but, in its 
greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad old man's. 
A face rounded and smoothed by some half- 
dozen years, but pinched and t^visted by the ex- 
pei-iences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youth- 
ful. Naked feet, beautiful in their childish 
delicacy — ugly in the blood and dirt that 
cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young 
monster, a child who had never been a child, a 
creature who might live to take the outward 
form of man, but who, within, would live and 
perish a mere beast. — Haunted Man, Chap. i. 

BOY—" Jo " the Outcast. 

As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along 
the streets, where the high church spires and 
the distances are so near and clear in the morn- 
ing light that the city itself seems renewed by 
rest, Allan revolves in his mind how and where 
he shall bestow his companion. " It surely is a 
strange fact," he considers, " that in the heart of 
a civilized world this creature in human form 
should be more difBcult to dispose of than an 
unowned dog." But it is none the less a fact 
because of its strangeness, and the difficulty re- 
mains. 

At first, he looks behind him often, to assure 
himself that Jo is still really following. But 
look where he will, he still beholds him close to 
the opposite houses, making his way \^ith his 
wary hand from brick to brick, and from door 
to door, and often, as he creeps along, glancing 
over at him, watchfully. Soon satisfied that the 
last thing in his thoughts is to give him the slip, 
Allan goes on ; considering with a less divided 
attention what he shall do. 

A breakfast-stall at a street comer suggests 
the first thing to be done. He stops there, looks 
round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses, and comes 
halting and shuffling, slowly scooping the 
knuckles of his right hand round and round in 
the hollowed palm of his left — kneading dirt 
with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a 
dainty repast to Jo is then set before him, and 
he begins to gulp the coffee, and to gnaw the 
bread-and-butter ; looking anxiously about him 
in all directions, as he eats and drinks, like a 
scared animal. 

But he is so sick and miserable, that even 
hunger has abandoned him. " I thought I was 
a'most a-starvin', sir," says Jo, soon putting 
down his food : " but I don't know nothink — 
not even that. I don't care for eating wittles 
nor yet for drinking on 'em." And Jo stands 
shivering, and looking at the breakfast wonder- 
ingly. 

Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse 
and on his chest. " Draw breath, Jo ! " " It 
draws," says Jo, " as heavy as a cart." He 
might add, " and rattles like it ;" but he only 
mutters, " I'm a-moving on, sir." 

Allan looks about for an apothecary's shop 
There is none at hand, bi . . tavern does as well 
or better. He obtains a little measure of wine 



BOY 



63 



BOY 



and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. 
He begins to revive almost as soon as it passes 
his lips. "We may repeat that dose, Jo," ob- 
serves Allan, after watching him with his atten- 
tive face. " So ! we will now take five minutes' 
rest, and then go on again." 

Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the 
breakfast-stall, with his back against an iron 
railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in 
the early sunshine, casting an occasional look 
towards him without appearing to watch him. 
It requires no discernment to perceive that he 
is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded 
can brighten, his face brightens somewhat ; and, 
by little and little, he eats the slice of bread he 
had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these 
signs of improvement, Allan engages him in 
conversation ; and elicits, to his no small won- 
der, the adventure of the lady in the veil, with 
all its consequences. Jo slowly munches, as he 
slowly tells it. When he has finished his story 
and his bread, they go on again. 

Bleak House, Chap. 47. 

" Who took you away ? " 

" I dustn't name him," says Jo. " I dustn't 
do it, sir." 

" But I want, in the young lady's name, to 
know. You may trust me. No one else shall 
hear." 

" Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking 
his head fearfully, " as he dont hear." 

" Why, he is not in this place." 

" Oh, ain't he though ? " says Jo. " He's in 
all manner of places, all at wunst." 

Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers 
some real meaning and good faith at the bottom 
of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits 
an explicit answer ; and Jo, more baffled by his 
patience than anything else, at last desperately 
whispers a name in his ear. 

" Aye ! " says Allan. " Why, what had you 
been doing?" 

" Nothiuk, sir. Never done nothink to get 
myself into no trouble, 'sept in not moving on, 
and the Inkwhich. But I'm a-moving on now. 
I'm amoving on to the berryin ground— that's 
the move as I'm up to." 

" No, no, we will try to prevent that. But 
what did he do with you ? " 

•' Put me in a horsepittle," replied Jo, whis- 
pering, " till I was discharged, then gave me a 
little money — four half-bulls, wot you may call 
half-crowns — and ses ' Hook it ! Nobody wants 
you here,' he ses. 'You hook it. You go and 
tramp,' he ses. ' You move on,' he ses. ' Don't 
let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile 
of London, or you'll repent it.' So I shall, if 
ever he does see me, and he'll see me if I'm 
above ground," concludes Jo, nervously repeat- 
ing all his former precautions and investiga- 
tions. 

Allan considers a little ; then remarks, turn- 
ing to the woman, but keeping an encouraging 
eye on Jo ; " He is not so ungrateful as you sup- 
posed. He had a reason for going away, though 
it was an insufficient one." 

" Thank'ee, sir, thank'ee ! " exclaims Jo. 
" There now ! See how hard you wos upon me. 
But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn 
ses, and it's all right. Y ox you wos wery good to 
me too, and I knows it." 

" Now, Jo," says Allan, keeping his eye upon 



him, " come with me, and I will find you a bet- 
ter place than this to lie down and hide in. If 
I take one side of the way, and you the other, to 
avoid observation, you will not run away, I 
know very well, if you make me a promise." 

" I won't, not unless I wos to see hhn a-com- 
ing, sir." — Bleak House, Chap. 46. 

'k * * * * * 

" Look here, Jo ! " says Allan, " This is Mr. 
George." 

Jo searches the floor for some time longer, 
then looks up for a moment, and then down 
again. 

" He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to 
give you lodging-room here." 

Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is 
supposed to be a bow. After a little more con- 
sideration, and some backing and changing of 
the foot on which he rests, he mutters that he is 
" wery thankful." 

" You are quite safe here. All you have to do 
at present is to be obedient, and to get strong. 
And mind you tell us the truth here, whatever 
you do. Jo." 

" Wishermaydie if I don't, sir," says Jo, re- 
verting to his favorite declaration. "I never 
done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get 
myself into no trouble. I never was in no 
other trouble at all, sir — 'sept not knowin' no- 
think and starwation." 

****** 

To Mr. Jarndyce, Jo repeats in substance 
what he said in the morning ; without any ma- 
terial variation. Only, that cart of his is heavier 
to draw, and draws with a hollower sound. 

" Let me lay here quiet, and not be chivied no 
more," falters Jo ; " and be so kind any person 
as is a-passin' nigh where I used fur to sweep, as 
jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known 
once, is a-moving on right forards with his duty, 
and I'll be wery thankful. I'd be more thank- 
ful than I am a'ready, if it wos any ways possi- 
ble for an unfortnet to be it." 

Bleak House, Chap. 47. 

BOY-An old " Bailey." 

Mr. Bailey spoke as if he already had a leg 
and three-quarters in the grave, and this had 
happened twenty or thirty years ago. Paul 
Sweedlepipe, the meek, was so perfectly con- 
founded by his precocious self-possession, and 
his patronising manner, as well as by his boots, 
cockade, and livery, that a mist swam before his 
eyes, and he saw — not the Bailey of acknow- 
ledged juvenility, from Todger's Commercial 
Boarding House, who had made his acquaint- 
ance within a twelve-month, by purchasing, at 
sundry times, small birds at two-pence each — 
but a highly condensed embodiment of all the 
sporting grooms in London ; an abstract of all 
the stable-knowledge of the time ; a something 
at a high pressure that must have had existence 
many years, and was fraught with terrible ex- 
periences. And truly, though in the cloudy at- 
mosphere of Todgers's, Mr. Bailey's genius had 
ever shone out brightly in this particular re- 
spect, it now eclipsed both time and space, 
cheated beholders of their senses, and worked 
on their belief in defiance of all natural laws. 
He walked along the tangible and real stones 
of Holborn Hill, an under-sized boy ; and yet 
he winked the winks, and thought the thoughts 



BOZ 



54 



BREAD AND BUTTER 



and did the deeds, and said the sayings of an an- 
cient man. There was an old principle within 
him, and a young surface without. He became 
an inexplicable creature : a breeched and booted 
Sphinx. There was no course open to the 
barber but to go distracted himself, or to take 
Bailey for granted : and he wisely chose the 
latter. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 26. 

*• BOZ "—The Original. 

" Boz," my signature in the Morning Chronicle, 
and in the Old Monthly Magazine, appended 
to the monthly cover of this book, and retained 
long afterwards, was the nick-name of a pet 
child, a younger brother, whom I dubbed 
Moses, in honor of the Vicar of Wakefield ; 
which being facetiously pronounced through 
the nose, became Boses, and, being shortened, 
became Boz. Boz was a very familiar house- 
hold word to me, long before I was an "author, 
and so I came to adopt it. 

Preface to Pickwick. 

BROKER— Pancks' Opinion of a. 

" Noble old boy ; ain't he ? " said Mr. 
Pancks, entering on a series of the dryest of 
snorts. " Generous old buck. Confiding old 
boy. Philanthropic old buck. Benevolent old 
boy ! Twenty per cent. I engaged to pay him, 
sir. But we never do business for less, at our 
shop." 

Arthur felt an awkward consciousness of hav- 
ing in his exultant condition been a little prema- 
ture. 

" I said to that — ^boiling-over old Christian," 
Mr. Pancks pursued, appearing greatly to relish 
this descriptive epithet, " that I had got a little 
project on hand ; a hopeful one ; I told him a 
hopeful one ; which wanted a certain small capi- 
tal. I proposed to him to lend me the money on 
my note. Which he did, at twenty ; sticking 
the twenty on in a business-like way, and put- 
ting it into the note to look like a part of the 
principal. If I had broken down after that, I 
should have been his grubber for the next seven 
years at half wages and double grind.- But he 
is a perfect Patriarch : and it would do a man 
good to serve him on such terms — on any 
terms." 

****** 

" As to the brim of his hat, it's narrow. And 
there's no more benevolence bubbling out of 
him than out of a ninepin." 

Little Dorrit, Chap. 35. 

BROKER— In Second-Hand Fumitnre. 

There lived in those days, round the comer 
— in Bishopsgate Street Without — one Brogley, 
sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop 
where every description of second-hand furni- 
ture was exhibited in the most uncomfortable 
aspect, and under circumstances and in com- 
binations the most completely foreign to its 
purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to wash- 
ing-stands, which with difficulty poised them- 
selves on the shoulders of sideboards, which in 
their turn stood upon the wrong side of dining- 
tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on the 
tops of other dining-tables, were among its most 
reasonable arrangements. A banquet array of 
dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was 
generally to be seen spread forth upon the 



bosom of a four-post bedstead, for the entertain- 
ment of such genial company as half-a-dozen 
pokers, and a hall lamp. A set of window cur- 
tains with no windows belonging to them, would 
be seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests 
of drawers, loaded with little jars from chemists* 
shops ; while a homeless hearthrug, severed 
from its natural companion the fireside, braved 
the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and trem- 
bled in melancholy accord with the shrill com- 
plainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a 
string a day, and faintly resounding to the noises 
of the street in its jangling and distracted brain. 
Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, 
and seemed as incapable of being successfully 
wound up as the pecuniary affairs of their 
former owners, there was always great choice in 
Mr. Brogley's shop : and various looking-glasses 
accidentally placed at compound interest of re- 
flection and refraction, presented to the eye an 
eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin. 

Mr. Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink- 
complexioned, crisp-haired man, of a bulky fig- 
ure and an easy temper — for that class of Caius 
Marius who sits upon the ruins of other peo- 
ple's Carthages, can keep up his spirits well 
enough. — Dombey and Son, Chap. 9. 

BROKERS' -SHOPS. 

Our readers must often have observed in some 
by-street, in a poor neighborhood, a small, dirty 
shop, exposing for sale the most extraoi'dinaiy 
and confused jumble of old, M'orn-out, wretched 
articles, that can well be imagined. Our won- 
der at their ever having been bought, is only to 
be equalled by our astonishment at the idea of 
their ever being sold again. On a board at the 
side of the door are placed about twenty books 
— all odd volumes ; and as many wine-glasses — 
all different patterns ; several locks, an old 
earthenware pan, full of iTisty keys ; two or 
three gaudy chimney ornaments — cracked, of 
course ; the remains of a lustre, without any 
drops ; a round frame like a capital O, which has 
once held a mirror ; a flute, complete, with the 
exception of the middle joint ; a pair of curling- 
irons ; and a tinder-box. In front of the shop- 
window are ranged some half-dozen high-backed 
chairs, with spinal complaints and wasted legs ; 
a corner cupboard ; two or three very dark ma- 
hogany tables with flaps like mathematical 
problems ; some pickle jars ; some surgeons' dit- 
to, with gilt labels and without stoppers ; an 
unframed portrait of some lady who flourished 
about the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
by an artist who never flourished at all ; an in- 
calculable host of miscellanies of every descrip- 
tion, including bottles and cabinets, rags and 
bones, fenders and street-door knockers, fire- 
irons, wearing-apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, 
and a room -door. Imagine, in addition to this 
incongruous mass, a black doll in a white frock, 
with two faces — one looking up the street, and 
the other looking down, swinging over the door 
a board with the squeezed-up inscription " Deal- 
er in marine stores," in lanky white letters, 
whose height is strangely out of proportion to 
their width ; and you have before you precisely 
the kind of shop to which we wish to direct 
your attention. — Scenes, Chap. 21. 

BREAD AND BUTTER. 

Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three 



BREATH 



55 



BUTCHER 



feather beds, and was slipping butter in between 
the blankets, and covering it up. 

Great Expectations ^ Chap. 19. 

BREATH-A short. 

" And how have you been since ? " 
Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had 
been too. 

" Oh ! nothing to grumble at, you know," said 
Mr. Omer. " I find my breath gets short, but it 
seldom gets longer as a man gets older. . I take 
it as it comes, and make the most of it. That's 
the best way, ain't it ? " 

David Copperjield, Chap. 21. 

BRUISES— of Mr. Squeers. 

" I was one blessed bruise, sir," said Squeers, 
touching first the roots of his hair, and then the 
toes of his boots, *' from here to there. Vinegar 
and brown paper, vinegar and brown paper, 
from morning to night. I suppose there was a 
matter of half a ream of brown paper stuck 
upon me, from first to last. As I laid all of a 
heap in our kitchen, plastered all over, you 
might have thought I was a large brown paper 
parcel, chock full of nothing but groans." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34. 

BUSINESS MANAGER-Capt. Cuttle as a. 

" And how is master, Rob ? " said Polly. 

" Well, I don't know, mother ; not much to 
boast on. There ain't no bis'ness done, you 
see. He don't know anything about it, the 
Cap'en don't. There was a man come into the 
shop this very day, and says, ' I want a so-and- 
so,' he says — some hard name or another. ' A 
which ? ' says the Cap'en. ' A so-and-so,' says 
the man. ' Brother,' says the Cap'en, ' will you 
take a observation round the shop ? ' ' Well,' 
says the man, ' I've done it.' * Do you see what 
you want ? ' says the Cap'en. ' No, I don't,' 
says the man. ' Do you know it when you do 
see it ? ' says the Cap'en. ' No, I don't," says 
the man. ' Why, then I tell you wot, my lad,' 
says the Cap'en, ' you'd better go back and ask 
wot it's like, outside, for no more don't I ! ' " 

" That ain't the way to make money, though, 
is it ? " said Polly. 

" Money, mother ! He'll never make money." 
Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 38. 

Captain Cuttle, also, as a man of business, 
took to keeping books. In these he entered ob- 
servations on the weather, and on the currents 
of the wagons and other vehicles ; which he 
observed, in that quarter, to set westward in the 
morning and during the greater part of the day, 
and eastward towards the evening. Two or 
three stragglers appearing in one week, who 
" spoke him " — so the Captain entered it — on 
the subject of spectacles, and who, without posi- 
tively purchasing, said they would look in again, 
the Captain decided that the business was im- 
proving, and made an entry in the day-book to 
that effect : the wind then blowing (which he 
first recorded) pretty fresh, west and by north ; 
having changed in the night. 

Dombey &* Son, Chap. 39. 

BUSINESS MANAGER-Carker the. 

Mr. Carker the Manager sat at his desk, 
smooth and soft as usual, reading those letters 
which were reserved for him to open, backing 



them occasionally with such memoranda and 
references as their business purport required, 
and parcelling them out into little heaps for dis- 
tribution through the several departments of the 
House. The post had come in heavy that morn- 
ing, and Mr. Carker the Manager brd a good 
deal to do. 

The general action of a man so engaged — 
pausing to look over a bundle of papers in his 
hand, dealing them round in various portions, 
taking up another bundle and examining its con- 
tents with knitted brows and pursed-out lips — 
dealing, and sorting, and pondering by turns — 
would easily suggest some whimsical resemblance 
to a player at cards. The face of Mr. Carker 
the Manager was in good keeping with such a 
fancy. It was the face of a man who studied 
his play, warily : who made himself master of 
all the strong and weak points of the game : 
who registered the cards in his mind as they fell 
about him, knew exactly what was on them, 
what they missed, and what they made : who 
was crafty to find out what the other players 
held, and who never betrayed his own hand. 

The letters were in various languages, but Mr. 
Carker the Manager read them all. If there had 
been anything in the offices of Dombey and Son 
that he could not read, there would have been a 
card wanting in the pack. He read almost at a 
glance, and made combinations of one letter 
with another and one business with another as 
he went on, adding new matter to the heaps — 
much as a man would know the cards at sight, 
and work out their combinations in his mind 
after they were turned. Something too deep for 
a partner, and much too deep for an adversary, 
Mr. Carker the Manager sat in the rays of the 
sun that came down slanting on him through 
the skylight, playing his game alone. 

Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 22. 

Frequently, when the clerks were all gone, 
the offices dark and empty, and all similar 
places of business shut up, Mr. Carker, with the 
whole anatomy of the iron room laid bare be- 
fore him, would explore the mysteries of books 
and papers, with the patient progress of a man 
who was dissecting the minutest nerves and 
fibres of his subject. 

Dombey (Sr» Son, Chap. 46. 

BUSINESS— The motto of Pancks. 

" Take all you can get, and keep back all yoti 
can't be forced to give up. That's business." 
Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 24. 

BUTCHER— Artistically considered. 

To see the butcher slap the steak, befora l>e 
laid it on the block, and give his knife a sharpen- 
ing, was to forget breakfast instantly. It way 
agreeable, too — it really was — to see him cut it 
off, so smooth and juicy. There was nothing 
savage in the act, although the knife was large 
and keen ; it was a piece of art — high art ; there 
was delicacy of touch, clearness of tone, skillful 
handling of the subject, fine shading. It was 
the triumph of mind over matter ; quite. 

Perhaps the greenest cabbage-leaf ever grown 
in a garden was wrapped about this steak, be- 
fore it was delivered over to Tom. But the 
butcher had a sentiment for his business, and 
knew how to refine upon it. When he saw Torn 
putting the cabbage-leaf into his pocket awk- 



BXJTTONED-UP MEN 



56 



CANAL-BOAT 



wardly, he begged to be allowed to do it for 
him ; " for meat," he said with some emotion, 
" must be humored, not drove." 

Martin Chuzzlewity Chap. 39. 

BTJTTONED-TJP MEN— Their importance. 

Mr. Tite Barnacle was a buttoned-up man, 
and consequently a weighty one. All buttoned- 
up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are 
believed in. Whether or no the reserved and 
never-exercised power of unbuttoning, fascinates 
mankind ; whether or no wisdom is supposed to 
condense and augment when buttoned up, and 
to evaporate when unbuttoned ; it is certain 
that the man to whom importance is accorded is 
the buttoned-up man. Mr, Tite Barnacle never 
would have passed for half his current value, 
unless his coat had been always buttoned up to 
his white cravat. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12. 







CABS AND DUrVERS-Description of. 

Of all the cabriolet-drivers whom we ever had 
the honor and gratification of knowing by 
sight — and our acquaintance in this way has 
been most extensive — there is one who made an 
impression on our mind which can never be 
effaced, and who awakened in our bosom a feel- 
ing of admiration and respect, which we enter- 
tain a fatal presentiment will never be called 
forth again by any human being. He was a 
man of most simple and prepossessing appear- 
ance. He was a brov/n-whiskered, white-hatted, 
no-coated cabman ; his nose was generally red, 
and his bright blue eye not unfrequently stood out 
in bold relief against a black border of artificial 
workmanship ; his boots were of the Wellington 
form, pulled up to meet his corduroy knee-smalls, 
or at least to approach as near them as their di- 
mensions would admit of ; and his neck was 
usually garnished with a bright yellow hand- 
kerchief. In summer he carried in his mouth a 
flower ; in winter, a straw — slight, but to a con- 
templative mind, certain indications of a love of 
nature, and a taste for botany. 

His cabriolet was gorgeously painted — a 
bright red ; and wherever we went. City or 
West End, Paddington or Holloway, North, 
East, West, or South, there was the red cab, 
bumping up against the posts at the street cor- 
ners, and turning in and out, among hackney- 
coaches, and drays, and carts, and wagons, and 
omnibuses, and contriving by some strange 
means or other to get out of places which no 
other vehicle but the red cab could ever by any 
possibility have contrived to get into at all. Our 
fondness for that red cab is unbounded. How 
we should have liked to see it in the circle at 
Astley's ! Our life upon it, that it should have 
performed such evolutions as would have put 
the whole company to shame — Indian chiefs, 
knights, Swiss peasants, and all. 

Some people object to the exertion of getting 
into cabs, and others object to the difficulty of 
getting out of them ; we think both these are 



objections which take their rise in perverse and 
ill-conditioned minds. The getting into a cab 
is a very pretty and graceful process, which, 
when well performed, is essentially melodra- 
matic. First, there is the expressive pantomime 
of every one of the eighteen cabmen on the 
stand, the moment you raise your eyes from the 
ground. Then there is your own pantomime in 
reply — quite a little ballet. Four cabs immedi- 
ately leave the stand, for your especial accom- 
modation ; and the evolutions of the animals 
who draw them are beautiful in the extreme, as 
they grate the wheels of the cabs against the 
curb-stones, and sport playfully in the kennel. 
You single out a particular cab, and dart swiftly 
towards it. One bound, and you are on the 
first step ; turn your body lightly round to the 
right, and you are on the second ; bend grace- 
fully beneath the reins, working round to the 
left at the same time, and you are in the cab. 
There is no difficulty in finding a seat : the 
apron knocks you comfortably into it at once, 
and off you go. — Scenes, Chap. 17. 

CANAL-BOAT— An American. 

I have mentioned my having been in some 
uncertainty and doubt, at first, relative to the 
sleeping-arrangements on board this boat. I 
remained in the same vague state of mind until 
ten o'clock or thereabouts, when, going below, 
I found, suspended on either side of the cabin, 
three long tiers of hanging book-shelves, de- 
signed apparently for volumes of the small oc- 
tavo size. Looking with greater attention at 
these contrivances (wondering to find such liter- 
ary preparations in such a place), I descried on 
each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blan- 
ket ; then I began dimly to comprehend that 
the passengers were the library, and that they 
were to be arranged, edgewise, on these shelves 
till morning. 

I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing 
some of them gathered round the master of the 
boat, at one of the tables, drawing lots with all 
the anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted 
in their countenances ; while others, with small 
pieces of card-board in their hands, were grop- 
ing among the shelves in search of numbers 
corresponding with those they had drawn. As 
soon as any gentleman found his number, he 
took possession of it by immediately undressing 
himself and crawling into bed. The rapidity 
with which an agitated gambler subsided into a 
snoring slumberer was one of the most singular 
effects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies, 
they were already abed, behind the red curtain, 
which was carefully drawn and pinned up the 
centre ; though, as every cough, or sneeze, or 
whisper behind this curtain was perfectly audible 
before it, we had still a lively consciousness of 
their society. 

The politeness of the person in authority had 
secured to me a shelf in a nook near this red 
curtain, in some degree removed from the great 
body of sleepers — to which place I retired, with 
many acknowledgments to him for his attention. 
I found it, on after-measurement, just the width 
of an ordinary sheet of Bath post letter-paper ; 
and I was at first in some uncertainty as to the 
best means of getting into it. But, the shelf 
being a bottom one, I finally determined on 
lying upon the floor, rolling gently in, stopping 
immediately I touched the mattress, and remain- 



CANDLE 



57 



CAPTAIN CUTTLE 



ing for the night with that side uppermost, what- 
ever it might be. Luckily, I came upon my 
back at exactly the right moment. I was much 
alarmed, on looking upward, to see, by the shape 
of his half-yard of sacking (which his weight had 
bent into an exceedingly tight bag), that there 
was a very heavy gentleman above me, whom 
the slender cords seemed quite incapable of 
holding ; and I could not help reflecting upon 
the grief of my wife and family in the event of 
his coming down in the night. But as I could 
not have got up again without a severe bodily 
struggle, which might have alarmed the ladies, 
and as I had nowhere to go to, even if I had, 
I shut my eyes upon the danger, and remained 
there. — American Notes, Chap. lo. 

CANDLE— Ligh-ting a. 

The wretched candle burns down ; the 
woman takes its expiring end between her fin- 
gers, lights another at it, crams the guttering, 
frying morsel deep into the candlestick, and rams 
it home with the new candle, as if she were 
loading some ill-savored and unseemly weapon 
of witchcraft. — Edwin Drood, Chap. 23. 

CAPTAIN CUTTLE — His reverence for 
Science. 

" I suppose he could make a clock if he 
tried ? " 

" I shouldn't wonder, Captain Cuttle," re- 
turned the boy. 

" And it would go ! " said Captain Cuttle, 
making a species of serpent in the air with his 
hook. " Lord, how that clock would go ! " 

For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in 
contemplating the pace of this ideal timepiece, 
and sat looking at the boy as if his face were 
the dial. 

" But he's chockfull of science," he observed, 
waving his hook towards the stock-in-trade. 
** Look 'ye here ! Here's a collection of 'em. 
Earth, air, or water. It's all one. Only say 
where you'll have it. Up in a balloon ? There 
you are. Down in a bell ? There you are. 
D'ye want to put the North Star in a pair of 
scales and weigh it ? He'll do it for you." 

It may be gathered from these remarks that 
Captain Cuttle's reverence for the stock of in- 
struments was profound, and that his philosophy 
knew little or no distinction between trading in 
it and inventing it. 

" Ah ! " he said, with a sigh, " it's a fine thing 
to understand 'em. And yet it's a fine thing 
not to understand 'em. I hardly know which is 
best. It's so comfortable to sit here and feel 
that you might be weighed, measured, magnified, 
electrified, polarized, played the very devil with ; 
and never know how." — Dombey ^ Son^ Ch. 4. 

CAPTAIN CUTTLE-His observations and 
characteristics. 

His rooms were very small, and strongly im- 
pregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug enough ; 
everything being stowed away, as if there were 
an earthquake regularly every half hour.— C>4. Q. 



" Sol Gills ! The observation as I'm a-going 
to make is calc'lated to blow every stitch of sail 
as you can carry, clean out of the bolt-ropes, 
and bring you on your beam ends with a lurch. 
Not one of them letters was ever delivered to 
Ed'ard Cuttle. Not one o' them letters," re- 



peated the Captain, to make his declaration the 
more solemn and impressive, " was ever deliver- 
ed unto Ed'ard Cuttle, Mariner, of England, 
as lives at home at ease, and doth improve each 
shining hour ! " — Chai>. 56. 

" And with regard to old Sol Gills," here the 
Captain became solemn, " who I'll stand by, and 
not desert until death doe us part, when the 
stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow — over 
haul the Catechism," said the Captain paren- 
thetically, *' and there you'll find them expres- 
sions — if it would console Sol Gills to have the 
opinion of a seafaring man as has got a mind 
equal to any undertaking that he puts it along- 
side of, and as was all but smashed in his 'pren- 
ticeship, and of which the name is Bunsby, that 
'ere man shall give him such an opinion in his 
own parlor as'U stun him. Ah ! " said Captain 
Cuttle, vauntingly, " as much as if he'd gone 
and knocked his head again a door 1 " — Ch. 23. 

" My lady lass ! " said the Captain, " you're as 
safe here as if you was at the top of St. Paul's 
Cathedral, with the ladder cast off; Sleep is what 
you want, afore all other things, and may you 
be able to show yourself smart with that there 
balsam for the still . small woice of a wounded 
mind ! When there's anything you want, my 
Heart's Delight, as this here humble house or 
town can offer, pass the word to Ed'ard Cuttle, 
as'll stand off and on outside that door, and that 
there man will wibrate with ]oy."— Chap. 48. 



" Wal'r is a lad as'll bring as much success to 
that 'ere brig as a lad is capable on. WaUr," 
said the Captain, his eyes glistening with the 
praise of his young friend, and his hook raised 
to announce a beautiful quotation, " is what you 
may call a out'ard and visible sign of a in'ard 
and spirited grasp, and when found, make a note 
of." — Chap. 23. 



Florence had no words to answer with. She 
only said, " Oh, dear, dear Paul ! oh, Walter ! " 

" The wery planks she walked on," murmured 
the Captain, looking at her drooping face, " was 
as high esteemed by Wal'r, as the water brooks 
is by the hart which never rejices ! I see him 
now, the wery day as he was rated on them 
Dombey books, a speaking of her with his face 
a glistening with doo — leastways with his modest 
sentiments — like a new blowed rose, at dinner. 
Well, well ! If our poor Wal'r was here, my 
lady lass — or if he could be — for he's drownded, 
an't he?"— C/5a/. 49. 



" But the ship's a good ship, and the lad's a 
good lad ; and it ain't easy, thank the Lord," 
the Captain made a little bow, " to break up 
hearts of oak, whether they're in brigs or buz- 
zums. Here we have 'em both ways, which is 
bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain't 
a bit afeard as yti."-^Chap. 23. 

" Half a loafs better than no bread, and the 
same remark holds good with crumbs." — Ch. 10. 



" Wal'r, my lad," observed the Captain in a 
deep voice : " stand by ! " 

At the same time the Captain, coming a little 
further in, brought out his wide suit of blue, his 
conspicuous shirt-collar, and his knobby nose in 



CAPTAIN CUTTLE 



58 



CABDS 



full relief, and stood bowing to Mr. Dombey, and 
waving his hook politely to the ladies, with the 
hard glazed hat in his one hand, and a red 
equator round his head, which it had newly im- 
printed there. — Chap. lo. 



" Wal'r, my boy," replied the Captain, " in 
the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the fol- 
lowing words, ' May we never want a friend in 
need, nor a bottle to give him ! ' When found, 
make a note of." — Chap. 15. 



" Bunsby," said the Captain, striking home at 
once, " here you are ; a man of mind, and a man 
as can give an opinion. Here's a young lady as 
wants to take that opinion, in regard to my 
friend Wal'r ; likewise my t'other friend, Sol 
Gills, which is a character for you to come within 
hail of, being a man of science, which is the mo- 
ther of inwention, and knows no law." — Ch. 23. 



The Captain, pale as Florence, pale in the 
very knobs upon his face, raised her like a baby, 
and laid her on the same old sofa upon which 
she had slumbered long ago. 

" It's Heart's Delight ! " said the Captain, 
looking intently in her face. "It's the sweet 
creetur grow'd a woman ! " 

Captain Cuttle was so respectful of her, and 
had such a reverence for her in this new charac- 
ter, that he would not have held her in his arms, 
while she was unconscious, for a thousand 
pounds. 

" My Heart's Delight ! " said the Captain, 
withdrawing to a little distance, with the great- 
est alarm and sympathy depicted on his coun- 
tenance. " If you can hail Ned Cuttle with a 
finger, do it ! " 

But Florence did not stir. 

•• My Heart's Delight ! " said the trembling 
Captain. " For the sake of Wal'r drownded in 
the briny deep, turn to, and histe up something 
or another, if able." — Dombey 6^ Son^ Ch. 48. 

CAPTAIN CUTTLE and Mrs. MacSting-er. 

" We had some words about the swabbing of 
these here planks, and she— in short," said the 
Captain, eyeing the door, and relieving himself 
with a long breath, " she stopped my liberty." 

" Oh ! I wish she had me to deal with ! " said 
Susan, reddening with the energy of the wish, 
" I'd stop her ! " 

" Would you, do you think, my dear ? " rejoined 
the Captain, shaking his head doubtfully, but re- 
garding the desperate courage of the fair aspirant 
with obvious admiration. " I don't know. It's 
difficult navigation. She's very hard to carry on 
with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll 
head, you see. She's full one minute, and round 
upon you next. And when she is a tartar," said 
the Captain, with the perspiration breaking out 
upon his forehead — . There was nothing but a 
whistle emphatic enough for the conclusion of 
the sentence, so the Captain whistled tremu- 
lously. — Dombey &» Son^ Chap. 23. 

♦ ♦ « 4( « He 

Honest Captain Cuttle, as the weeks flew over 
him in his fortified retreat, by no means abated 
any of his prudent provisions against surprise, 
because of the non-appearance of the enemy. 
The Captain argued that his present security was 
too profound and wonderful to endure much 



longer : he knew that when the wind stood in a 
fair quarter, the weathercock was seldom nailed 
there ; and he was too well acquainted with the 
determined and dauntless character of Mrs. Mac- 
Stinger, fo doubt that that heroic woman had de- 
voted herself to the task of his discovery and cap- 
ture. Trembling beneath the weight of these 
reasons. Captain Cuttle lived a very close and re- 
tired life ; seldom stirring abroad until after dark ; 
venturing even then only into the obscurest 
streets ; never going forth at all on Sundays ; 
and both within and without the walls of his 
retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn 
by raging lions. 

The Captain never dreamed that in the event 
of his being pounced upon by Mrs. MacStinger, 
in his walks, it would be possible to offer resist- 
ance. He felt that it could not be done. He 
saw himself, in his mind's eye, put meekly ir a 
hackney-coach, and carried off to his old lo< g- 
ings. He foresaw that, once immured there, he 
was a lost man. 

" Now, my lad, stand by ! If ever I'm took — " 
" Took, Captain ! " interposed Rob, with his 
round eyes wide open. 

"Ah ! " said Captain Cuttle, darkly, " if ever I 
goes away, meaning to come back to supper, and 
don't come within hail again twenty-four hours 
arter my loss, go you to Brig Place and whistle 
that 'ere tune near my old moorings — not as if 
you was a meaning of it, you understand, but as 
if you'd drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer 
in that tune, you sheer off, my lad, and come 
back four-and-twenty hours artervvards ; if I 
answer in another tune, do you stand off and on^ 
and wait till I throw out further signals." 

Dombey &=> Son, Chap. 32. 

CAPTAIN CUTTLE and Mr. Toots. 

" Mr. Gills—" 

" Awast ! " said the Captain. " My name'* 
Cuttle." 

Mr. Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while 
the Captain proceeded gravely. 

" Cap'en Cuttle is my name, and England is 
my nation, this here is my dwelling-place, and 
blessed be creation — Job," said the Captain, as 
an index to his authority. 

" Oh ! I couldn't see Mr. Gills, could I ?" said 
Mr. Toots ; " because — " 

" If you could see Sol Gills, young genTm'n," 
said the Captain, impressively, and laying his 
heavy hand on Mr. Toots' knee, " old Sol, mind 
you — with your own eyes — as you sit there — you'd 
be welcomer to me than a wind astarn to a ship 
becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills. And why 
can't you see Sol Gills ? " said the Captain, ap- 
prised by the face of Mr. Toots that he was 
making a profound impression on that gentle- 
man's mind. " Because he's inwisible." 

Do77ibey &^ Son, Chap. 32. 

CARDS— A g-ana.e for love. 

Two people who cannot afford to play cards 
for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game 
for love. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. i. 

CARDS— Of Callers. 

Next day, and the day after, and every day, all 
graced by more dinn company, cards descend- 
ed on Mr. Dorrit, like theatrical snow. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16, 



r 




Paul and Mrs. Pipchin. 



59 



CARES 



59 



CATACOMBS OP ROME 



CARES— Second-hand. 

The confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's 

Bank were principally occupied with the cares 

of other people ; and perhaps second-hand cares, 

like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4. 

CARES— The oppressiveness of. 

Although a man may lose a sense of his own 
importance when he is a mere unit among a busy 
throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no 
means follows that he can dispossess himself, 
with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the 
importance and magnitude of his cares.' 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 16. 

CARPET-SHAKINGr— The pleasures of. 

It is not half as innocent a thing as it looks, 
that shaking little pieces of carpet — at least, 
there may be no great harm in the shaking, but 
the folding is a very insidious process. So long 
as the shaking lasts, and the two parties are kept 
the carpet's length apart, it is as innocent an 
amusement as can well be devised ; but when 
the folding begins, and the distance between 
them gets gradually lessened from one-half its 
former length to a quarter, and then to an eighth, 
and then to a sixteenth, and then to a thirty- 
second, if the carpet be long enough : it becomes 
dangerous. We do not know, to a nicety, how 
many pieces of carpet were folded in this instance ; 
but we can venture to state that as many pieces 
as there were, so many times did Sam kiss the 
pretty housemaid. — Pickwick, Chap. 39. 

CARVIl4^-The art of. 

We have already had occasion to observe that 
Mrs. Chirrup is an incomparable housewife. In 
all the arts of domestic arrangement and man- 
agement, in all the mysteries of confectionery- 
making, pickling, and preserving, never was such 
a thorough adept as that nice little body. .She 
is, besides, a cunning worker in muslin and fine 
linen, and a special hand at marketing to the 
very best advantage. But if there be one branch 
of housekeeping in which she excels to an utter- 
ly unparalleled and unprecedented extent, it is 
in the important one of carving. A roast goose 
is universally allowed to be the great stumbling- 
block in the way of young aspirants to perfection 
in this department of science ; many promising 
carvers, beginning with legs of mutton, and 
preserving a good reputation through fillets of 
veal, sirloins of beef, quarters of lamb, fowls, 
and even ducks, have sunk before a roast goose, 
and lost caste and character forever. To Mrs. 
Chirrup the resolving a goose into its smallest 
component parts is a pleasant pastime — a prac- 
tical joke — a thing to be done in a minute or so, 
without the smallest interruption to the conver- 
sation of the time. No handing the dish over 
to an unfortunate man upon her right or left, no 
wild sharpening of the knife, no hacking and 
sawing at an unruly joint, no noise, no splash, 
no heat, no leaving off in despair ; all is confi- 
dence and cheerfulness. The dish is set upon 
the table, the cover is removed ; for an instant, 
and only an instant, you observe that Mrs. Chir- 
rup's attention is distracted ; she smiles, but 
heareth not. You proceed with your story ; 
meanwhile the glittering knife is slowly upraised, 
both Mrs. Chirrup's wrists are slightly Ijut not 
ungracefully agitated, she compresses her lips for 



an instant, then breaks into a smile, and all is 
over. The legs of the bird slide gently down 
into a pool of gravy, the wings seem to melt from 
the body, the breast separates into a row of 
juicy slices, the smaller and more complicated 
parts of his anatomy are perfectly developed, a 
cavern of stuffing is revealed, and the goose is 
gone ! — Sketches of Couples. 

CAT— Mrs. Pipchin and Paul. 

Mrs. Pipchin had an old black cat, who gen- 
erally lay coiled upon the centre foot of the 
fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the 
fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes were 
like two notes of admiration. The good old 
lady might have been — not to record it disre- 
spectfully — a witch, and Paul and the cat her 
two familiars, as they all sat by the fire together. 
It would have been quite in keeping with the 
appearance of the party if they had all sprung 
up the chimney in a high wind one night, and 
never been heard of any more. 

Dombey <5r» Son, Chap. 45. 

CATACOMBS OF ROME— The graves of 
Martyrs. 

Below the church of San Sebastiano, two 
miles beyond the gate of San Sebastiano, on the 
Appian Way, is the entrance to the Catacombs of 
Rome — quarries in the old time, but afterwards 
the hiding-places of the Christians. These ghast- 
ly passages have been explored for twenty miles, 
and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in 
circumference. 

A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright 
eye. was our only guide, down into this profound 
and dreadful place. The narrow ways and open- 
ings hither and thither, coupled with the dead 
and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any 
recollection of the track by which we had come ; 
and I could not help thinking, " Good Heaven, 
if, in a sudden fit of madness, he should dash 
the torches out, or if he should be seized with a 
fit, what would become of us !" On we wandered, 
among martyrs' graves : passing great subterra- 
nean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, 
and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves 
and murderers may not take refuge there, and 
form a population under Rome even worse than 
that which lives between it and the sun. Graves, 
graves, graves ; Graves of men, of women, of 
their little children, who ran crysng to the perse- 
cutors, " We are Christians ! We are Christians ! " 
that they might be murdered with their parents ; 
Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut 
into their stone boundaries, and little niches, 
made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood ; 
Graves of some who lived down here, for years 
together, ministering to the rest, and preaching 
truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude 
altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this 
hour ; more roomy graves, but far more terrible, 
where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed 
in and walled up : buried before death, and killed 
by slow starvation. 

" The Triumphs of the Faith are not above 
ground in our splendid churches," said the friar, 
looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest in 
one of the low passages, with bones and dust 
surrounding us on every side. " They arc here ! 
Among the Martyrs' Graves ! " He was a gentle, 
earnest man, and said it from his heart ; but 
when I thought how Christian men have dealt 



CELLABS 



60 



CHAIR 



with one another ; how, perverting our most 
merciful religion, they have hunted down and 
tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaugh- 
tered, and oppressed each other ; I pictured to 
myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust 
had suffered\vith the breath of life yet lingering 
in it, and how these great and constant hearts 
would have been shaken — how they would have 
quailed and drooped — if a foreknowledge of the 
deeds that professing Christians would commit 
in the Great Name for which they died, could 
have rent them with its own unutterable anguish, 
on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the 
fearful fire. — Pictures from Italy, 

CEIiliARS— And old ledgers. 

Down in the cellars, as up in the bed-chambers, 
old objects that he well remembered were 
changed by age and decay, but were still in their 
old places ; even to empty beer-casks hoary with 
cobwebs, and empty wine-bottles, with fur and 
fungus choking up their throats. There, too, 
among unused bottle-racks and pale slants of 
light from the yard above, was the strong room, 
stored with old ledgers which had as musty and 
corrupt a smell as if they were regularly bal- 
anced, in the dead small hours, by a nightly re- 
surrection of old book-keepers. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5. 

i/EREMONY— A frosty (Mrs. General). 

Mrs. General at length retired. Her retire- 
ment for the night was always her frostiest cere- 
mony ; as if she felt it necessary that the human 
imagination should be chilled into stone, to pre- 
vent its following her. When she had gone 
through her rigid preliminaries, amounting to a 
sort of genteel platoon-exercise, she withdrew. 
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15. 

CHAIR— Tom Smart's vision. 

" It was a good large room with big closets, and 
a bed which might have served for a whole board- 
ing-school, to say nothing of a couple of oaken 
presses, that would have held the baggage of a 
small army ; but what struck Tom's fancy most 
was a strange, grim-looking, high-backed cliair, 
carved in the most fantastic manner, with a 
flowered damask cushion, and the round knobs 
at the bottom of the legs carefully tied up in red 
cloth, as if it had got the gout in its toes. Of any 
other queer chair, Tom would only have thought 
it was a queer chair, and there would have been 
an end to the matter ; but there was something 
about this particular chair, and yet he couldn't 
tell what it was, so odd and so unlike any other 
piece of furniture he had ever seen, that it seemed 
to fascinate him. 

-X- :jc 4( * * « 

" In about half an hour, Tom woke up, with a 
start, from a confused dream of tall men and 
tumblers of punch ; and the first object that pre- 
sented itself to his waking imagination was the 
queer chair. 

" * I won't look at it any more,' said Tom to 
himself, and he squeezed his eyelids together, 
and tried to persuade himself he was going to 
sleep again. No use ; nothing but queer chairs 
danced before his eyes, kicking up their legs, 
jumping over each other's backs, and playing all 
kinds of antics. 

" ' I may as well see one real chair, as two or 
three complete sets of false ones,' said Tom, 



bringing out his head from under the bed- 
clothes. There it was, plainly discernible by the 
light of the fire, looking as provoking as ever. 

" Tom gazed at the chair ; and, suddenly, as 
he looked at it, a most extraordinary change 
seemed to come over it. The carving of the 
back gradually assumed the lineaments and ex- 
pression of an old, shrivelled, human face ; the 
damask cushion became an antique, flapped 
waistcoat ; the round knobs grew into a couple 
of feet, encased in red cloth slippers ; and the 
old chair looked like a very ugly old man, of the 
previous century, with his arms a-kimbo. Tom 
sat up in bed, and rubbed his eyes to dispel the 
illusion. No. The chair was an ugly old gen- 
tleman ; and what was more, he was winking at 
Tom Smart. 

" Tom was naturally a headlong, careless sort 
of dog, and he had had five tumblers of hot 
punch into the bargain ; so, although he was a 
little startled at first, he began to grow rather 
indignant when he saw the old gentleman wink- 
ing and leering at him with such an impudent 
air. At length he resolved that he wouldn't 
stand it ; and as the old face still kept winking 
away as fast as ever, Tom said, in a very angry 
tone : 

" ' What the devil are you winking at me for ?' 

" ' Because I like it, Tom Smart,' said the 
chair ; or the old gentleman, whichever you like 
to call him. He stopped winking though, when 
Tom spoke, and began grinning like a super- 
annuated monkey. 

" ' How do you know my name, old nut- 
cracker face ? ' inquired Tom Smart, rather stag- 
gered ; though he pretended to carry it off" so 
well. 

" * Come, come, Tom,' said the old gentleman, 
' that's not the way to address solid Spanish Ma- 
hogany. Dam'me, you couldn't treat me with 
less respect if I was veneered.' When the old 
gentleman said this, he looked so fierce that Tom 
began to grow frightened. 

H: H: 4: H: 4: 4: 

" ' I have been a great favorite among the wo- 
men in my time, Tom,' said the profligate old 
debauchee ; ' hundreds of fine women have sat 
in my lap for hours together. What do you 
think of that, you dog, eh ? ' The old gentleman 
was proceeding to recount some other exploits 
of his youth, when he was seized with such a 
violent fit of creaking that he was unable to pro- 
ceed. 

" ' Just serves you right, old boy,' thought 
Tom Smart ; but he didn't say anything. 

'* * Ah ! ' said the old fellow, ' I am a good 
deal troubled with this now. I am getting old, 
Tom, and have lost nearly all my rails. I have 
had an operation performed, too — a small piece 
let into my back — and I found it a severe trial, 
Tom.' 

'• ' I dare say you did, sir,* said Tom Smart. 

" ' However,' said the old gentleman, ' that's 
not the point. Tom ! I want you to marry the 
widow.' 

" ' Me, sir ! ' said Tom. 

" ' You,' said the old gentleman. 

" ' Bless your reverend locks,' said Tom— (he 
had a few scattered horsehairs left) — ' bless your 
reverend locks, she wouldn't have me.' And 
Tom sighed involuntarily as he thought of the 
bar. 



CHARACTERS AND 



61 



CHARACTERISTICS 



" ' You may say that, Tom,' replied the old 
fellow, with a very complicated wink. ' I am 
the last of my family, Tom,' said the old gentle- 
man, with a melancholy sigh. 

" * Was it a large one ? ' inquired Tom Smart. 

" ' There were twelve of us, Tom,' said the 
old gentleman ; * fine, straight-backed, hand- 
some fellows as you'd wish to see. None of 
your modern abortions — all with arms, and with 
a degree of polish, though I say it that should 
not, which would have done your heart good to 
behold.' 

"'And what's become of the others, sir?' 
asked Tom Smart. 

" The old gentleman applied his elbow to his 
eye as he replied, ' Gone, Tom, gone. We had 
hard service, Tom, and they hadn't all my con- 
stitution. They got rheumatic about the legs 
and arms, and went into kitchens and other hos- 
pitals ; and one of 'em, with long service and 
hard usage, positively lost his senses ; he got so 
crazy that he was obliged to be burnt. Shock- 
ing thing that, Tom.' 

" As the old gentleman solemnly uttered these 
words, his features grew less and less distinct, 
and his figure more shadowy. A film came over 
Tom Smart's eyes. The old man seemed gradu- 
ally blending into the chair, the damask waist- 
coat to resolve into a cushion, the red slippers 
to shrink into little red cloth bags. The light 
faded gently away, and Tom Smart fell back on 
his pillow, and dropped asleep." 

Pickwicky Chap, 14. 

CHARACTER— Simplicity of Capt. Cuttle. 

Unlike as they were externally — and there 
could scarcely be a more decided contrast than 
between Florence in her delicate youth and 
beauty, and Captain Cuttle with his nobby face, 
his great, broad, weather-beaten person, and his 
gruff voice — in simple innocence of the world's 
ways and the world's perplexities and dangers, 
they were nearly on a level. No child could 
have surpassed Captain Cuttle in inexperience 
of everything but wind and weather ; in sim- 
plicity, credulity, and generous trustfulness. 
Faith, hope, and charity, shared his whole na- 
ture among them. An odd sort of romance, per- 
fectly unimaginative, yet perfectly unreal, and 
subject to no considerations of worldly prudence 
or practicability, was the only partner they had 
in his character. As the Captain sat, and smoked, 
and looked at Florence, God knows what im- 
possible pictures, in which she was the principal 
figure, presented themselves to his mind. Equally 
vague and uncertain, though not so sanguine, 
were her own thoughts of the life before her ; 
and even as her tears made prismatic colors in the 
light she gazed at, so, through her new and heavy 
grief, she already saw a rainbow faintly shining 
in the far-off sky. A wandering princess and a 
good monster in a story-book might have sat by 
the fireside, and talked as Captain Cuttle and 
poor Florence thought — and not have looked very 
much unlike them. — Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap, 49. 

Captain Cuttle, in the exercise of that sur- 
prising talent for deep-laid and unfathomable 
scheming, with which (as is not unusual in men 
of transparent simplicity) he sincerely believed 
himself to be endowed by nature, had gone to 
Mr. Dombey's house on the eventful Sunday, 



winking all the way as a vent for his superfluous 
sagacity. — Dombey &" Son^ Chap. 17. 

CHARACTERS and CHARACTERISTICS. 

ALLEN, BEN— and Bob Sawyer.— Mr. Ben- 
jamin Allen was a coarse, stout, thick-set young 
man, with black hair cut rather short, and a 
white face cut rather long. He was embellished 
with spectacles, and wore a white neckerchief. 
Below his single-breasted black surtout, which 
was buttoned up to his chin, appeared the usual 
number of pepper-and-salt colored legs, termi- 
nating in a pair of imperfectly polished boots. 
Although his coat was short in the sleeves, it 
disclosed no vestige of a linen wristband ; and 
although there was quite enough of his face to 
admit of the encroachment of a shirt collar, it 
was not graced by the smallest approach to that 
appendage. He presented, altogether, rather a 
mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odor 
of full-flavored Cubas. 

Mr. Bob Sawyer, who was habited in a coarse 
blue coat, which, without being either a great- 
coat or a surtout, partook of the nature and 
qualities of both, had about him that sort of 
slovenly smartness, and swaggering gait, which 
is peculiar to young gentlemen who smoke in 
the streets by day, shout and scream in the same 
by night, call waiters by their Christian names, 
and do various other acts and deeds of an 
equally facetious description. He wore a pair 
of plaid trousers, and a large, rough, double- 
breasted waistcoat ; out of doors, he carried a 
thick stick with a big top. He eschewed gloves, 
and looked, upon the whole, something like a 
dissipated Robinson Crusoe. 

Pickwick, Chap. 30. 

BAGNET, Mr.— Mr. Bagnet is an ex-artil- 
leryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows, 
and whiskers like the fibres of a cocoanut, not a 
hair upon his head, and a torrid complexion. 
His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all 
unlike the tones of the instrument to which he 
is devoted. Indeed, there may be generally ob- 
served in him an unbending, unyielding, brass 
bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of 
the human orchestra. — Bleak House, Chap. 27. 

BANTAM, ANGELO CK/^^^.-A charming 
young man of not much more than fifty, dressed 
in a very bright blue coat with resplendent but- 
tons, black trousers, and the thinnest possible 
pair of highly-polished boots. A gold eye-glass 
was suspended from his neck by a short, broad, 
black ribbon ; a gold snuff-box was lightly 
clasped in his left hand ; gold rings innumerable 
glittered on his fingers ; and a large diamond 
pin set in gold glistened in his shirt-frill. He 
had a gold watch, and a gold curb-chain with 
large gold seals ; and he carried a pliant ebony 
cane with a heavy gold top. His linen was of 
the very whitest, finest, and stiffcst ; his wig of 
the glossiest, blackest, and curliest. His snuff 
was princes' mixture ; his scent botiqtiet du rot. 
His features were contracted into a perpetual 
smile : and his teeth were in such perfect order 
that it was difficult at a small distance to tell the 
real from the false. 

" Mr. rickwick," said Mr. Dowler ; " my 
friend, Angelo Cyrus Bantam, Esquire, M. C. 
Bantam, Mr. Pickwick. Know each other." 
Pickwick, Chap. 35. 



CHARACTERS AND 



62 



CHARACTERISTICS 



" 



BITZER. — Sissy, being at the corner of a row 
on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of 
a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner 
of a row on the other side, a few rows in ad- 
vance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl 
was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she 
seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous 
color from the sun, when it shone upon her, the 
boy was so light-eyed and light-haired, that the 
selfsame rays appeared to draw out of him what 
little color he ever possessed. His cold eyes 
would hardly have been eyes, but for the short 
ends of lashes which, by bringing them into im- 
mediate contrast with something paler than 
themselves, expressed their form. His short- 
cropped hair might have been a mere continu- 
ation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and 
face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient 
in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if 
he were cut, he would bleed white. 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 2. 

B LIMBER, BocfoK— The Doctor was a port- 
ly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at his 
knees, and stockings below them. He had a 
bald head, highly polished ; a deep voice ; and 
a chin so very double, that it was a wonder how 
he ever managed to shave into the creases. He 
had likewise a pair of little eyes that were al- 
ways half shut up, and a mouth that was al- 
ways half expanded into a grin, as if he had, 
that moment, posed a boy, and were waiting to 
convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, that 
when the Doctor put his right hand into the 
breast of his coat, and with his other hand be- 
hind him, and a scarcely perceptible wag of 
his head, made the commonest observation to a 
nervous stranger, it was like a sentiment from 
the sphinx, and settled his business. 

Dombey &^ Son, Chap. ii. 

BO YTHORN. — " You know my old opinion 
of him," said Mr. Skimpole, lightly appealing 
to us. " An amiable bull, who is determined to 
make every color scarlet ! " 

Bleak House, Chap. 43. 

BO UNDERB V, Mr.— A bully of humility.— 
Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Grad- 
grind's bosom friend, as a man perfectly devoid 
of sentiment can approach that spiritual rela- 
tionship towards another man perfectly devoid 
of sentiment. So near was Mr. Bounderby — or 
if the reader should prefer it, so far off. 

He was a rich man : banker, merchant, manu- 
facturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a 
stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out 
of a coarse material, which seemed to have been 
stretched to make so much of him. A man 
with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled 
veins in liis temples, and such a strained skin to 
his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and 
lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading 
appearance on him of being inflated like a bal- 
loon, and ready to start. A man who could 
never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made 
man. A man who was always proclaiming, 
through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice 
of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A 
man who was the Bully of humility. 

A year or two younger than his eminently 

Eractical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older ; 
is seven or eight and forty might have had the 



seven or eight added to it again, without sur- 
prising anybody. He had not much hair. One 
might have fancied he had talked it off; and 
that what was left, all standing up in disorder, 
was in that condition from being constantly 
blown about by his windy boastfulness. 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 4. 

BRASS, SAMPSON {the Lawyer).— The le- 
gal gentleman, whose melodious name was Brass, 
might have called it comfort also but for two 
drawbacks ; one was^ that he could by no exer- 
tion sit easy in his chair, the seat of which was 
very hard, angular, slippery, and sloping ; the 
other, that tobacco-smoke always caused him 
great internal discomposure and annoyance. But 
as he was quite a creature of Mr. Quilp's, and 
had a thousand reasons for conciliating his good 
opinion, he tried to smile, and nodded his ac- 
quiescence with the best grace he could assume. 

This Brass was an attorney of no very good 
repute, from Bevis Marks in the city of London ; 
he was a tall, meagre man, with a nose like a 
wen, a protruding forehead, retreating eyes, and 
hair of a deep red. He wore a long black sur- 
tout reaching nearly to his ankles, short black 
trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a 
bluish gray. He had a cringing manner, but a 
very harsh voice ; and his blandest smiles were 
so extremely forbidding that to have had his 
company under the least repulsive circumstan- 
ces, one would have wished him to be out of 
temper that he might only scowl. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. II. 

BUNSBY. — Immediately there appeared, 
coming slowly up above the bulk-head of the 
cabin, another bulk-head — human, and very 
large — with one stationary eye in the mahogany 
face, and one revolving one, on the principle of 
some light-houses. This head was decorated 
with shaggy hair, like oakum, which had no gov- 
erning inclination towards the north, east, west, 
or south, but inclined to all four quarters of the 
compass, and to every point upon it. The head 
was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and by 
a shirt-collar and neckerchief, and by a dread- 
nought pilot-coat, and by a pair of dreadnought 
pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was so very 
broad and high, that it became a succedaneum 
for a waistcoat ; being ornamented near the 
wearer's breast-bone with some massive wooden 
buttons, like backgammon men. As the lower 
portions of these pantaloons became revealed, 
Bunsby stood confessed ; his hands in their 
pockets, which were of vast size ; and his gaze 
directed, not to Captain Cuttle or the ladies, but 
the masthead. 

The profound appearance of this philosopher, 
who was bulky and strong, and on whose ex- 
tremely red face an expression of taciturnity sat 
enthroned, not inconsistent with his character, in 
which that quality was proudly conspicuous, al- 
most daunted Captain Cuttle, though on familiar 
terms with him. Whispering to Florence that 
Bunsby had never in his life expressed surprise, 
and was considered not to know what it meant, 
the Captain watched him as he eyed his mast- 
head, and afterwards swept the horizon ; and 
when the reVolving eye seemed to be coming 
round in his direction, said : 

" Bunsby, my lad, how fares it ? " 

A deep, gruff, husky utterance, which seemed 




Solemn Reference is made to Mr. Bunsby. 



62 



CHARACTERS AND 



63 



CHARACTERISTICS 



to have no connection with Bunsby, and certain- 
ly had not the least effect upon his face, replied, 
" Aye, aye, shipmet, how goes it ? " At the same 
time Bunsby's right hand and arm, emerging 
from a pocket, shook the Captain's, and went 
back again. 

" Bunsby," said the Captain, striking home at 
once, " here you are ; a man of mind, and a man 
as can give an opinion. Here's a young lady as 
wants to take that opinion, in regard to my 
friend Wal'r ; likewise my t'other friend, Sol 
Gills, which is a character for you to come with- 
in hail of, being a man of science, which is the 
mother of inwention, and knows no law. Buns- 
by, will you wear, to oblige me, and come along 
with us ? " 

The great commander, who seemed by the ex- 
pression of his visage to be always on the look- 
out for something in the extremest distance, and 
to have no ocular knowledge of anything within 
ten miles, made no reply whatever. 

Dombey ^ Son^ Chap. 23. 

CAL TON, Mr., a superannuated beau. — Mr. 
Calton was a superannuated beau — an old boy. 
He used to say of himself that although his fea- 
tures were not regularly handsome, they were 
striking. They certainly were. It was impos- 
sible to look at his face without being reminded 
of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion, half- 
monkey ; and the comparison might be extended 
to his whole character and conversation. He 
had stood still, while everything else had been 
moving. He never originated a conversation, 
or started an idea ; but if any commonplace 
topic were broached, or, to pursue the compari- 
son, if anybody lifted him up, he would hammer 
away with surprising rapidity. He had the tic- 
doloreux occasionally, and then he might be said 
to be muffled, because he did not make quite as 
much noise as at other times, when he would go 
on prosing, rat-tat-tat, the same thing over and 
over again. 

Tales. — The Boarding-House, Chap. r. 

CARKER, SENIOR.— M.r. Carker was a gen- 
tleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid 
complexion, and with two unbroken rows of glis- 
tening teeth, whose regularity and whiteness 
were quite distressing. It was impossible to es- 
cape the observation of them, for he showed 
them whenever he spoke ; and bore so wide a 
smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, 
very rarely, indeed, extending beyond his mouth), 
that there was something in it like the snarl of a 
cat. He affected a stiff white cravat, after the 
example of his principal, and was always; ^lose.y 
buttoned up and lightly dressed. 

« 'X- He -x- « 4e 

The stiffness and nicety of Mr. Carker's dress, 
and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural 
to him or imitated from a pattern not far off, 
gave great additional effect to his humility. He 
seemed a man who would contend against the 
power that vanquished him, if he could, but who 
was utterly borne down by tte greatness and su- 
periority of Mr. Dombey. 

Dombey (5r» Son, Chap. 76. 
« * « * « « 

Although it is not among the instincts, wild or 
domestic, of the cat tribe, to play at cards, feline 
from sole to crown was Mr. Carker the Manager, 
as he basked in the strip of summer light and 



warmth that shone upon his table and the 
ground as if they were a crooked dial-plate, and 
himself the only figure on it. With hair and 
whiskers deficient in color at all times, but fee- 
bler than common in the rich sunshine, and 
more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat ; 
with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened ; 
with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, 
which made him pause sometimes and watch the 
falling motes of dust, and rub them off his smooth 
white hand or glossy linen ; Mr. Carker the 
Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of 
foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of 
heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfast- 
ness and patience at his work, as if he were 
waiting at a mouse's hole. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 22. 

The Captain said " Good day ! " and walked 
out and shut the door ; leaving Mr. Carker still 
reclining against the chimney-piece. In whose 
sly look and watchful manner ; in whose false 
mouth, stretched but not laughing ; in whose 
spotless cravat and very whiskers ; even in whose 
silent passing of his soft hand over his white 
linen and his smooth face, there was something 
desperately cat-like. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 17. 

CHEER YBLE BRO THERS— The.—B.^ 
was a sturdy old fellow in a broad-skirted blue 
coat, made pretty large, to fit easily, and with no 
particular waist ; his bulky legs clothed in drab 
breeches and high gaiters, and his head protected 
by a low-crowned broad-brimmed white hat, such 
as a wealthy grazier might wear. He wore his 
coat buttoned ; and his dimpled double-chin 
rested in the folds of a white neckerchief — not 
one of your stiff-starched apoplectic cravats, but 
a good, easy, old-fashioned white neck-cloth that 
a man might go to bed in and be none the worse 
for. But what principally attracted the attention 
of Nicholas, was the old gentleman's eye — never 
was such a clear, twinkling, honest, merry, happy 
eye, as that. And there he stood, looking a lit- 
tle upward, with one hand thrust into the breast 
of his coat, and the other playing with his old- 
fashioned gold watch-chain ; his head thrown a 
little on one side, and his hat a little more on 
one side than his head (but that was evidently 
accident ; not his ordinary way of wearing it), 
with such a pleasant smile playing about his 
mouth, and such a comical expression of mingled 
slyness, simplicity, kind-heartedness, and good- 
humor, lighting up his jolly old face, that Nicho- 
las would have been content to have stood there, 
and looked at him until evening, and to have for- 
gotten, meanwhile, that there was such a thing 
as a soured mind or a crabbed countenance to 
be met with in the whole wide world. 

****** 

Still, the old gentleman stood there, glancing 
from placard to placard, and Nicholas could not 
forbear raising his eyes to his face again. Grafted 
upon the quaintness and oddity of his appear- 
ance, was something so indescribably engaging, 
and bespeaking so much worth, and there were 
so many little lights hovering al)out the corners 
of his mouth and eyes, that it was not a mere 
amusement, but a positive pleasure and delight 

to look at him. 

****** 

Both the brothers, it may be here remarked 



CHARACTERS AND 



64 



CHARACTERISTICS 



had a very emphatic and earnest delivery ; both 
had lost nearly the same teeth, which imparted 
the same peculiarity to their speech ; and both 
spoke as if, besides possessing the utmost seren- 
ity of mind that the kindliest and most unsus- 
pecting nature could bestow, they had, in col- 
lecting the plums from Fortune's choicest pud- 
ding, retained a few for present use, and kept 
them in their mouths, 

AUchoIas Nickkhy, Chap. 35. 

CHI VERY, yOI/A'.—Yonng John issued 
forth on his usual Sunday errand ; not empty- 
handed, but with his ofl'ering of cigars. He 
was neatly attired in a plum-colored coat, with 
as large a collar of black velvet as his fig- 
ure could carry ; a silken waistcoat, bedecked 
with golden sprigs ; a chaste neckerchief much 
in vogue at that day, representing a preserve of 
lilac pheasants on a buff ground ; pantaloons so 
highly decorated with side stripes, that each leg 
was a three-stringed lute ; and a hat of state, 
very high and hard. When the prudent Mrs. 
Chivery perceived that in addition to these 
adornments her John carried a pair of white kid 
gloves, and a cane like a little finger-post, sur- 
mounted by an ivory hand marshalling him the 
way that he should go ; and when she saw him, 
in his heavy marching order, turning the corner 
to the right, she remarked to Mr. Chivery, who 
was at home at the time, that she thought she 
knew which way the wind blew. 

Lt'ff/e Dorrit, Book /., Chap, 18. 

CHOLLOP, Mr.— An American.— My. Chol- 
lop was, of course, one of the most remarkable 
men in the country : but he really was a notorious 
person besides. He was usually described by 
his friends, in the South and West, as " a splendid 
sample of our na-tive raw material, sir." and 
was much esteemed for his devotion to rational 
Liberty ; for the better propagation whereof he 
usually carried a brace of revolving pistols in his 
coat pocket, with seven barrels a-piece. He also 
carried, amongst other trinkets, a sword-stick 
which he called his "Tickler;" and a great 
knife, which (for he was a man of a pleasant 
turn of humor) he called " Ripper," in allusion 
to Its usefulness as a means of ventilating the 
stomach of any adversary in a close contest! He 
had used these weapons with distinguished eflfect 
m several instances, all duly chronicled in the 
newspapers ; and was greatly beloved for the 
gallant manner in which he had "jobbed out" 
the eye of one gentleman, as he was in the act 
of knocking at his own street-door. 

Mr. Chollop was a man of a roving disposition ; 
and in any less advanced community, micrht 
have been mistaken for a violent vagabond. But 
his fine qualities being perfectly understood and 
appreciated in those regions where his lot was 
cast, and where he had many kindred spirits to 
consort with, he may be regarded as having 
been born under a fortunate star, which is not 
always the case with a man so much before the 
age in which he lives. Preferring, with a view 
to the gratification of his tickling and ripping 
fancies, to dwell upon the outskirts of societ)% 
and in the more remote towns and cities, he was 
in the habit of emigrating from place to place, 
and establishing in each some business— usually 
a newspaper— which he presently sold : for the 
most Dart closing the bargain by challenging 



stabbing, pistolling, or gouging, the new editor, 
before he had quite taken possession of the prop- 
erty. 

He had come to Eden on a speculation of this 
kind, but had abandoned it, and was about to 
leave. He always introduced himself to strangers 
as a worshipper of Freedom ; was the consistent 
advocate of Lynch law, and slavery ; and inva- 
riably recommended, both in print and speech, 
the " tarring and feathering " of any unpopular 
person who difl'ered from himself. He called 
this "planting the standard of civilization in the 
wilder gardens of My country." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 33. 

" CHUFFE F," the Old Clerk.— ^^ I've lost my 
glasses, Jonas," said old Anthony. 

"Sit down without your glasses, can't you?" 
returned his son. " You don't eat or drink out 
of 'em, I think ; and where's that sleepy-headed 
old Chuffey got to! Now, stupid. Oh! you 
know your name, do you ? " 

It would seem that he didn't, for he didn't 
come until the father called. As he spoke, the 
door of a small glass ofiice, which was parti- 
tioned off from the rest of the room, was slowly 
opened, and a little blear-eyed, weazen-faced, 
ancient man came creeping out. He was of a 
remote fashion, and dusty, like the rest of the 
furniture ; he was dressed in a decayed suit of 
black ; with breeches garnished at the knees 
with nisty wisps of ribbon, the very paupers of 
shoe-strings ; on the lower portion of his spindle 
legs were dingy worsted stockings of the same 
color. He looked as if he had been put away 
and forgotten half a century before, and some- 
body had just found him in a lumber closet. 

Such as he was, he came slowly creeping on 
towards the table, until at last he crept into the 
vacant chair, from which, as his dim faculties be- 
came conscious of the presence of strangers, and 
those strangers ladies, he rose again, apparently 
intending to make a bow. But he sat down once 
more, without having made it, and breathing on 
his shrivelled hands to warm them, remained 
with his poor blue nose immovable about his 
plate, looking at nothing, with eyes that saw 
nothing, and a face that meant nothing. Take 
him in that state, and he was an embodiment of 
nothing. Nothing else. 

Maiiin Chazzlewit, Chap. n. 



CREAKLE, Mr.—Mx. Creakle's face was 
fieiy, and his eyes were small, and deep in his 
head ; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little 
nose, and a large chin. He was bald on the top 
of his head ; and had some thin wet-looking 
hair that was just turning grav, brushed across 
each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on 
his forehead. But the circumstance about him 
which impressed me most, was that he had no 
voice, but spoke in a whisper. The exertion 
this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in 
that feeble way, made his angry face so much 
more angry, and his thick veins so much thicker, 
when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on look- 
ing back, at this peculiaritv striking me as his 
chief onQ.—Daznd Copperjicld, Chap. 6. 

CC/JP/O^/^J/.^A'— ^.— Thc/«wasamanon 
board this boat, with a light, fresh-colored face, 
and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was 
the most inquisitive fellow that can possibly be 



I 



CHARACTERS AND 



65 



CHARACTERISTICS 



imagined. He never spoke otherwise than in- 
terrogatively. He v^'as an embodied inquiry. 
Sitting down or standing up, still or moving, 
walking the deck or taking his meals, there he 
was, with a great note of interrogation in each 
eye, two in his cocked ears, two more in his 
turned-up nose and chin, at least half a dozen 
more about the corners of his mouth, and the 
largest one of all in his hair, which was brushed 
pertly off his forehead in a flaxen clump. Every 
button in his clothes said, "Eh? What's that? 
Did you speak ? Say that again, will you ?" He 
was always wide awake, like the enchanted bride 
who drove her husband frantic ; always restless, 
always thirsting for answers, perpetually seeking 
and never finding. There never was such a 
curious man. — American Notes, Chap. lo. 

CUTTLE, CAPTAIN.— Bu\. an addition to 
the little party now made its appearance, in the 
shape of a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with 
1 hook instead of a hand attached to his right 
wrist ; very bushy black eyebrows ; and a thick 
stick in his left hand covered all over (like his 
nose) with knobs. He wore a loose black silk 
handkerchief round his neck, and such a very 
large, coarse shirt-collar, that it looked like a 
small sail. He was evidently the person for 
whom the spare wine-glass was intended, and 
evidently knew it ; for having taken off his rough 
outer coat, and hung up, on a particular peg be- 
hind the door, such a hard glazed hat as a sym- 
pathetic person's head might ache at the sight 
of, and which left a red rim round his own fore- 
head as if he had been wearing a tight basin, he 
brought a chair to where the clean glass was, 
and sat himself down behind it. He was usu- 
ally addressed as Captain, this visitor ; and had 
been a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateer's-man, 
or all three, perhaps ; and was a very salt-looking 
man indeed. 

His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, 
brightened as he shook hands with uncle and 
nephew ; but he seemed to be of a laconic dis- 
position, and merely said : 

'• How goes it?" 

"All well," said Mr. Gills, pushing the bottle 
towards him. 

He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt 
it, said with extraordinary expression : 

" The?" 

" The," returned the instrument maker. 

Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, 
and seemed to think they were making holiday 
indeed. 

" Wal'r ! " he said, arranging his hair (which 
was thin) with his hook, and then pointing it at 
the instrument-maker, " Look at him ! Love ! 
Honor ! And Obey ! Overhaul your catechism 
till you find that passage, and when found turn 
the leaf down. Success, my boy ! " 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 4. 

DENNIS, The Executioner. — The man who 
now confronted Gashford was a squat, thick-set 
personage, with a low, retreating forehead, a 
coarse shock head of hair, and eyes so small and 
near together, that his broken nose alone seemed 
to prevent their meeting and fusing into one of 
the usual size, A dingy handkerchief, twisted 
like a cord about his neck, left its great veins 
exposed to view, and they were swollen and 
starting, as though with gulping down strong 



passions, malice, and ill-will. His dress wafi of 
threadbare velveteen — a faded, rusty, whitened 
black, like the ashes of a pipe or a coal-fire after 
a day's extinction ; discolored with the soils of 
many a stale debauch, and reeking yet with pot- 
house odors. In lieu of buckles at his knees, he 
wore unequal loops of packthread : and in his 
grimy hands he held a knotted stick, the knob of 
which was carved into a rough likeness of his 
own vile face. Such was the visitor who doffed 
his three-cornered hat in Gashford's presence, 
and waited, leering, for his notice. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 37. 

DISMAL JEMMY.— It was a care-worn 
looking man, whose sallow face, and deeply- 
sunken eyes, were rendered still more striking 
than nature had made them, by the straight 
black hair which hung in matted disorder half- 
way down his face. His eyes were almost unnat- 
urally bright and piercing ; his cheek-bones were 
high and prominent ; and his jaws were so long 
and lank, that an observer would have supposed 
that he was drawing the flesh of his face in, for 
a moment, by some contraction of the muscles, 
if his half-opened mouth and immovable ex- 
pression had not announced that it was his or- 
dinary appearance. Round his neck he wore a 
green shawl, with the large ends straggling over 
his chest, and making their appearance occasion- 
ally beneath the worn button-holes of his old 
waistcoat. His upper garment was a long black 
surtout ; and below it he wore wide drab trou- 
sers, and large boots, running rapidly to seed. 
Pickwick, Chap. 3. 

DINGWALL, CORNELIUS BROOK— 
an official. — Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., 
M.P., was very haughty, solemn, and portentous. 
He had, naturally, a somewhat spasmodic ex- 
pression of countenance, which was not rendered 
the less remarkable by his wearing an extremely 
stiff cravat. He was wonderfully proud of the 
M.P. attached to his name, and never lost an 
opportunity of reminding people of his dignity. 
He had a great idea of his own abilities, which 
must have been a great comfort to him, as no 
one else had ; and in diplomacy, on a small 
scale, in his own family arrangements, he con- 
sidered himself unrivalled. He was a county 
magistrate, and discharged the duties of his 
station with all due justice and impartiality ; 
frequently committing poachers, and occasion- 
ally committing himself. Miss Brook Dingwall 
was one of that numerous class of young ladies, 
who, like adverbs, may be known by their an- 
swering to a commonplace question, and doing 
nothing else. — Tales, Chap. 3. 

LITTLE DOR PIT'S UNCLE.— yi^ stoop- 
ed a good deal, and plodded along in a slow, 
preoccupied manner, which made the bustling 
London thoroughfares no very safe resort for 
him. He was dirtily and meanly dressed, in a 
threadbare coat, once blue, reaching to his an- 
kles and buttoned to his chin, where it vanishef*. 
in a pale ghost of a velvet collar. A piece <i 
red cloth with which that phantom had b'.eri 
stiffened in its lifetime was now laid bare and 
poked itself up, at the back of the old .nan's 
neck, into a confusion of gray hair and rusty 
stock and buckle which altogether nearly poked 
his hat off. A greasy hat it was and a napless : 



CHARACTERS AND 



66 



CHARACTERISTICS 



impending over his eyes, cracked and crumpled 
at the brim, and with a wisp of pocket handker- 
chief dangling out below it. His trousers were 
so long and loose, and his shoes so clumsy and 
large, that he shuffled like an elephant : though 
how much of this was gait, and how much trail- 
ing cloth and leather, no one could have told. 
Under one arm he carried a limp and worn-out 
case, containing some wind-instrument ; in the 
same hand he had a pennyworth of snuff in a 
little packet of whitey-brown paper, from which 
he slowly comforted his poor old blue nose with a 
lengthened-out pinch, as Arthur Clennam looked 
at \{\m.— Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 8. 

There was a ruined uncle in the family group 
— ruined by his brother, the Father of the 
Marshalsea, and knowing no more how than 
his miner did, but accepting the fact as an 
inevitable certainty — on whom her protection 
devolved. Naturally a retired and simple man, 
he had shown no particular sense of being ruined, 
at the time when that calamity fell upon him, 
further than that he left off washing himself when 
the shock was announced, and never took to that 
luxury any more. He had been a very indiffer- 
ent musical amateur in his better days ; and 
when he fell with his brother, resorted for sup- 
port to playing a clarionet as dirty as himself in 
a small Theatre Orchestra. It was the theatre 
in which his niece became a dancer ; he had been 
a fixture there a long time when she took her 
poor station in it ; and he accepted the task of 
serving as her escort and guardian, just as he 
would have accepted an illness, a legacy, a feast, 
starvation — anything but soap. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 7. 

DO YCE, the Inventor. — He was not much to 
look at, either in point of size or in point of 
dress ; being merely a short, square, practical- 
looking man, whose hair had turned gray, and 
in whose face and forehead there were deep 
lines of cogitation, which looked as though they 
were carved in hard wood. He was dressed in 
decent black, a little rusty, and had the appear- 
ance of a sagacious master in some handicraft. 
He had a spectacle-case in his hand; which he 
turned over and over while he was thus in ques- 
tion, with a certain free use of the thumb that 
is never seen but in a hand accustomed to tools, 
****** 

" This Doyce," said Mr. Meagles, " is a smith 
and engineer. He is not in a large way, but he 
is well known as a very ingenious man. A 
dozen years ago, he perfected an invention (in- 
volving a very curious secret process) of great 
importance to his country and his fellow-crea- 
tures. I won't say how much money it cost him, 
or how many years of his life he had been about 
it, but he brought it to perfection a dozen years 
ago. Wasn't it a dozen ? " said Mr. Meagles, 
addressing Doyce. " He is the most exasper- 
ating man in the world ; he never complains ! " 
"Yes. Rather better than twelve years ago." 
"Rather better?" said Mr. Meagles, "you 
mean rather worse. Well, Mr. Clennam. He 
addresses himself to the Government. The 
moment he addresses himself to the Govern- 
ment, he becomes a public offender ! Sir," said 
Mr. Meagles, in danger of making himself ex- 
cessively hot again, " he ceases to be an innocent 
citizen, and becomes a culprit. He is treated. 



from that instant, as a man who has. done some 
infernal action. He is a man to be shirked, put 
off, brow-beaten, sneered at, handed over by this 
highly-connected young or old gentleman to that 
highly-connected young or old gentleman, ana 
dodged back again ; he is a man with no rights 
in his own time, or his own property ; a mere 
outlaw, whom it is justifiable to get rid of any- 
how ; a man to be worn out by all possible 
means." 

It was not so difficult to believe, after the morn- 
ing's experience, as Mr. Meagles supposed. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10. 

DRUMMLE, BENTLE K— Bentley Brum- 
mie, who was so sulky a fellow that he even 
took up a book as if its writer had done him an 
injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more 
agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, 
and comprehension — in the sluggish complexion 
of his face, and in the large awkward tongue ^ 
that seemed to loll about in his mouth as he 
himself lolled about in a room — he was idle, 
proud, niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He 
came of rich people down in Somersetshire, who 
had nursed this combination of qualities until 
they made the discovery that it was just of age 
and a blockhead. — Great Expectations^ Chap. 25. 

Drummle, an old-looking young man of a 
heavy order of architecture, was whistling. 
Startop, younger in years and appearance, was 
reading and holding his head, as if he thought 
himself in danger of exploding it with too 
strong a charge of knowledge. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 23. 



D URDLES. — In a suit of coarse flannel, with 
horn buttons, a yellow neckerchief with draggled 
ends, an old hat more russet-colored than black, 
and laced boots of the hue of his stony calling, 
Durdles leads a hazy, gypsy sort of life, carry- 
ing his dinner about with him in a small bundle, 
and sitting on all manner of tombstones to dine. 
This dinner of Durdles's has become quite a 
Cloisterham institution ; not only because of his 
never appearing in public without it, but be- 
cause of its having been, on certain renowned 
occasions, taken into custody along with Dur- 
dles (as drunk and incapable), and exhibited be- 
fore the Bench of Justices at the Town Hall. 
These occasions, however, have been few and 
far apart, Durdles being as seldom drunk as 
sober. For the rest, he is an old bachelor, and 
he lives in a little antiquated hole of a house 
that was never finished, supposed to be built, so 
far, of stones stolen from the city wall. To this 
abode there is an approach, ankle-deep in stone- 
chips, resembling a petrified grove of tombstones, 
urns, draperies, and broken columns, in all 
stages of sculpture. Herein, two journeymen 
incessantly chip, while other two journeymen 
who face each other, incessantly saw stone, dip 
ping as regularly in and out of their sheltering 
sentry-boxes, as if they were mechanical figures 
emblematical of Time and Death. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 4. 

FLAM WELL, Mr. [a Social Pretender).^ 
Mr. Flamwell was one of those gentlemen of 
remarkably extensive information whom one oc- 
casionally meets in society, who pretend to 
know everybody, but in reality know nobody, 



I 



CHARACTERS AND 



67 



CHARACTERISTICS 



At Malderton's, where any stories about great 
people were received with a greedy ear, he was 
an especial favorite ; and, knowing the kind of 
people he had to deal with, he carried his pas- 
sion of claiming acquaintance with everybody, 
to the most immoderate length. Pie had rather 
a singular way of telling his greatest lies in a 
parenthesis, and with an air of self-denial, as if 
he feared being thought egotistical. 

Tales, Chap. 5. 

FLINTWITCH, JEREMIAH.— Wi% neck 
was so twisted, that the knotted ends of his 
white cravat usually dangled under one ear ; his 
natural acerbity and energy, always contending 
with a second nature of habitual repression, gave 
his features a swollen and suffused look ; and al- 
together, he had a weird appearance of having 
hanged himself at one time or other, and of hav- 
ing gone about ever since, halter and all, exactly 
as some timely hand had cut him down, 

* * 4( 4« 4« 4: 

His head was awry, and he had a one-sided, 
crab-like way with him, as if his foundations 
had yielded at about the same time with those 
of the house, and he ought to have been propped 
up in a simitar manner. 

Liitle Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 3. 

FOGG, Mr. (Lawyer).— " Take a seat, sir," 
said Fogg ; " there is the paper, sir ; my partner 
will be here directly, and we can converse about 
this matter, sir." 

Mr. Pickwick took a seat and the paper, but, 
instead of reading the latter, peeped over the top 
of it, and took a survey of the man of business, 
who was an elderly, pimply-faced, vegetable-diet 
sort of man, in a black coat, dark mixture trou- 
sers, and small black gaiters ; a kind of being 
who seemed to be an essential part of the desk 
at which he was writing, and to have as much 
thought or sentiment. — Pickimck, Chap. 20. 

GARGER V, yO^.— Presently I heard Joe 
on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his 
clumsy manner of coming up-stairs — his state 
boots being always too big for him — and by the 
time it took him to read the names on the other 
floors in the course of his ascent. When at last 
he stopped outside our door, I could hear his 
finger tracing over the painted letters of my 
name, and I afterward distinctly heard him 
breathing in at the keyhole. Finally, he gave a 
faint single rap, and Pepper — such was the com- 
promising name of the avenging boy — announced 
" Mr. Gargery ! " I thought he never would 
have done wiping his feet, and that I must have 
gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he 
came in. 

" Joe, how are you, Joe ? " 

" Pip, how AIR you, Pip ? " 

With his good honest face all glowing and 
shining, and his hat put down on the floor be- 
tween us, he caught both my hands and worked 
them straight up and down, as if I had been the 
last-patented Pump. 

" I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your 
hat." 

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, 
like a bird's-nest with eggs in it, wouldn't hear 
of parting with that piece of property, and per- 
sisted in standing talking over it in a most un- 
comfortable way. 



" Which you have that growed," said Joe 
" and that swelled, and that gentlefolked ;" Joe 
considered a little before he discovered this 
word ; " as to be sure you are a honor to your 
king and country." 

" And you, Joe, look wonderfully well." 
" Thank God," said Joe, " I'm ekerval to most. 
And your sister, she's no worse than she were. 
And Biddy, she's ever right and ready. And all 
friends is no backerder, if not no forarder." 

Great Expectations, Chap. 27. 

GASHFORD. — Gashford, the secretary, was 
taller, angularly made, high-shouldered, bony, 
and ungraceful. His dress, in imitation of 
his superior, was demure and staid in the ex- 
treme ; his manner, formal and constrained. 
This gentleman had an overhanging brow, great 
hands and feet and ears, and a pair of eyes that 
seemed to have made an unnatural retreat into 
his head, and to have dug themselves a cave to 
hide in. His manner was smooth and humble, 
but very sly and slinking. He wore the aspect 
of a man who was always lying in wait for 
something that wouldn't come to pass ; but he 
looked patient — very patient — and fawned like 
a spaniel dog. Even now, while he warmed 
and rubbed his hands before the blaze, he had 
the air of one who only presumed to enjoy it in 
his degree as a commoner ; and though he knew 
his lord was not regarding him, he looked into 
his face from time to time, and with a meek and 
deferential manner, smiled as if for practice. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 35. 

There was a remarkable contrast between this 
man's occupation at the moment, and the expres- 
sion of his countenance, which was singularly 
repulsive and malicious. His beetling brow al- 
most obscured his eyes ; his lip was curled con- 
temptuously ; his very shoulders seemed to sneer 
in stealthy whisperings with his great flapped 
ears, — Barnaby Rtidgc, Chap. 36. 

GEORGE, Mr., the Trooper.— '' Andi how 
does the world use you, Mr. George ? " Grand- 
father Smallweed inquires, slowly rubbing his 
hands. 

" Pretty much as usual. Like a football." 

He is a swarthy brown man of fifty ; well- 
made, and good-looking ; with crisp dark hair, 
bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and 
powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have 
evidently been used to a pretty rough life. What 
is curious about him is, that he sits forward on 
his chair as if he were, from long habit, allow- 
ing space for some dress or accoutrements that 
he has altogether laid aside. His step, too, is 
measured and heavy, and would go well with 
a weighty clash and jingle of spurs. He is 
close-shaved now, but his mouth is set as if his 
upper lip had been for years familiar with a great 
moustache ; and his manner of occasionally lay- 
ing the open palm of his broad brown hand 
upon it, is to the same effect. Altogether, one 
might guess Mr. George to have been a trooper 
once upon a time, 

A special contrast Mr. George makes to the 
Smallweed family. Trooper was never yet bil- 
leted upon a household more unlike him. It is 
a broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed 
figure, and their stunted forms ; his large man- 
ner, filling any amount of room, and their little 
narrow pinched ways ; his sounding voice, and 



CHARACTERS AND 



CHARACTERISTICS 



their sharp spare tones ; are in the strongest and 
the strangest opposition. As he sits in the mid- 
dle of the grim parlor, leaning a little forward, 
with his hands upon his thighs and his elbows 
squared, he looks as though, if he remained 
there long, he would absorb into himself the 
whole family and the whole four-roomed house, 
extra little back-kitchen and all. 

Bleak House, Chap. 21. 

GORDON, LOUD.— The lord, the great per- 
sonage, who did the Maypole so much honor, 
was about the middle height, of a slender make, 
and sallow complexion, with an aquiline nose, 
and long hair of a reddish brown, combed per- 
fectly straight and smooth about his ears, and 
slightly powdered, but without the faintest ves- 
tige of a curl. He was attired, under his great- 
coat, in a full suit of black, quite free from any 
ornament, and of the most precise and sober cut. 
The gravity of his dress, together with a cer- 
tain lankness of cheek and stiffness of deport- 
ment, added nearly ten years to his age, but his 
figure was that of one not yet past thirty. As 
he stood musing in the red glow of the fire, it 
was striking to observe his very bright large eye, 
which betrayed a restlessness of thought and 
purpose, singularly at variance with the studied 
composure and sobriety of his mien, and with 
his quaint and sad apparel. It had nothing 
harsh or cruel in its expression ; neither had his 
face, which was thin and mild, and wore an air 
of melancholy ; but it was suggestive of an in- 
definable uneasiness, which infected those who 
looked upon him, and filled them with a kind 
of pity for the man ; though why it did so, they 
would have had some trouble to explain. 

Barnaby Rudge, CJiap. 35. 

GREWGIOUS, Mr.-^Mv. Grewgious had 
been well selected for his trust, as a man of in- 
corruptible integrity, but certainly for no other 
appropriate quality discernible on the surface. 
He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been 
put into a grinding-mill, looked as if he would 
have ground immediately into high-dried snuff". 
He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in color and 
consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tip- 
pet ; it was so unlike hair, that it must have been 
a wig, but for the stupendous improbability of 
anybody's voluntarily sporting such a head. The 
little play of feature that his face presented was 
cut deep into it, in a few hard curves that made 
it more like work ; and he had certain notches 
in his forehead, which looked as though Nature 
had been about to touch them into sensibility or re- 
finement when she had impatiently thrown away 
the chisel, and said, " I really cannot be wor- 
ried to finish off this man ; let him go as he is." 

With too great length of throat at his upper 
end, and too much ankle-bone and heel at his 
lower ; with an awkward and hesitating man- 
ner ; with a shambling walk, and with what is 
called a near sight — which perhaps prevented 
his observing how much white cotton stocking 
he displayed to the public eye, in contrast with 
his black suit, — Mr. Grewgious still had some 
strange capacity in him of making on the whole 
an agreeable impression. 

Edvnn Drood, Chap, g. 

GRIDE, ARTHUR {the Usurer).— The per- 
son who made this reply was a little old man, 



of about seventy or seventy-five years of age, of 
a very lean figure, much bent, and slightly twist- 
ed. He wore a gray coat with a very narrow 
collar, an old-fashioned waistcoat of ribbed black 
silk, and such scanty trousers as displayed his 
shrunken spindle-shanks in their full ugliness. 
The only articles of display or ornament in his 
dress, were a steel watch-chain to which were 
attached some large gold seals ; and a black 
ribbon into which, in compliance with an old 
fashion scarcely ever observed in these days, his 
gray hair was gathered behind. His nose and 
chin were sharp and prominent, his jaws had 
fallen inwards from loss of teeth, his face was 
shrivelled and yellow, save where the cheeks 
were streaked with the color of a dry winter 
apple ; and where his beard had been, there lin- 
gered yet a few gray tufts which seemed, like 
the ragged eyebrows, to denote the badness of 
the soil from which they sprung. The whole air 
and attitude of the form was one of stealthy, 
cat-like obsequiousness ; the whole expression 
of the face was concentrated in a wrinkled leer, 
compounded of cunning, lecherousness, slyness, 
and avarice. 

Such was old Arthur Gride, in whose face 
there was not a wrinkle, in whose dress there 
was not one spare fold or plait, but expressed 
the most covetous and griping penury, and suffi- 
ciently indicated his belonging to that class of 
which Ralph Nickleby was a member. Such 
was old Arthur Gride, as he sat in a low chair 
looking up into the face of Ralph Nickleby, who, 
lounging on the tall office-stool, with his arms 
upon his knees, looked down into his ; a match 
for him, on whatever errand he had come. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47. 

HEEP, URIAH.— The low arched door then 
opened, and the face came out. It was quite as 
cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though 
in the grain of it there was that tinge of red 
which is sometimes to be observed in the skins 
of red-haired people. It belonged to a red- 
haired person — a youth of fifteen, as I take it 
now, but looking much older — whose hair was 
cropped as close as the closest stubble ; who had 
hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes 
of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, 
that I remember wondering how he went to 
sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony ; 
dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a 
neck-cloth ; buttoned up to the throat ; and had 
a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly 
attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's 
head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at 
us in the chaise. — David Copperjield, Chap. 15. 

I turned away without any ceremony ; and left 
him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like 
a scarecrow in want of support. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 42. 

J AGGERS, Mr. {Lawyer). — yir. Jaggers 
never laughed ; but he wore great bright creak- 
ing boots ; and, in poising himself on those 
boots, with his large head bent down and his 
eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, 
he sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if 
they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As 
he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick 
was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick 
that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers's 



CHARACTERS AND 



CHARACTERISTICS 



" Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compli- 
ment," answered Wemmick ; " he don't mean 
that you should know what to make of it — Oh ! " 
for 1 looked surprised, " it's not personal ; it's 
professional ; only professional." 

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching — and 
crunching — on a dry, hard biscuit ; pieces of 
which he threw from time to time into his slit of 
a mouth, as if he were posting them. 

"Always seems tome," said Wemmick, "as 
if he had set a man-trap and was watching it. 
Suddenly — click — you're caught ! " 

Without remarking that man-traps were not 
among the amenities of life, I said I supposed he 
was very skillful ? 

" Deep," said Wemmick, " as Australia." 
Pointing with his pen at the office floor, to ex- 
press that Australia was understood, for the pur- 
poses of the figure, to be symmetrically on the 
opposite spot of the globe. " If there was any- 
thing deeper," added Wemmick, bringing his 
pen to paper, " he'd be it." 

Great Expectations, Chap. 24. 

He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark 
complexion, with an exceedingly large head and 
a corresponding large hand. He took my chin 
in his large hand and turned up my face to have 
a look at me by the light of the candle. He 
was prematurely bald on the top of his head, 
and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn't lie 
down, but stood up bristling. His eyes were set 
very deep in his head, and were disagreeably 
sharp and suspicious. He had a large watch- 
chain, and strong black dots where his beard 
and whiskers would have been if he had let 
them. — Great Expectations, Chap. 11. 

JORKINS, the Silent Partner.—! was quite 
dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. 
But I found out afterwards that he was a mild 
man of a heavy temperament, whose place in 
the business was to keep himself in the back- 
ground, and be constantly exhibited by name as 
the most obdurate and ruthless of men. If a 
clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins 
wouldn't listen to such a proposition. If a client 
were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins 
was resolved to have it paid ; and however pain- 
ful these things might be (and always were) to 
the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would 
have his bond. The heart and hand of the 
good angel Spenlow would have been always 
open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As 
I have grown older, I think I have had experi- 
ence of some other houses doing business on the 
principle of Spenlow and Jorkins ! 

David Copperjield, Chap. 23. 

y INGLE. — He was about the middle height, 
but the thinness of his body, and the length of 
his legs, gave him the appearance of being much 
taller. The green coat had been a smart dress 
garment in the days of swallow-tails, but had 
evidently in those times adorned a much shorter 
man than the stranger, for the soiled and faded 
sleeves scarcely reached to his wrists. It was 
buttoned closely up to his chin, at the imminent 
hazard of splitting the back ; and an old stock, 
without a vestige of shirt-collar, ornamented his 
neck. His scanty black trousers displayed here 
and there those shiny patches which bespeak 



long service, and were strapped very tightly over 
a pair of patched and mended shoes, as if to 
conceal the dirty white stockings, which were 
nevertheless distinctly visible. His long black 
hair escaped in negligent waves from beneath 
each side of his old pinched-up hat ; and glimps- 
es of his bare wrists might be observed be- 
tween the tops of his gloves, and the cuffs of 
his coat-sleeves. His face was thin and hag- 
gard ; but an indescribable air of jaunty impu- 
dence and perfect self-possession pervaded the 
whole man. — Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

KITTERBELL, Mr.— ''How are you?" 
said little Kitterbell, in a greater bustle than 
ever, bolting out of the little back parlor with a 
cork-screw in his hand, and various particles of 
sawdust, looking like so many inverted commas, 
on his inexpressibles. — Tales, Chap. 11. 

KROOK. — Turning towards the door, he now 
caught sight of us. He was short, cadaverous, 
and withered ; with his head sunk sideways be- 
tween his shoulders, and the breath issuing in 
visible smoke from his mouth, as if he were on 
fire wi'thin. His throat, chin, and eyebrows 
were so frosted with white hairs, and so gnarled 
with veins and puckered skin, that he looked, 
from his breast upward, like some old root in a 
fall of snow. — Bleak House, Chap. 5. 

LILLY VIC JC, Mr.— The features of Mr. 
Lillyvick they were, but strangely altered. If 
ever an old gentleman had made a point of ap- 
pearing in public, shaved close and clean, that 
old gentleman was Mr. Lillyvick. If ever a col- 
lector had borne himself like a collector, and 
assumed before all men a solemn and portentous 
dignity, as if he had the world on his books and 
it was all two quarters in arrear, that collector 
was Mr. Lillyvick. And now, there he sat, with 
the remains of a beard at least a week old, en- 
cumbering his chin ; a soiled and crumpled 
shirt-frill crouching, as it were, upon his breast, 
instead of standing boldly out ; a demeanor so 
abashed and drooping, so despondent, and ex- 
pressive of humiliation, grief, and shame ; that 
if the souls of forty unsubstantial housekeepers, 
all of whom had had their water cut off for non- 
payment of the rate, could have been concen- 
trated in one body, that one body could hardly 
have expressed such mortification and defeat as 
were now expressed in the person of Mr. Lilly- 
vick, the collector. 

Newman Noggs uttered his name, and Mr. 
Lillyvick groaned ; then coughed to hide it. But 
the groan was a full-sized groan ; and the cough 
was but a wheeze. 

" Is anything the matter ? " said Newman 
Noggs. 

"Matter, sir!" cried Mr. Lilljrvick. "The 
plug of life is dry, sir, and but the mud is left." 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 52. 

LIRRIPER, Mr.— My poor Lirriper was a 
handsome figure of a man, with a beaming eye. 
and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument 
made of honey and steel, but he had ever been 
a free liver, being in the commercial travelling 
line and travelling what he called a limekiln 
road — " a dry road, Emma, my dear," my poor 
Lirriper says to me, " where I have to lay the 
dust with one drink or another all day long and 



CHARACTERS AND 



70 



CHARACTERISTICS 



i.alf the night, and it wears me, Emma" — and 
this led to his running through a good deal and 
might have run through the turnpike, too, when 
that dreadful horse that never would stand still 
for a single instant set off; but for its being 
night, the gate shut and consequently took his 
wheel, my poor Lirriper, and the gig smashed to 
atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a 
handsome figure of a man, and a man with a 
jovial heart and a sweet temper ; but if they had 
come up then, they never could have given you 
the mellowness of his voice, and indeed, I con- 
sider photographs wanting in mellowness as a 
general rule, and making you look like a new- 
ploughed field. 

Mrs. Lirriper' s Lodgings ^ Chap. i. 

LOBLE F, the Sailor. — He was a jolly 
favored man, with tawny hair and whiskers, and 
a big red face. He was the dead image of 
the sun in old woodcuts, his hair and whiskers 
answering for rays all round him. Resplendent 
in the bow of the boat, he was a shining sight, 
with a man-of-war's man's shirt on — or off, ac- 
cording to opinion — and his arms and breast 
tattooed all sorts of patterns. Lobley seemed to 
take it easily, and so did Mr. Tartar ; yet their 
oars bent as they pulled, and the boat bounded 
under them. — Edwin Drood, Chap. 22. 

LO WR Y, Mr., the Bank o.r. — ^Very orderly and 
methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, 
and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon 
under his flapped waistcoat, as though it pitted 
its gravity and longevity against the levity and 
evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good 
leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown 
stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a 
fine texture ; his shoes and buckles, too, though 
plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek 
crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head : 
which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of 
hair, but which looked far more as though it 
were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His 
linen, though not of a fineness in accordance 
with his stockings, was as white as the tops of 
the waves that broke upon the neighboring 
beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the 
sunlight far at sea. A face habitually sup- 
pressed and quieted, was still lighted up under 
the quaint wig by a pair of moist, bright eyes, 
that it must have cost their owner, in years gone 
by, some pains to drill to the composed and 
reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had 
a healthy color in his cheeks, and his face, though 
lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But perhaps 
the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's 
Bank were principally occupied with the cares 
of other people ; and perhaps second-hand 
cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off 
and on. — Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4. 

MICA WBER, Mr. — The counting-house 
clock was at half-past twelve, and there was gen- 
eral preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. 
Quinion tapped at the counting-house window, 
and beckoned me to go in, I went in, and found 
there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown 
surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more 
hair upon his head (which was a large one, and 
very shining) than there is upon an egg, and 
with a very extensive face, which he turned full 
upon me. His clothes were shabby, but he had 



an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty 
sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels 
to it ; and a quizzing-glass hung outside his coat, 
— for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very 
seldom looked through it, and couldn't see any- 
thing when he did. 

" This," said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to my- 
self, " is he." 

" This," said the stranger, with a certain con- 
descending roll in his voice, and a certain inde- 
scribable air of doing something genteel, which 
impressed me very much, " is Master Copper- 
field. I hope I see you well, sir ? " 



" This is Mr. Micawber," said Mr. Quinion to 
me. 

*' Ahem ! " said the stranger, " that is my 
name." 

" Mr. Micawber," said Mr. Quinion, " is known 
to Mr. Murdstone. He takes orders for us on 
commission, when he can get any. He has been 
written to by Mr, Murdstone, on the subject of 
your lodgings, and he will receive you as a 
lodger," 

" My address," said Mr. Micawber, " is Wind- 
sor Terrace, City Road. I — in short," said Mr. 
Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in an- 
other burst of confidence — " I live there." 

I made him a bow. 

" Under the impression," said Mr. Micawber, 
" that your peregrinations in this metropolis 
have not as yet been extensive, and that you 
might have some difficulty in penetrating the 
arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction 
of the City Road — in short," said Mr, Micawber, 
in another burst of confidence, " that you might 
lose yourself — I shall be happy to call this even • 
ing, and install you in the knowledge of the near- 
est way." — David Copper/ield, Chap. ii. 

MINNS, Mr. AUGUSTUS {Bachelor).— 
Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about 
forty, as he said — of about eight-and-forty, as his 
friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, 
precise, and tidy ; perhaps somewhat priggish, 
and the most retiring man in the world. He 
usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrin- 
kle, light inexplicables without a spot, a neat 
neckerchief with a remarkably neat tie, and boots 
without a fault ; moreover, he always carried a 
brown silk umbrella with an ivory handle. He 
was a clerk in Somerset House, or, as he said 
himself, he held *' a responsible situation under 
Government." He had a good and increasing 
salary, in addition to some 10,000/. of his own 
(invested in the funds), and he occupied a first- 
floor in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, where 
he had resided for twenty years, having been in 
the habit of quarrelling with his landlord the 
whole time ; regularly giving notice of his in- 
tention to quit on the first day of every quarter, 
and as regularly countermanding it on the sec- 
ond. There were two classes of created objects 
which he held in the deepest and most unmin- 
gled horror ; these were dogs and children. He 
was not unamiable, but he could, at any time, 
have viewed the execution of a dog, or the as- 
sassination of an infant, with the liveliest satis- 
faction. Their habits were at variance with his 
love of order, and his love of order was as pow 
erful as his love of life. — Tales, Chap. 2. 



CHARACTERS AND 



71 



CHARACTERISTICS 



MONSEIGNE UR.—YLg was a man of about 
sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, 
and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a 
transparent paleness ; every feature in it clearly 
defined, one set expression on it. The nose, 
beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly 
pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two 
compressions, or dints, the only little change 
that the face ever showed, resided. They per- 
sisted in changing color sometimes, and they 
would be occasionally dilated and contracted by 
something like a faint pulsation ; then, they gave 
a look of treachery and cruelty to the whole 
countenance. Examined with attention, its ca- 
pacity of helping such a look was to be found in 
the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits 
of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin ; 
still, in the effect the face made, it was a hand- 
some face, and a remarkable one. 

Tale of Two Cities ^ Chap. 7. 

MURDSTONE, Mr.—Ue had that kind of 
shallow black eye — I want a better word to ex- 
press an eye that has no depth in it to be looked 
into — which, when it is abstracted, seems, from 
some peculiarity of light, to be disfigured, for a 
moment at a time, by a cast. Several times when 
I glanced at him, I observed that appearance 
with a sort of awe, and wondered what he was 
thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers 
were blacker and thicker, looked at so near, than 
even I had given them credit for being. A 
squai-eness about the lower part of his face, and 
the dotted indication of the strong black beard 
he shaved close every day, reminded me of the 
wax-work that had travelled into our neighbor- 
hood some half-a-year before. This, his regular 
eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and 
brown, of his complexion — confound his com- 
plexion, and his memory ! — made me think him, 
in spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man. 
I have no doubt that my poor dear mother 
thought him so too. 

David Copperjieldy Chap. 2. 

NADGE TT, The Secret Man.— He was the 
man at a pound a week who made the inquiries. 
It was no virtue or merit in Nadgett that he 
transacted all his Anglo-Bengalee business se- 
cretly and in the closest confidence : for he was 
born to be a secret. He was a short, dried-up, 
withered old man, who seemed to have secreted 
his very blood ; for nobody would have given 
him credit for the possession of six ounces 
of it in his whole body. How he lived was a 
secret ; where he lived was a secret ; and even 
what he was, was a secret. In his musty old 
pocket-book he carried contradictory cards, in 
some of which he called himself a coal-merchant, 
in others a wine-merchant, in others a commission 
agent, in others a collector, in others an account- 
ant ; as if he really didn't know the secret him- 
self. He was always keeping appointments in 
the City, and the other man never seemed to 
come. He would sit on 'Change for hours, look- 
ing at everybody who walked in and out, and 
would do the like at Garraway's, and in other 
business coffee-houses, in some of which he would 
be occasionally seen drying a very damp pocket- 
handkerchief before the fire, and still looking 
over his shoulder for the man who never appear- 
ed. He was mildewed, threadbare, shabby ; al- 
ways had flue upon his legs and back ; and kept 



his linen so secret by buttoning up and wrapping 
over, that he might have had none — perhaps he 
hadn't. He carried one stained beaver glove, 
which he dangled before him by the forefinger 
as he walked or sat ; but even its fellow was a 
secret. Some people said he had been a bank- 
rupt, others that he had gone an infant into an 
ancient Chancery suit which was still depending, 
but it was all a secret. He carried bits of seal- 
ing-wax and a hieroglyphical old copper seal in 
his pocket, and often secretly indited letters in 
corner boxes of the trysting-piaces before men- 
tioned ; but they never appeared to go to any- 
body, for he would put them into a secret place 
in his coat, and deliver them to himself weeks 
afterwards, very much to his own surprise, quite 
yellow. He was that sort of man that if he had 
died worth a million of money, or had died 
worth twopence halfpenny, everybody would 
have been perfectly satisfied, and would have 
said it was just as they expected. And yet he 
belonged to a class ; a race peculiar to the City ; 
who are secrets as profound to one another, as 
they are to the rest of mankind. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27. 

NOAKES, PERCY— a " Society" Man.— Mr. 
Percy Noakes was a law-student, inhabiting a 
set of chambers on the fourth floor, in one of 
those houses in Gray's Inn Square which com- 
mand an extensive view of the gardens, and their 
usual adjuncts — flaunting nursery-maids, and 
town-made children, with parenthetical legs. 
Mr. Percy Noakes was what is generally termed 
— " a devilish good fellow." He had a large 
circle of acquaintance, and seldom dined at his 
own expense. He used to talk politics to papas, 
flatter the vanity of mammas, do the amiable to 
their daughters, make pleasure engagements with 
their sons, and romp with the younger branches. 
Like those paragons of perfection, advertising 
footmen out of place, he was always " willing to 
make himself generally useful." If any old 
lady, whose son was in India, gave a ball, Mr. 
Percy Noakes was master of the ceremonies ; if 
any young lady made a stolen match, Mr. Percy 
Noakes gave her away ; if a juvenile wife pre- 
sented her husband with a blooming cherub, Mr. 
Percy Noakes was either godfather, or deputy 
godfather ; an-d if any member of a friend's fam- 
ily died, Mr. Percy Noakes was invariably to be 
seen in the second mourning coach, with a white 
handkerchief to his eyes, sobbing — to use his 
own appropriate and expressive description — 
" like winkin' ! " 

It may readily be imagined that these numer- 
ous avocations were rather calculated to inter- 
fere with Mr. Percy Noakes's professional stud- 
ies. Mr. Percy Noakes was perfectly aware of 
the fact, and had, therefore, after mature reflec- 
tion, made up his mind not to study at all — a 
laudable determination, to which he adhered 
in the most praiseworthy manner. His sitting- 
room presented a strange chaos of dress-gloves, 
boxing-gloves, caricatures, albums, invitation- 
cards, foils, cricket-bats, cardboard drawings, 
paste, gum, and fifty other miscellaneous articles, 
heaped together in the strangest confusion. He 
was always making something for somebody, or 
planning some party of pleasure, which was his 
great fo/'/e. He invariably spoke with astonish- 
ing rapidity ; was smart, spoffish, and eigiit-and- 
twenty. — 7a/es, Chap. 7. 



CHARACTERS AND 



72 



CHARACTERISTICS 



A'OGGS, NEWMAN.— Th^ clerk got off 
the high stool (to which he had communicated a 
high polish by countless gettings off and on), 
and presented himself in Mr. Nickleby's room. 
He was a tall man of middle age, with two gog- 
gle-eyes, whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund 
nose, a cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if 
the term be allowable when they suited him not 
at all) much the worse for wear, very much too 
small, and placed upon such a short allowance 
of buttons that it was marvellous how he con- 
trived to keep them on. 

4: Nc * * * * 

Noggs gave a peculiar grunt, as was his cus- 
tom at the end of all disputes with his master, to 
imply that he (Noggs) triumphed ; and (as he 
rarely spoke to anybody unless somebody spoke 
to him) fell into a grim silence, and rubbed his 
hands slowly over each other : cracking the 
joints of his fingers, and squeezing them into all 
possible distortions. The incessant performance 
of this routine on every occasion, and the com- 
munication of a fixed and rigid look to his un- 
affected eye, so as to make it uniform with the 
other, and to render it impossible for anybody to 
determine where or at what he was looking, 
were two among the numerous peculiarities of 
Mr. Noggs, which struck an inexperienced ob- 
server at first sight. 

Nicholas Nickleby^ Chap. 2. 

PANCKS. — He was dressed in black, and 
rusty iron gray ; had jet-black beads of eyes ; a 
scrubby little black chin ; wiry black hair striking 
out from his head in prongs, like forks or hair- 
pins ; and a complexion that was very dingy by 
nature, or very dirty by art, or a compound by 
nature and art. He had dirty hands and dirty 
broken nails, and looked as \i he had been in 
the coals ; he was in a perspiration, and snorted 
and sniffed and puffed and blew, like a little 
laboring steam-engine. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 

PINCH, TOM.— Kn ungainly, awkward- 
looking man, extremely short-sighted, and pre- 
maturely bald, availed himself of this pemiission ; 
and seeing that Mr. Pecksniff sat with his back 
towards him, gazing at the fire, stood hesitating, 
with the door in his hand. He was far from 
handsome, certainly ; and was dressed in a snuff- 
colored suit, of an uncouth make at the best, 
which, being shrunk with long wear, was twisted 
and tortured into all kinds of odd shapes ; but 
notwithstanding his attire, and his clumsy figure, 
which a great stoop in his shoulders, and a ludi- 
crous habit he had of thrusting his head forward, 
by no means redeemed, one would not have been 
disposed (unless Mr. Pecksniff said so) to con- 
sider him a bad fellow by any means. He was 
perhaps about thirty, but he might have been 
almost any age between sixteen and sixty ; being 
one of those strange creatures who never decline 
into an ancient appearance, but look their oldest 
when they are very young, and get it over at 
once. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

PIPKIN NATHANIEL.— -^-Athaniel Pip- 
kin was a harmless, inoffensive, good-natured 
being, with a turned-up nose, and rather turned- 
in legs ; a cast in his eye, and a halt in his gait ; 
and he divided his time between the church and 
his school, verily believing that there existed not, 



on the face of the earth, so clever a man as the 
curate, so imposing an apartment as the vestry- 
room, or so well-ordered a seminary as his own. 
Once, and only once, in his life, Nathaniel Pip- 
kin had seen a bishop — a real bishop, with his 
arms in lawn sleeves, and his head in a wig. He 
had seen him walk, and heard him talk, at a con- 
firmation, on which momentous occasion Na- 
thaniel Pipkin was so overcome with reverence 
and awe, when the aforesaid bishop laid his 
hand on his head, that he fainted right clean 
away, and was borne out of church in the arms 
of the beadle. — Pickwick, Cliap. 17. 

POOR AM, ELIJAH, M.C. — Among the 
passengers on board the steamboat, there was a 
faint gentleman sitting on a low camp-stool, with 
his legs on a high barrel of flour, as if he were 
looking at the prospect with his ankles ; who at- 
tracted their attention speedily. 

He had straight black hair, parted up the mid- 
dle of his head, and hanging down upon his 
coat ; a little fringe of hair upon his chin ; wore 
no neck-cloth ; a white hat ; a suit of black, long 
in the sleeves, and short in the legs ; soiled 
brown stockings, and laced shoes. His com- 
plexion, naturally muddy, was rendered muddier 
by too strict an economy of soap and water ; and 
the same observation will apply to the washable 
part of his attire, which he might have changed 
with comfort to himself and gratification to his 
friends. He was about five and thirty ; was 
ci^ushed and jammed up in a heap, under the 
shade of a large green cotton umbrella ; and 
mminated over his tobacco-plug like a cow. 

He was not singular, to be sure, in these re- 
spects ; for every gentleman on board appeared 
to have had a difference with his laundress, and 
to have left off washing himself in early youth. 
Every gentleman, too, was perfectly stopped up 
with tight plugging, and was dislocated in the 
greater part of his joints. But about this gentle- 
man there was a peculiar air of sagacity and 
wisdom, which convinced Martin that he was no 
common character ; and this turned out to be 
the case. — Martin Chuzzleixdt, Chap. 34. 

POTT, the Editor.— Thxs was a tall, thin man, 
with a sandy-colored head inclined to baldness, 
and a face in which solemn importance was 
blended with a look of unfathomable profundity. 
He was dressed in a long brown surtout, with a 
black cloth waistcoat and drab trousers. A 
double eye-glass dangled at his waistcoat ; and 
on his head he wore a very low-crowned hat 
with a broad brim. The new-comer was intro- 
duced to Mr. Pickwick as Mr. Pott, the editor 
of the Eatanswill Gazette. 

Pickwick, Chap. 13. 

PUMBLECHOOK.—'' Mrs. Joe," said Uncle 
Pumblechook : a large, hard breathing, middle- 
aged, slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull 
staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on 
his head, so that he looked as if he had just been 
all but choked, and had that moment come to. 
Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

The mere sight of the torment, with his 
fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair in- 
quisitively on end, and his waistcoat heaving 
with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my 
reticence. — Great Expectations, Chap. 9. 




Tom Pinch. 



72 



CHARACTERS AND 



73 



CHARACTERISTICS 



QUILP.—ThQ child was closely followed by 
an elderly man of remarkably hard features and 
forbidding aspect, and so low in stature as to be 
quite a dwarf, though his head and face were 
large enough for the body of a giant. His black 
eyes were restless, sly, and cunning ; his mouth 
and chin, bristly with the stubble of a coarse, 
hard beard ; and his complexion was one of that 
kind which never looks clean or wholesome. 
But what added most to the grotesque expression 
of his face, was a ghastly smile, which, appear- 
ing to be the m-ere result of habit, and to have 
no connection with any mirthful or complacent 
feeling, constantly revealed the few discolored 
fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and 
gave him the aspect of a panting dog. His dress 
consisted of a large high-crowned hat, a worn 
dark suit, a pair of capacious shoes, and a dirty 
white neckerchief, sufificiently limp and crumpled 
to disclose the greater portion of his wiry throat. 
Such hair as he had was of a grizzled black, cut 
short and straight upon his temples, and hang- 
ing in a frowsy fringe about his ears. His hands, 
which were of a rough, coarse grain, were very 
dirty ; his finger-nails were crooked, long, and 
yellow. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 3. 

RUDGE, BARNAB Y {Idiot).— As he stood, 
at that moment, half shrinking back and half 
bending forward, both his face and figure were 
full in the strong glare of the link, and as dis- 
tinctly revealed as though it had been broad 
day. He was about three-and-twenty years old, 
and though rather spare, of a fair height and 
strong make. His hair, of which he had a great 
profusion, was red, and, hanging in disorder 
about his face and shoulders, gave to his restless 
looks an expression quite unearthly — enhanced 
by the paleness of his complexion, and the glassy 
lustre of his large protruding eyes. Startling as 
his aspect was, the features were good, and there 
was something even plaintive in his wan and 
haggard aspect. But the absence of the soul is 
far more terrible in a living man than in a dead 
one ; and in this unfortunate being its noblest 
powers were wanting. 

His dress was of green, clumsily trimmed here 
and there — apparently by his own hands — with 
gaudy lace ; brightest where the cloth was most 
worn and soiled, and poorest where it was the 
best. A pair of tawdry ruffles dangled at his 
wrists, while his throat was nearly bare. He had 
ornamented his hat with a cluster of peacock's 
feathers, but they were limp and broken, and 
now trailed negligently down his back. Girt to 
his side was the steel hilt of an old sword with- 
out blade or scabbard ; and some parti-colored 
ends of ribands and poor glass toys completed 
the ornamental portion of his attire. The flut- 
tered and confused disposition of all the motley 
scraps that formed his dress, bespoke, in a 
scarcely less degree than his eager and unsettled 
manner, the disorder of his mind, and by a gro- 
tesque contrast set off and heightened the more 
impressive wildness of his face. 

Bamaby Rudge^ Chap, 3. 

RUGG, Mr. and Miss. — In the society of Mr. 
Rugg, who had a round white visage, as if all 
his blushes had been drawn out of him long 
ago, and who had a ragged yellow head like a 
worn-out hearth-broom ; and in the society of 
Miss Pugg, who had little nankeen spots, like 



shirt buttons, all over her face, and whose own 
yellow tresses were rather scrubby than luxuri- 
ant ; * * — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 25. 

SCROOGE, the Miser.— Oh ! But he was a 
tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a 
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutch- 
ing, covetous, old sinner ! Hard and sharp as flint, 
from which no steel had ever struck out generous 
fire ; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an 
oyster. The cold within him froze his old fea- 
tures, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his 
cheek, stiffened his gait ; made his eyes red, his 
thin lips blue ; and spoke out shrewdly in his 
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, 
and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He 
carried his own low temperature always about 
with him ; he iced his office in the dog days, 
and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. 

External heat and cold had little influence on 
Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry 
weather chill him. No wind that blew was bit- 
terer than he, no falling snow was more intent 
upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to 
entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to 
have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and 
hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage 
over him in only one respect. They often 
" came down " handsomely, and Scrooge never 
did. 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, 
with gladsome looks, " My dear Scrooge, how 
are you ? When will you come to see me ? " 
No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no 
children asked him what it was o'clock, no man 
or woman ever once in all his life inquired the 
way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even 
the blind men's dogs appeared to know him ; and 
when they saw him coming on, would tug their 
owners into doorways and up courts ; and then 
would wag their tails as though they said, " No 
eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark mas- 
ter ! " — Christmas Carol, Stave I. 

SLAMMER, Dr.— One of the most popular 
personages, in his own circle, present, was a little 
fat man, with a ring of upright black hair round 
his head, and an extensive bald plain on the top 
of it — Doctor Slammer, surgeon to the 97th. 
The Doctor took snuff with everybody, chatted 
with everybody, laughed, danced, made jokes, 
played whist, did everything, and was every- 
where. To these pursuits, multifarious as they 
were, the little Doctor added a more important 
one than any — he was indefatigable in paying 
the most unremitting and devoted attention to a 
little old widow, whose rich dress and profusion 
of ornament bespoke her a most desirable ad- 
dition to a limited income. 

Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

SLOPP V.—" Is he called by his right name ? " 

** Why, you see, speaking quite correctly, he 
has no right name. I always understood he 
took his name from being found on a Sloppy 
night." 

" He seems an amiable fellow." 

" Bless you, sir, there's not a bit of him," re- 
turned Betty, " that's not amiable. _ So you may 
judge how amiable he is, by running your eye 
along his height." 

Of an ungainly make was Sloppy. Too much 
of him longwise, too little of him broadw'se. 



CHARACTERS AND 



74 



CHARACTERISTICS 



and too many sharp angles of him anglewise. 
One of those shambling male human creatures, 
born to be indiscreetly candid in the revelation 
of buttons ; every button he had about him 
glaring at the public to a quite preternatural ex- 
tent. A considerable capital of knee and elbow 
and w^rist and ankle had Sloppy, and he didn't 
know how to dispose of it to the best advan- 
tage, but was always investing it in wrong se- 
curities, and so getting himself into embarrassed 
circumstances. Full-Private Number One in the 
Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life, was 
Sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of 
standing true to the Colors. 

Our Mutual Fiiend, Book /., Chap. i6. 

SLYME, CHEVY.— Yiz might have added 
that he hated two sorts of men ; all those who 
did him favors, and all those who were better 
off than himself ; as in either case their position 
was an insult to a man of his stupendous merits. 
But he did not ; for with the apt closing words 
above recited, Mr. Slyme — of too haughty a 
stomach to work, to beg, to borrow, or to steal ; 
yet mean enough to be worked or borrowed, 
begged or stolen for, by any catspaw that would 
serve his turn ; too insolent to lick the hand that 
fed him in his need, yet cur enough to bite and 
tear it in the dark — with these apt closing words, 
Mr. Slyme fell forward with his head upon the 
table, and so declined into a sodden sleep. 

"Was there ever," cried Mr. Tigg, joining the 
young men at the door, and shutting it carefully 
behind him, " such an independent spirit as is 
possessed by that extraordinary creature ? Was 
there ever such a Roman as our friend Chiv? 
Was there ever a man of such a purely classical 
turn of thought, and of such a toga-like sim- 
plicity of nature ? Was there ever a man with 
such a flow of eloquence ? Might he not, gents 
both, I ask, have sat upon a tripod in the ancient 
tim.es, and prophesied to a perfectly unlimited 
extent, if previously supplied with gin-and-water 
at the public cost ? " 

Martin Chuzzlewii, Chap. 7. 

SMALLWEED, Grandfather, {Usurer).— 
The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the 
neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, was a horny- 
skinned, two-legged, money-getting species of 
spider, who spun webs to catch unwary flies, and 
retired into holes until they were entrapped. 
The name of this old pagan's God was Com- 
pound Interest. He lived for it, married it, 
died of it. Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest 
little enterprise, in which all the loss was in- 
tended to have been on the other side, he broke 
something — something necessary to his exist- 
ence ; therefore it couldn't have been his heart — 
and made an end of his career. As his charac- 
ter was not good, and he had been bred at a 
Charity School, in a complete course, according 
to question and answer, of those ancient people 
the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently 
quoted as an example of the failure of educa- 
tion. 

His spirit shone through his son, to whom he 
had always preached of " going out " early in 
life, and whom he made a clerk in a sharp 
scrivener's ofiice at twelve years old. There, 
the young gentleman improved his mind, which 
was of a lean and anxious character ; and, de- 
veloping the family gifts, gradually elevated 



himself into the discounting profession. Going 
out early in life, and marrying late, as his father 
had done before him, he, too, begat a lean and 
anxious-minded son ; who, in his turn, going out 
early in life and manying late, became the father 
of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed, twins. 
During the whole time consumed in the slow 
growth of this family-tree, the house of Small- 
weed, always early to go out and late to marry, 
has strengthened itself in its practical character, 
has discarded all amusements, discountenanced 
all story-books, fairy tales, fictions, and fables, 
and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence 
the gratifying fact, that it has had no child born 
to it, and that the complete little men and 
women whom it has produced, have been ob- 
served to bear a likeness to old monkeys with 
something depressing on their minds. 

****** 

Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually 
sliding down in his chair since his last adjust- 
ment, and is now a bundle of clothes, with a 
voice in it calling for Judy. 

Bleak House, Chap. 21. 

SNITCHE Y {Lawyer).— h. cold, hard, dry 
man, dressed in gray and white, like a flint ; with 
small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck 
sparks out of them. The three natural king- 
doms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative 
among this brotherhood of disputants ; for 
Snitchey was like a magpie or a raven (only not 
so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face 
like a winter-pippin, with here and there a dim^ 
pie to express the peckings of the birds, and a 
very little bit of pigtail behind that stood for the 
s\.zSk.— Battle of Life, Chap. i. 

SNAGSBY, Mr. and Mrs.— In his lifetime, 
and likewise in the period of Snagsby's " time " 
of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer, in 
the same law-stationering premises, a niece — a 
short, shrewd niece, something too violently com- 
pressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose 
like a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be 
frosty towards the end. The Cook's-Courtiers 
had a rumor flying among them, that the mother 
of this niece did, in her daughter's childhood, 
moved by too jealous a solicitude that her figure 
should approach perfection, lace her up every 
morning with her m.aternal foot against the bed- 
post for a stronger hold and purchase ; and fur- 
ther, that she exhibited internally pints of vine- 
gar and lemon-juice ; which acids, they held, had 
mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. 
With whichsoever of the many tongues of Rumor 
this frothy report originated, it either never 
reached, or never influenced, the ears of young 
Snagsby ; who, having wooed and won its fair 
subject on his arrival at man's estate, entered 
into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook's 
Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece 
are one ; and the niece still cherishes her figure 
— which, however tastes may diff"er, is unques- 
tionably so far precious, that thei-e is mighty little 
of it. 

Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone 
and one flesh, but, to the neighbors' thinking, 
one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed 
from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's 
Court very often. Mr. Snagsby, otherwise than 
as he finds expression through these dulcet 
tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid 




Stiggins (iiiE Reverend Shepherd). 



75 



CHARACTEKS AND 



75 



CHARACTERISTICS 



man, with a shining head, and a* scrubby clump 
of black hair sticking out at the back. He tends 
to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his 
door in Cook's Court, in his gray shop-coat and 
black calico sleeves, looking up at the clouds ; or 
stands behind his desk in his dark shop, with a 
heavy flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheep- 
skin, in company with his two 'prentices ; he is 
emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. 
From beneath his feet, at such times, as from a 
shrill ghost unquiet in its grave, there frequently 
arise complainings and lamentations in the voice 
already mentioned ; and haply, on some occa- 
sions, when these reach a sharper pitch than 
usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the 'prentices, 
*' I think my little woman is a-giving it to Ous- 
ter ! " 

•I* »!« )|S S|£ •)• SfS 

Rumor, always flying, bat-like, about Cook's 
Court, and skimming in and out at everybody's 
windows, does say that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous 
and inquisitive ; and that Mr. Snagsby is some- 
times worried out of house and home, and that 
if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand 
it. It is even observed that the wives who quote 
him to their self-willed husbands as a shining 
example, in reality look down upon him ; and 
that nobody does so with greater supercilious- 
ness than one particular lady, whose lord is more 
than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as 
an instrument of correction. But these vague 
whisperings may arise from Mr, Snagsby's being, 
in his way, rather a meditative and poetical man ; 
loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer 
time, and to observe how countrified the spar- 
rows and the leaves are ; also to lounge about 
the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon, and to 
remark (if in good spirits) that there were old 
times once, and that you'd find a stone coffin or 
two, now, under that chapel, he'll be bound, if 
you was to dig for it. He solaces his imagina- 
tion, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors 
and Vices, and Masters of the Rolls, who are de- 
ceased ; and he gets such a flavor of the country 
out of telling th«e two 'prentices how he has 
heard say that a brook " as clear as crystial " once 
ran right down the middle of Holborn, when 
Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap 
away into the meadows — gets such a flavor of 
the country out of this, that he never wants to 
go there. — Bleak House, Chap. lo. 

SOWERBERRY {the Undertaker). — "^x. 
Sowerberry was a tall, gaunt, large-jointed man, 
attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned 
cotton stockings of the same color, and shoes to 
answer. His features were not naturally intended 
to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general 
rather given to professional jocosity. His step 
was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleas- 
antry. — Oliver Twisty Chap. 4. 

SPENLOW{the Lawyer).— Yi^ was a little 
light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, 
and the stiffest of white cravats and shirt- collars. 
He was buttoned up mighty trim and tight, and 
must have taken a great deal of pains with his 
whiskers, which were accurately curled. His 
gold watch-chain was so massive, that a fancy 
came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy 
golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which 
are put up over the gold-beaters' shops. He was 
got up with such care, and was so stiff, that he 



could hardly bend himself ; being obliged, when 
he glanced at some papers on his desk, after sit 
ting down in his chair, to move his whole body, 
from the bottom of his spine, like Punch, 

David Copperjield, Chap. 23. 

SQUEERS {Schoolmaster). — Mr. Squeers's 
appearance was not prepossessing. He had but 
one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor 
of two. The eye he had was unquestionably 
useful, but decidedly not ornamental ; being of 
a greenish gray, and in shape resembling the 
fan-light of a street door. The blank side of his 
face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which 
gave him a very sinister appearance, especially 
whei) he smiled, at which times his expression 
bordered closely on the villanous. His hair was 
very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it 
was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding 
forehead, which assorted well with his harsh 
voice and coarse manner. He was about two or 
three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle 
size ; he wore a white neckerchief with long 
ends, and a suit of scholastic black ; but his 
coat-sleeves being a great deal too long, and his 
trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill 
at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a per- 
petual state of astonishment at finding himself 
so respectable, — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 4. 

SQUOD, PHIL.—" Shut up shop, Phil ! " 
As Phil moves about to execute this order, it 
appears that he is lame, though able to move 
very quickly. On the speckled side of his face 
he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has 
a bushy black one, which want of uniformity 
gives him a very singular and rather sinister ap- 
pearance. Everything seems to have happened 
to his hands that could possibly take place, con- 
sistently with the retention of all the fingers ; 
for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled 
all over. He appears to be very strong, and 
lifts heavy benches about as if he had no idea 
what weight was. He has a curious way of 
limping round the gallery with his shoulder 
against the wall, arid tacking off" at objects he 
wants to lay hold of, instead of going straight to 
them, which has left a smear all round the four 
walls, conventionally called " Phil's mark." 

4: N: * He * 4: 

The little man is dressed something like a 
gunsmith, in a green baize apron and cap ; and 
his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder, 
and begrimed with the loading of guns. As he 
lies in the light, before a glaring white target, 
the black upon him shines again. Not far off" is 
the strong, rough, primitive table, with a vice 
upon it, at which he has been working. He is 
a little man with a face all crushed together, who 
appears, from a certain blue and speckled ap- 
pearance that one of his cheeks presents, to have 
been blown up, in the way of business, at some 
odd time or times. — Bleak House, Chap. 21. 

STIGGINS {the Reverend Shepherd).—'' Now, 
then ! " said a shrill female voice the instant 
Sam thrust his head in at the door, '* what do 
you want, young man ? " 

Sam looked round in the direction whence the 
voice proceeded. It came from a rather stout 
lady of comfortable appearance, who was seated 
beside the fire-place in the bar, blowing the fire 
to make the kettle boil for tea. She was not 



CHARACTERS AND 



76 



CHARACTERISTICS 



alone ; for on the other side of the fire-place, 
sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, was a 
man in threadbare black clothes, with a back 
almost as long and stiff as that of the chair 
itself, who caught Sam's most particular and 
especial attention at once. 

He was a prim -faced, red-nosed man, with a 
long, thin countenance, and a semi-rattlesnake 
sort of eye — rather sharp, but decidedly bad. 
He wore very short trousers, and black cotton 
stockings, which, like the rest of his apparel, 
were particularly rusty. His looks were starched, 
but his white neckerchief was not, and its long 
limp ends straggled over his closely-buttoned 
waistcoat in a verv' uncouth and unpicturesque 
fashion. A pair of old, worn beaver gloves, a 
broad-brimmed hat, and a faded green umbrella, 
ft-ith plent)- of whalebone sticking through the 
bottom, as if to counterbalance the want of a 
handle at the top, lay on a chair beside him, and, 
being disposed in a ver\' tidy and careful man- 
ner, seemed to imply that the red-nosed man, 
whoever he was, had no intention of going 
away in a hurry. 

To do the red-nosed man justice, he would 
have been ver\- far from wise if he had enter- 
tained any such intention ; for, to judge from all 
appearances, he must have been possessed of a 
most desirable circle of acquaintance, if he could 
have reasonably expected to be more comfortable 
an}n;\-here else. The fire was blazing brightly 
under the influence of the bellows, and the ket- 
tle was singing gaily under the influence of both. 
A small tray of tea-things was arranged on the 
table, a plate of hot buttered toast was gently 
simmering before the fire, and the red -nosed 
man himself was busily engaged in converting a 
large slice of bread into the same agreeable 
edible, through the instrumentality of a long 
brass toasting-fork. Beside him stood a glass of 
reeking hot pine-apple rum and water, with a 
slice of lemon in it ; and every time the red- 
nosed man stopped to bring the round of toast 
to his eye, with the view of ascertaining how it 
got on, he imbibed a drop or two of the hot 
pine-apple rum and water, and smiled upon the 
rather stout lady, as she blew the fire. 

Fickvnck, Chap. 27. 

STRYVER {Lawyer). — So, he pushed open 
the door with the weak rattle in its throat, 
stumbled down the two steps, got past the two 
ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the 
musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great 
books ruled for figures, with perpendicidar iron 
bars to his window as if that were ruled for fig- 
ures too, and everything under the clouds were 
a sum. 

" Halloa ! " said Mr. Stryver. " How do you 
do ? I hope you are well ! " 

It was Strj'^'er's grand peculiarity that he al- 
ways seemed too big for any place, or space. He 
was so much too big for Tellson's, that old clerks 
in distant comers looked up with looks of re- 
monstrance, as though he squeezed them against 
the wall. The House itself, magnificently read- 
ing the paper quite in the far-off perspective, 
lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had 
been butted into its responsible waistcoat 

Talf of Two Cities, Chap. 12. 

STRONG, Z)r.— Doctor Strong looked almost 
as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron rails 



and gates outside the house ; and almost as stiff 
and heavy as the great stone urns that flanked 
them, and were set up, on the top of the red- 
brick wall, at regular distances all roimd the 
[ court, like sublimated skittles, for Time to play 
at He was in his library (I mean Doctor Strong 
I was), with his clothes not particularly well- 
I brushed, and his hair not particularly well- 
' combed ; his knee-smalls unbraced ; his long 
' black gaiters unbuttoned ; and his shoes ya"WTi- 
ing like two caverns on the hearth-rug. Turn- 
ing upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me 
of a long-forgotten blind old horse who once 
used to crop the grass, and tumble over the 
graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he 
was glad to see me ; and then he gave me his 
hand ; which I didn't know what to do with, as 
it did nothing for itself. 

David Copperfieldy Chap. 16. 

SWIVELLER, DICK.—lX was perhaps not 
very unreasonable to suspect from what had al- 
ready passed, that Mr. Swiveller was not quite 
recovered from the effects of the powerful sun- 
light to which he had made allusion ; but if no 
such suspicion had been awakened by his speech, 
his wiry hair, dvdl eyes, and sallow face, would 
still have been strong witnesses against him. 
His attire was not as he had himself hinted, 
remarkable for the nicest arrangement, but was 
in a state of disorder which strongly induced 
the idea that he had gone to bed in it. It con- 
sisted of a brown body-coat with a great many 
brass buttons up the front and only one behind ; 
a bright check neckerchief, a plaid waistcoat, 
soiled white trousers, and a very limp hat, worn 
with the wrong side foremost, to hide a hole in 
the brim. The breast of his coat was ornamented 
with an outside pocket from which there peeped 
forth the cleanest end of a very large and very 
ill-favored handkerchief ; his dirty wristbands 
were pulled down as far as possible and ostenta- 
tiously folded back over his cuffs ; he displayed 
no gloves, and carried a yellow cane having at 
the top a bone hand with the semblance of a 
ring on its little finger and a black ball in its 
grasp. With all these personal advantages (to 
which may be added a strong savor of tobacco- 
smoke, and a prevailing greasiness of appear- 
ance) Mr. Swiveller leaned back in his chair with 
his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and occasionally 
pitching his voice to the needful key, obliged the 
company with a few bars of an intensely dismal 
air, and then, in the middle of a note, relapsed 
into his former silence. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 2. 

TACKLETON.—YL& didn't look much like 
a Bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier's kit- 
chen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw 
in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge 
of his nose, and his hands tucked down into the 
bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic 
ill-conditioned self peering out of one little cor- 
ner of one little eye, like the concentrated es- 
sence of any number of ravens. But, a Bride- 
groom he designed to be. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I. 

TAPPER TIT, SIMON.— Sim, as he was 
called in the locksmith's family, or Mr. Simon 
Tappertit as he called himself, and required all 
men to style him out of doors, on holidays, and 




Mr. Strvver at Tei.lson's Bank. 



76 



CHARACTERS AND 



77 



CHARACTERISTICS 



Sundays out — was an old-fashioned, thin-faced, 
sleek-haired, sharp-nosed, small-eyed little fel- 
low, very little more than five feet high, and 
thoroughly convinced in his own mind that he 
was above the middle size ; rather tall, in fact, 
than otherwise. Of his figure, which was well 
enough formed, though somewhat of the leanest, 
he entertained the highest admiration ; and with 
his legs, which, in knee-breeches, were perfect 
curiosities of littleness, he was enraptured to a 
degree amounting to enthusiasm. He also had 
some majestic, shadowy ideas, which had never 
been quite fathomed by his intimate friends, 
concerning the power of his eye. Indeed, he 
had been known to go so far as to boast that he 
could utterly quell and subdue the haughtiest 
beauty by a simple process, which he termed 
" eyeing her over ; " but it must be added, that 
neither of this faculty, nor of the power he claim- 
ed to have, through the same gift, of vanquishing 
and heaving down dumb animals, even in a rabid 
state, had he ever furnished evidence which could 
be deemed quite satisfactory and conclusive. 

It may be inferred from these premises, that 
in the small body of Mr. Tappertit there was 
locked up an ambitious and aspiring soul. As 
certain liquors, confined in casks too cramped 
in their dimensions, will ferment, and fret, and 
chafe in their imprisonment, so the spiritual es- 
sence or soul of Mr. Tappertit would sometimes 
fume within that precious cask, his body, until, 
with great foam and froth and splutter, it would 
force a vent, and carry all before it. It was his 
custom to remark, in reference to any one of 
these occasions, that his soul had got into his 
head ; and in this novel kind of intoxication, 
many scrapes and mishaps befell him, which he 
had frequently concealed with no small difficulty 
from his worthy master. 

Sim Tappertit, among the other fancies upon 
which his before-mentioned soul was for ever 
feasting and regaling itself (and which fancies, 
like the liver of Prometheus, grew as they were 
fed upon), had a mighty notion of his order ; and 
had been heard by the servant-maid openly ex- 
piessing his regret that the 'prentices no longer 
carried clubs wherewith to mace the citizens ; 
that was his strong expression. 

« * :)« « :)e 4c 

In respect of dress and personal decoration, 
Sim Tappertit was no less of an adventurous 
and enterprising character. He had been seen 
beyond dispute to pull off ruffles of the finest 
quality at the corner of the street on Sunday 
night, and to put them carefully in his pocket 
before returning home ; and it was quite notori- 
ous that on all great holiday occasions it was his 
habit to exchange his plain steel knee-buckles 
for a pair of glittering paste, under cover of a 
friendly post, planted most conveniently in that 
same spot. Add to this, that he was in years 
just twenty, in his looks much older, and in con- 
ceit at least two hundred ; that he had no ob- 
jection to be jested with, touching his admira- 
tion of his master's daughter ; and had even, 
when called upon at a certain obscure tavern to 
pledge the lady whom he honored with his love, 
toasted with many winks and leers, a fair crea- 
ture whose Christian name, he said, began with a 
D — ; — and as much is known of Sim Tappertit, 
who has by this time followed the locksmith in to 
breakfast, as is necessary to be known in making 
his acquaintance. — Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 4. 



TIBBS, Mr. and J/rj. — Mrs. Tibbs was 
somewhat short of stature, and Mr. Tibbs was 
by no means a large man. He had, moreover, 
very short legs, but, by way of indemnification, 
his face was peculiarly long. He was to his 
wife what the o is in 90 — he was of some impor- 
tance with her — he was nothing without her. 
Mrs. Tibbs was always talking. Mr. Tibbs 
rarely spoke ; but, if it were at any time possible 
to put in a word when he should have said 
nothing at all, he had that talent. Mrs. Tibbs 
detested long stories, and Mr. Tibbs had one, 
the conclusion of which had never been heard 
by his most intimate friends. It always began, 
" I recollect when I was in the volunteer corps, 
in eighteen hundred and six," — but, as he spoke 
very slowly and softly, and his better half very 
quickly and loudly, he rarely got beyond the 
introductory sentence. He was a melancholy 
specimen of the story-teller. He was the wan- 
dering Jew of Joe Millerism. 

Tales. The Boarding- House, Chap. i. 

TIGG, MONTAGUE.— Mr. Pecksniff found 
himself immediately collared by something which 
smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel of 
beer, a cask of warm brandy-and-water, and a 
small parlor-full of stale tobacco-smoke mixed ; 
and was straightway led down stairs into the 
bar from which he had lately come, where he 
found himself standing opposite to, and in the 
grasp of, a perfectly strange gentleman of still 
stranger appearance, who, with his disengaged 
hand, rubbed his own head very hard, and 
looked at him, Pecksniff, with an evil counte- 
nance. 

The gentleman was of that order of appear- 
ance which is currently termed shabby-genteel, 
though in respect of his dress he can hardly be 
said to have been in any extremities, as his fin- 
gers were a long way out of his gloves, and the 
soles of his feet were at an inconvenient dis- 
tance from the upper leather of his boots. His 
nether garments were of a bluish gray — violent in 
its colors once, but sobered now by age and din- 
giness — and were so stretched and strained in a 
tough conflict between his braces and his straps, 
that they appeared every moment in danger of 
flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in color 
blue and of a military cut, was buttoned and 
frogged up to his chin. His cravat was, in hue 
and pattern, like one of those mantles which 
hair-dressers are accustomed to wrap about their 
clients, during the progress of the professional 
mysteries. His hat had arrived at such a pass 
that it would have been hard to determine 
whether it was originally white or black. But 
he wore a moustache — a shaggy moustache, too ; 
nothing in the meek and merciful way, but quite 
in the fierce and scornful style ; the regular Sa- 
tanic sort of thing — and he wore, besides, a vast 
quantity of unbrushed hair. He was very dirty 
and very jaunty ; very bold and very mean ; 
very swaggering and very slinking ; very much 
like a man who might have been something bet- 
ter, and unspeakably like a man who deserved 
to be something worse. 

Martin Chuzzle-ivit, Chap. 4. 

TIGG {the Financier.)— 1)^^ appearance of 
Mr. Bailey's governor as he drove along, fully 
justified that enthusiastic youth's description of 
him to the wondering Poll. He had a world 



CHARACTERS AND 



73 



CHARACTERISTICS 



of jet-black shining hair upon his head, upon 
his cheeks, upon his chin, upon his upper lip. 
His clothes, symmetrically made, were of the 
newest fashion and the costliest kind. Flowers 
of gold and blue, and gjeen and blushing red, 
were on his waistcoat ; precious chains and jew- 
els sparkled on his breast ; his fingers, clogged 
with brilliant rings, were as unwieldy as summer 
flies but newly rescued from a honey-pot. The 
daylight mantled in his gleaming hat and boots 
as in a polished glass. And yet, though changed 
his name, and changed his outward surface, it 
was Tigg. Though turned and twisted upside 
do\\Ti, and inside out, as great men have been 
sometimes known to be ; though no longer Mon- 
tague Tigg, but Tigg Montague ; still it was 
Tigg ; the same Satanic, gallant, military Tigg. 
The brass was burnished, lacquered, newly- 
stamped ; yet it was the true Tigg metal not- 
withstanding. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 27. 

TOODLE, Mr.— He was a strong, loose, 
round shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on 
whom his clothes sat negligently ; with a good 
deal of hair and' whisker, deepened in its natural 
tint, perhaps, by smoke and coal-dust ; hard 
knotty hands ; and a square forehead, as coarse 
in grain as the bark of an oak. 

He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly 
besmeared with coal-dust and oil, and had cin- 
ders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked 
ashes all over him. He was not a bad-looking 
fellow, nor even what could be fairly called a 
dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this ; and, in 
short, he was Mr. Toodle, professionally clothed. 
Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 2. 

TOOTS, Mr. — There young Toots was, pos- 
sessed of the gruffest of voices and the shrillest 
of minds ; sticking ornamental pins into his 
shirt, and keeping a ring in his waistcoat pocket 
to put on his little finger by stealth, when the 
pupils went out walking ; constantly falling in 
love by sight with nurserj'maids, who had no 
idea of his existence ; and looking at the gas- 
lighted world over the little iron bars in the 
left-hand comer window of the front three pairs 
of stairs, after bed-time, like a greatly overgrown 
cherub who had sat up aloft much too long. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. ii. 

TOT TLB, W ATKINS {a Bachelor).— IsU. 
Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon com- 
pound of strong uxorious inclinations, and an 
unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. 
He was about fifty years of age ; stood four feet 
six inches and three-quarters in his socks — for 
he never stood in stocking at all — plump, clean, 
and rosy. He looked something like a vignette 
to one of Richardson's novels, and had a clean- 
cravatish formality of manner, and kitchen- 
pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandi- 
son himself might have envied. He lived on an 
annuity, which was well adapted to the indi- 
vidual who received it. in one respect — it was 
rather small. He received it in periodical 
payments on every alternate Monday ; but he 
ran himself out, about a day after the expiration 
of the first week, as regularly as an eight-day 
clock ; and then, to make the comparison com- 
plete, his landlady wound him up, and he went 
on with a regular tick. 



Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state 
of single blessedness, as bachelors say, or single 
cursedness. as spinsters think ; but the idea of 
matrimony had never ceased to haunt him. 

Tales, Chap. 10. 

TUGGSES, The. — Once upon a time, there 
dwelt, in a narrow street on the Surrey side of 
the water, within three minutes' walk of old 
London Bridge, Mr. Joseph Tuggs — a little dark- 
faced man, v/ith shiny hair, twinkling eyes, short 
legs, and a body of ver}- considerable thickness, 
measuring from the centre button of his waist- 
coat in front to the ornamental buttons of his 
coat behind. The figure of the amiable Mrs. 
Tuggs, if not perfectly s}Tnmetrical, was decided- 
ly comfortable ; and the form of her only daugh- 
ter, the accomplished Miss Charlotte Tuggs, was 
fast ripening into that state of luxuriant plump- 
ness which had enchanted the eyes, and capti- 
vated the heart, of Mr. Joseph Tuggs in his 
earlier days. Mr. Simon Tuggs, his only son, 
and Miss Charlotte Tuggs's only brother, was as 
differently formed in body, as he was differently 
constituted in mind, from the remainder of his 
family. There was that elongation in his 
thoughtful face, and that tendency to weakness 
in his interesting legs, which tell so forcibly of a 
great mind and romantic disposition. The 
slightest traits of character in such a being pos- 
sess no mean interest to speculative minds. He 
usually appeared in public in capacious shoes, 
with black cotton stockings ; and was observed 
to be particularly attached to a black glazed 
stock, without tie or ornament of any descrip- 
tion. — Tales, Chap. 4. 

TURVEYDROP {Deportment).— ]ns\. then, 
there appeared from a side-door old Mr. Turvey- 
drop, in the full lustre of his Deportment. 

He was a fat old gentleman, with a false com- 
plexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. 
He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast 
to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad 
blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched 
in, and swelled out, and got up, and strapped 
down, as much as he could possibly bear. He 
had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes 
out of their natural shape), and his chin and even 
his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though 
he must inevitably double up, if it were cast 
loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great 
size and weight, shelving downward from the 
crown to the brim ; and in his hand a pair of 
white gloves, with which he flapped it, as he 
stood poised on one leg, in a high-shouldered, 
round-elbowed state of elegance not to be sur- 
passed. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he 
had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had wristbands, 
he had ever\-thing but any touch of nature ; he 
was not like youth, he was not like age, he was 
not like anything in the world but a model of 
Deportment. 

" Father ! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, 
Miss Summerson." 

" Distinguished," said Mr. Turveydrop, " by 
Miss Summerson's presence." As he bowed to 
me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw 
creases come into the whites of his eyes. 

Bleak House, Chap. 14. 

VAGABOND, y^.— This last man was an ad- 
mirable specimen of a class of gentry which 



CHARACTEHS AND 



79 



CHABACTERISTICS 



never can be seen in full perfection but in such 
places ; they may be met with, in an imperfect 
state, occasionally about stable-yards and pub- 
lic-houses ; but they never attain thfeir full bloom 
except in these hot-beds, which would almost 
seem to be considerately provided by the Legis- 
lature for the sole purpose of rearing them. 

He was a tall fellow, with an olive complexion, 
long dark hair, and very thick bushy whiskers 
meeting under his chin. He wore no necker- 
chief, as he had been playing rackets all day, 
and his open shirt-collar displayed their full 
luxuriance. On his head he wore one of the 
common eighteenpenny French skull-caps, with 
a gaudy tassel dangling therefrom, very happily 
in keeping with the common fustian coat. His 
legs — which, being long, were afflicted with 
weakness — graced a pair of Oxford-mixture trou- 
sers, made to show the full symmetry of those 
limbs. Being somewhat negligently braced, how- 
ever, and, moreover, but imperfectly buttoned, 
they fell in a series of not the most graceful folds 
over a pair of shoes sufficiently down at heel to 
display a pair of very soiled white stockings. 
There was a rakish, vagabond smartness, and a 
kind of boastful rascality, about the whole man, 
that was worth a mine of gold. 

This figure was the first to perceive that Mr. 
Pickwick was looking on ; upon which he winked 
to the Zephyr, and entreated him, with mock 
gravity, not to wake the gentleman. 

Fickmick, Chap. 41. 

VHOLES {the Lawyer).— ^ix. Vholes is a 
very respectable man. He has not a large bus- 
iness, but he is a very respectable man. He is 
allowed by the greater attorneys who have made 
good fortunes, or are making them, to be a most 
respectable man. He never misses a chance in 
his practice ; which is a mark of respectability. 
He never takes any pleasure ; which is another 
mark of respectability. He is reserved and 
serious ; which is another mark of respectability. 
His digestion is impaired, which is highly re- 
spectable. And he is making hay of the grass 
which is flesh, for his three daughters. And his 
father is dependent on him in the Vale of Taun- 
ton. 

The one great principle of the English law is, 
to make business for itself There is no other 
principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently 
maintained through all its narrow turnings. 
Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent 
scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity 
are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly 
perceive that its grand principle is to make bus- 
iness for itself at their expense, and surely they 
will cease to grumble. — Bleak House, Chap. 39. 

WEMMICK, ^r.— Casting my eyes on Mr. 
Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was 
like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry 
man, rather short in stature, with a square wood- 
en face, whose expression seemed to have been 
imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. 
There were some marks in it that might have 
been dimples, if the material had been softer 
and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, 
were only dints. The chisel had made three or 
four of these attempts at embellishment over his 
nose, but had given them up without an effort to 
smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor 
from the frayed condition of his linen, and he 



appeared to have sustained a good many bereave, 
ments ; for he wore at least four mourning rings, 
besides a brooch representing a lady and a 
weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I 
noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at 
his watch-chain, as if he were quite laden with 
remembrances of departed friends. He had glit- 
tering eyes — small, keen, and black — and thin 
wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the 
best of my belief, from forty to fifty years. 
****** 

He wore his hat on the back of his head, and 
looked straight before him ; walking in a self- 
contained way as if there were nothing in the 
streets to claim his attention. His mouth was 
such a post-office of a mouth that he had a me- 
chanical appearance of smiling. We had got to 
the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it 
was merely a mechanical appearance, and that 
he was not smiling at all. 

Great Expectations, CJiap. 21. 

WILFER, REGINALD, the Conventional 
Cherub. — Reginald Wilfer is a name with rather 
a grand sound, suggesting on first acquaintance 
brasses in country churches, scrolls in stained- 
glass windows, and generally the De Wilfers who 
came over with the Conqueror. For it is a re- 
markable fact in genealogy that no De Anyones 
ever came over with Anybody else. 

But, the Reginald Wilfer family were of such 
common-place extraction and pursuits, that 
their forefathers had for generations modestly 
subsisted on the Docks, the Excise Office and 
the Custom House, and the existing P Wilfer 
was a poor clerk. So poor a clerk, though hav- 
ing a limited salary and an unlimited family, that 
he had never yet attained the modest object of 
his ambition ; which was, to wear a complete 
new suit of clothes, hat and boots included, at 
one time. His black hat was brown before he 
could affiDrd a coat, his pantaloons were white at 
the seams and knees before he could buy a pair 
of boots, his boots had worn out before he could 
treat himself to new pantaloons, and, by the time 
he worked round to the hat again, that shining 
modern article roofed-in an ancient ruin of va- 
rious periods. 

If the conventional Cherub could ever grow 
up and be clothed, he might be photographed as 
a portrait of Wilfer. His chubby, smooth, in- 
nocent appearance was a reason for his being 
always treated with condescension when he was 
not put down. A stranger entering his own 
poor house at about ten o'clock p.m. might have 
been surprised to find him sitting up to supper. 
So boyish was he in his curves and proportions, 
that his old schoolmaster, meeting him in Cheap- 
side, might have been unable to withstand the 
temptation of caning him on the spot. In short, 
he was the conventional Cherub, rather gray, with 
signs of care on his expression, and in decidedly 
insolvent circumstances. 

***** * 

He was shy, and unwilling to own to the 
name of Reginald, as being too aspiring and 
self-assertive a name. In his signature he used 
only the initial R., and imparted what it really 
stood for, to none but chosen friends, under the 
seal of confidence. Out of this, the facetious 
habit had arisen in the neighborhood surround- 
ing Mincing Lane of making Christian names 
for him of adjectives and participles beginning 



CHARACTEBS AND 



80 



CHARACTERISTICS 



with R. Some of these were more or less appro- 
priate : as Rusty, Retiring, Ruddy, Round, Ripe, 
Ridiculous, Ruminative ; others derived their 
point from their want of application, as Raging, 
Rattling, Roaring, Raffish. But his popular 
name was Rumty, which in a moment of inspi- 
ration had been bestowed upon him by a gentle- 
man of convivial habits connected with the drug 
market, as the beginning of a social chorus, his 
leading part in the execution of which had led 
this gentleman to the Temple of Fame, and of 
which the whole expressive burden ran : 

" Rumty, iddity, row dow dow, 
Sing toodlely, teedlely, bow wow wow." 

Thus he was constantly addressed, even in minor 
notes on business, as " Dear Rumty :" in answer 
to which, he sedately signed himself, " Yours 
truly, R. Wilfef-;^ 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 4. 

W ILK INS, SAMUEL.— Ux. Samuel Wil- 
kins was a carpenter, a journeyman carpenter, 
of small dimensions, decidedly below the middle 
size — bordering, perhaps, upon the dwarfish. 
His face was round and shining, and his hair 
carefully twisted into the outer corner of each eye, 
till it formed a variety of that description of semi- 
curls, usually known as " aggerawators." His 
earnings were all-sufficient for his wants, varying 
from eighteen shillings to one pound five, weekly 
— his manner undeniable — his Sabbath waist- 
coats dazzling. — Sketches {Characters), Chap. 4. 

WILLIAM, Mr. and Mrs—U.xs. William, 
like M William, was a simple, innocent-looking 
person, in whose smooth cheeks the cheerful red 
of her husband's official waistcoat was veiy 
pleasantly repeated. But whereas Mr. Wil- 
liam's light hair stood on end all over his head, 
and seemed to draw his eyes up with it in an 
excess of bustling readiness for anything, the 
dark brown hair of Mrs. William was carefully 
smoothed down, and waved away under a trim 
tidy cap, in the most exact and quiet manner 
imaginable. Whereas Mr. William's very trou- 
sers hitched themselves up at the ankles, as if it 
were not in their iron-gray nature to rest with- 
out looking about them, Mrs. William's neatly- 
flowered skirts — red and white, like her own 
pretty face — were as composed and orderly as 
if the very wind that blew so hard out of doors 
could not disturb one of their folds. Whereas 
his coat had something of a fly-away and half-off" 
appearance about the collar and breast, her little 
bodice was so placid and neat, that there should 
have been protection for her, in it, had she needed 
any, with the roughest people. Who could have 
had the heart to make so calm a bosom swell 
with grief, or throb with fear, or flutter with a 
thought of shame ! To whom would its repose 
and peace have not appealed against disturb- 
ance, like the innocent slumber of a child ! 

Haunted Man, Chap. i. 

WIT, a " Social'' — He could imitate the 
French horn to admiration, sang comic songs 
most inimitably, and had the most insinuating 
way of saying impertinent nothings to his doting 
female admirers. He had acquired, somehow or 
other, the reputation of being a great wit, and 
accordingly, whenever he opened his mouth, 
everybody who knew him laughed very heartily. 
Tales, Chap. 11. 



WATERBROOK, Mr., and Company.-— I 
found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gen- 
tleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of 
shirt collar, who only wanted a black nose to be 
the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was 
happy to have the honor of making my acquaint- 
ance ; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs. 
Waterbrook, presented me, with much cere- 
mony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet 
dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I re- 
member as looking like a near relation of Ham- 
let's — say his aunt. 

Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady's name ; and 
her husband was there too ; so cold a man, that 
his head, instead of being gray, seemed to be 
sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense deference 
was shown to the Henry Spikers, male and fe- 
male, which Agnes told me was on account of 
Mr. Henry Spiker being solicitor to something 
or to somebody, I forget what or which, remotely 
connected with the Treasury. 

I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a 
suit of black, and in deep humility. He told 
me, when I shook hands with him, that he was 
proud to be noticed by me, and that he really 
felt obliged to me for my condescension. I 
could have wished he had been less obliged to 
me, for he hovered about me in his gratitude all 
the rest of the evening ; and whenever I said a 
word to Agnes, was sure, with his shadowless 
eyes and cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly 
down upon us from behind. 

There were other guests — all iced for the oc- 
casion, as it struck me, like the wine. But there 
was one who attracted my attention before he 
came in, on account of my hearing him an- 
nounced as Mr. Traddles ! My mind flew back 
to Salem House ; and could it be Tommy, I 
thought, who used to draw the skeletons ! 

I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual inter- 
est. He was a sober, steady-looking young man, 
of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair, 
and eyes that were rather wide open ; and he 
got into an. obscure corner so soon, that I had 
some difficulty in making him out. At length I 
had a good view of him, and cither my vision de- 
ceived me, or it was the old unfortunate Tommy. 
David Copperfield, Chap. 25. 

CHARACTERS— General Description of. 

Tobacco-smoky Frenchman in Algerine wrap- 
per, with peaked hood behind, who might be 
Abd-el-Kader dyed rifle-green, and who seems 
to be dressed entirely in dirt and braid, carries 
pineapples in a covered basket. Tall, grave, 
melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke 
beard, and hair close-cropped, with expansive 
chest to waistcoat, and compressive waist to 
coat : saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to 
his feminine boots, precious as to his jewelry, 
smooth and white as to his linen ; dark-eyed, 
high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed — got up, one 
thinks, like Lucifer, or Mephistopheles, or Za- 
miel, transformed into a highly genteel Parisian 
— has the green end of a pineapple sticking out 
of his neat valise. — A Flight. — Reprinted Pieces. 

CHARACTERS.— A Haunted Man. 

Who could have seen his hollow cheek, his 
sunken brilliant eye ; his black-attired figure, 
indefinably grim, although well-knit and well- 
proportioned ; his grizzled hair hanging, like 
tangled sea-weed, about his face — as if he had 



CHARACTERS AND 



81 



CHARACTERISTICS 



been, through his whole life, a lonely mark for 
the chafing and beating of the great deep of 
humanity — but might have said he looked like a 
haunted man ? — Haunted Man, Chap. i. 

It was the voice of the same Richard, who had 
come upon them unobserved, and stood before 
the father and daughter ; looking down upon 
them with a face as glowing as the iron on which 
his stout sledge-hammer daily rung. A hand- 
some, well-made, powerful youngster he was ; 
with eyes that sparkled like the red-hot drop- 
pings from a furnace-fire ; black hair that curled 
about his swarthy temples rarely ; and a smile — 
a smile that bore out Meg's eulogium on his 
style of conversation. 

Christmas Chimes, ist Quarter. 

CHARACTERS— A Family Party at Peck- 
sniff's. 

If ever Mr. Pecksniff wore an apostolic look, 
he wore it on this memorable day. If ever his 
unruffled smile proclaimed the words : " I am a 
messenger of peace ! " that was its mission now. 
If ever man combined within himself all the 
mild qualities of the lamb with a considerable 
touch of the dove, and not a dash of the croco- 
dile, or the least possible suggestion of the very 
mildest seasoning of the serpent, that man was 
he. And, oh, the two Miss Pecksniffs ! Oh, the 
serene expression on the face of Charity, M'^hich 
seemed to say, " I know that all my family have 
injured me beyond the possibility of reparation, 
but I forgive them, for it is my duty so to do ! " 
And, oh, the gay simplicity of Mercy ; so charm- 
ing, innocent, and infant-like, that if she had 
gone out walking by herself, and it had been a 
little earlier in the season, the robin-redbreasts 
might have covered her with leaves against her 
will, believing her to be one of the sweet chil- 
dreii in the wood, come out of it, and issuing 
forth once more to look for blackberries, in the 
young freshness of her heart ! What words can 
paint the Pecksniffs in that trying hour ? Oh, 
none ; for words have naughty company among 
them, and the Pecksniffs were all goodness ! 

But when the company arrived f That was 
the time. When Mr. Pecksniff, rising from his 
seat at the table's head, with a daughter on either 
hand, received his guests in the best parlor and 
motioned them to chairs, with eyes so over- 
flowing and countenance so damp with gracious 
perspiration, that he may be said to have been in 
a kind of moist meekness ! And the company ; 
the jealous, stony-hearted, distrustful company, 
who were all shut up in themselves, and had no 
faith in anybody, and wouldn't believe anything, 
and would no more allow themselves to be soft- 
ened or lulled asleep by the Pecksniffs than if 
they had been so many hedgehogs or porcupines ! 

First, there was Mr. Spottletoe, who was so 
bald and had such big whiskers, that he seemed 
to have stopped his hair, by the sudden applica- 
tion of some powerful remedy, in the veiy act of 
falling off his head, and to have fastened it irre- 
vocably on his face. Then there was Mrs. Spot- 
tletoe, who, being too slim for her years, and of 
a poetical constitution, was accustomed to inform 
her more intimate friends that the said whiskers 
were " the lodestar of her existence ;" and who 
could now, by reason of her strong affection for 
her uncle Chuzzlewit, and the shock it gave her 
to be suspected of testamentary designs upon 

G 



him, do nothing but cry — except moan. Then 
there was Anthony Chuzzlewit, and his son 
Jonas : the face of the old man so sharpened by 
the wariness and cunning of his life, that it 
seemed to cut him a passage through the crowd- 
ed room, as he edged away behind the remotest 
chairs ; while the son had so well profited by the 
precept and example of the father, that he looked 
a year or two the elder of the twain, as they 
stood winking their red eyes, side by side, and 
whispering to each other softly. Then there 
was the widow of a deceased brother of Mr. Mar- 
tin Chuzzlewit, who being almost supematurally 
disagreeable, and having a dreary face and a 
bony figure and a masculine voice, was, in right 
of these qualities, what is commonly called a 
strong-minded woman ; and who, if she could, 
would have established her claim to the title, 
and have shown herself, mentally speaking, a 
perfect Samson, by shutting up her brother-in- 
law in a private mad-house, until he proved his 
complete sanity by loving her very much. Be- 
side her sat her spinster daughters, three in num- 
ber, and of gentlemanly deportment, who had 
so mortified themselves with tight stays, that 
their tempers were reduced to something less 
than their waists, and sharp lacing was expressed 
in their very noses. Then there was a young 
gentleman, grand-nephew of Mr. Martin Chuz- 
zlewit, very dark and very hairy, and apparently 
bom for no particular purpose but to save look- 
ing-glasses the trouble of reflecting more than 
just the first idea and sketchy notion of a face, 
which had never been carried out. Then there 
was a solitary female cousin who was remarkable 
for nothing but being very deaf, and living by 
herself, and always having the toothache. Then 
there was George Chuzzlewit, a gay bachelor- 
cousin, who claimed to be young, but had been 
younger, and was inclined to corpulency, and 
rather over-fed himself: to that extent, indeed, 
that his eyes were strained in their sockets, as if 
with constant surprise ; and he had such an ob- 
vious disposition to pimples, that the bright 
spots on his cravat, the rich pattern on his waist- 
coat, and even his glittering trinkets, seemed to 
have broken out upon him, and not to have come 
into existence comfortably. Last of all there 
were present Mr. Chevy Slyme and his friend 
Tigg. And it is worthy of remark, that although 
each person present disliked the other, mainly 
because he or she did belong to the family, they 
one and all concurred in hating Mr. Tigg because 
he didn't. 

Such was the pleasant little family circle now 
assembled in Mr. Pecksniff's best parlor, agree- 
ably prepared to fall foul of Mr. Pecksniff or any- 
body else who might venture to say anything 
whatever upon any subject. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 4. 

CHARACTERS— Miscellaneous. 

A corpulent man, with a fortnight's napkin 
under his arm and coeval stockings on his legs. 
Pickivick, Chap. 22. 



" Humph ! Caleb, come here ! Who's that 
with the gray hair? " 

" I don't know, sir," returned Caleb, in a 
whisper. " Never see him before, in all my life. 
A beautiful figure for a nut-cracker ; quite a new 
model. With a screw-jaw opening down into his 
waistcoat, he'd be lovely." 



CHARACTERS AND 



82 



CHARACTERISTICS 



" Not ugly enough," said Tackleton. 

" Or for a fire-box, either," observed Caleb, in 
deep contemplation, " what a model ! Unscrew 
his head to put the matches in ; turn him heels 
up'ards for the light ; and what a fire-box for a 
gentleman's mantel-shelf, just as he stands ! " 

" Not half ugly enough," said Tackleton. " No- 
thing in him at all." 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 

Two other geatlemen had come out with him. 
One was a low-spirited gentleman of middle age, 
of a meagre habit, and a disconsolate face ; who 
kept his hands continually in the pockets of his 
scanty pepper-and-salt trousers, very large and 
dog's eared from that custom ; and was not par- 
ticularly well brushed or washed. The other, a 
full-sized, sleek, well-conditioned gentleman, in 
a blue coat with bright buttons, and a white 
cravat. This gentleman had a very red face, as 
if an undue proportion of the blood in his body 
were squeezed up into his head ; which perhaps 
accounted for his having also the appearance of 
being rather cold about the heart. 

Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter. 

A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was ; 
a government officer ; in his way (and in most 
other people's too) a professed pugilist ; always 
in training, always with a system to force down 
the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard 
of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to 
fight All England. To continue in fistic phrase- 
ology, he had a genius for coming up to the 
scratch, wherever and whatever it Avas, and prov- 
ing himself an ugly customer. He would go in 
and damage any subject whatever with his right, 
follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, 
bore his opponent (he always fought All Eng- 
land) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. 
He was certain to knock the wind out of com- 
mon sense, and render that unlucky adversary 
deaf to the call of time. 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 2. 

There was a hanger-on at that establishment 
(a supernaturally preserved Druid, I believe him 
to have been, and to be still), with long white 
hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar 
off: who claimed to have been a shepherd, and 
who seemed to be ever watching for the reap- 
pearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some 
ghostly flock of sheep that had been muton for 
many ages. He was a man with a weird belief 
in him that no one could count the stones of 
Stonehenge twice, and make the same number 
of them ; likewise, that any one who counted 
them three times nine times, and then stood in 
the centre and said " I dare ! " would behold a 
tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead. 
The Holly. Tree. 

CHARACTERS— Female. 

MISS M URD STONE.— \\. was Miss Murd- 
stone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking 
lady she was ; dark, like her brother, whom she 
greatly resembled in face and voice ; and with 
very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her 
large nose^ as if being disabled by the wrongs 
of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had car- 
ried them to that account. She brought with 
her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with 
her initials on the lids in hard brass naiis. When 



she paid the coachman she took her money out 
of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in 
a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm 
by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had 
never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady al- 
together as Miss Murdstone was. 

* * * * * * 

She began to " help " my mother next morn- 
ing, and was in and out of the store-closet all 
day, putting things to rights, and making havoc 
in the old arrangements. Almost the first re- 
markable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone 
was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion 
that the servants had a man secreted somewhere 
on the premises. Under the influence of this 
delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the 
most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened 
the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it 
to again, in the belief that she had got him. 

Though there was nothing very airy about 
Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point 
of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to 
this hour, looking for that man) before anybody 
in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as 
her opinion that she even slept with one eye 
open ; but I could not concur in this idea ; for 
I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion 
thrown out, and found it couldn't be done. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 4. 

CLEMENCY NE JVCOME.— She was about 
thirty years old, and had a sufficiently plump and 
cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an 
odd expression of tightness that made it comical. 
But the extraordinary homeliness of her gait 
and manner would have superseded any face in 
the world. To say that she had two left legs, 
and somebody else's arms, and that all four limbs 
seemed to be out of joint, and to start from per- 
fectly wrong places when they were set in mo- 
tion, is to offer the mildest outline of the reality. 
To say that she was perfectly content and satis- 
fied with these arrangements, and regarded them 
as being no business of hers, and that she took 
her arms and legs as they came, and allowed 
them to dispose of themselves just as it happened, 
is to render faint justice to her equanimity. Her 
dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, 
that never wanted to go where her feet went ; 
blue stockings ; a printed gown of many colors 
and the most hideous pattern procurable for 
money ; and a white apron. She always wore 
short sleeves, and always had, by some accident, 
grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an 
interest, that she -was continually trying to turn 
them round and get impossible views of them. 
In general, a little cap perched somewhere on 
her head ; though it was rarely to be met with 
in the place usually occupied in other subjects 
by that article of dre^s ; but from head to foot 
she was scrupulously clean, and maintained a 
kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her laudable 
anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own con- 
science as well as in the public eye, gave rise to 
one of her most startling evolutions, which was 
to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden 
handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called 
a busk), and wrestle as it were with her gar- 
ments, until they fell into a symmetrical arrange- 
ment.— T-^^ ^.z/^/<? ^/Zz>, Chap. I. 

FEGGOT TV.— The first objects that assume 
a distinct presence before me. as I look far back, 



CC 







< 



CHARACTERS AND 



83 



CHARACTERISTICS 



into the blank of my infancy, are my mother, 
with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and 
Peggotty, with no shape at all, and eyes so dark 
that they seemed to darken their whole neigh- 
borhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so 
hard and red that I wondered that the birds 
didn't peck her in preference to apples. 

I believe I can remember these two at a little 
distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping 
down or kneeling on the floor, and I going un- 
steadily from the one to the other. I have an 
impression on my mind which I cannot distin- 
guish from actual remembrance, of the touch of 
I Peggotty's fore-finger as she used to hold it out 
■ to me, and of its being roughened by needle- 
work, like a pocket nutmeg-grater. 

David Copperjieldy Chap, 2. 

DOLL V VARDEN.—Yio^ well she looked ! 
Well ? Why, if he had exhausted every lauda- 
tory adjective in the dictionary, it wouldn't have 
been praise enough. When and where was there 
ever such a plump, roguish, comely, bright-eyed, 
enticing, bewitching, captivating, maddening lit- 
tle puss in all this world, as Dolly ! What was the 
Dolly of five years ago to the Dolly of that day ! 
How many coach-makers, saddlers, cabinet-ma- 
kers, and professors of other useful arts, had de- 
serted their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and, 
most of all, their cousins, for the love of her ! 
How many unknown gentlemen — supposed to be 
of mighty fortunes, if not titles — had waited round 
the corner after dark, and tempted Miggs, the 
incorruptible, with golden guineas, to deliver 
offers of marriage folded up in love letters ! How 
many disconsolate fathers and substantial trades- 
men had waited on the locksmith for the same 
purpose, with dismal tales of how their sons had 
lost their appetites, and taken to shut themselves 
up in dark bed-rooms, and wandering in deso- 
late suburbs with pale faces, and all because of 
Dolly Varden's loveliness and cruelty! How 
many young men, in all previous times of unpre- 
cedented steadiness, had turned suddenly wild 
and wicked for the same reason, and, in an 
ecstasy of unrequited love, taken to wrench off" 
door-knockers, and invert the boxes of rheu- 
matic watchmen ! How had she recruited the 
king's service, both by sea and land, through 
rendering desperate his loving subjects between 
the ages of eighteen and twenty-five ! How 
many young ladies had publicly professed with 
tears in their eyes, that for their tastes she was 
much too short, too tall, too bold, too cold, too 
stout, too thin, too fair, too dark — too ever}'thing 
but handsome ! How many old ladies, taking 
counsel together, had thanked Heaven their 
daughters were not like her, and had hoped she 
might come to no harm, and had thought she 
would come to no good, and had wondered what 
people saw in her, and had arrived at the con- 
clusion that she was " going off"" in her looks, or 
had never come on in them, and that she was a 
thorough imposition and a popular mistake ! 
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 41. 

MR. Fs A ^/iVr.— There was a fourth and 
most original figure in the Patriarchal tent, who 
also appeared before dinner. This was an 
amazing little old woman, with a face like a 
staring wooden doll too cheap for expression, 
and a stiff" yellow wig perched unevenly on the 
lop of her head, as if the child who owned the 



doll had driven a tack through it anywhere, so 
that it only got fastened on. Another remark- 
able thing in this little old woman was, that the 
same child seemed to have damaged her face in 
two or three places with some blunt instrument 
in the nature of a spoon ; her countenance, and 
particularly the tip of her nose, presenting the 
phenomena of several dints, generally answering 
to the bowl of that article. A further remark- 
able thing in this little old woman was, that she 
had no name but Mr. F's Aunt. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 13. 

Mr. F's Aunt was so stiff"ened that she had the 
appearance of being past bending, by any means 
short of powerful mechanical pressure. Her 
bonnet was cocked up behind in a terrific man- 
ner ; and her stony reticule was as rigid as if it 
had been petrified by the Gorgon's head, and 
had got it at that moment inside. 

Little Dorrit, Book LL., Chap. 34. 

SALL Y BRA 55.— The office commonly held 
two examples of animated nature, more to the 
purpose of this history, and in whom it has a 
stronger interest and more particular concern. 

Of these, one was Mr. Brass himself, who has 
already appeared in these pages. The other was 
his clerk, assistant, housekeeper, secretary, con- 
fidential plotter, adviser, intriguer, and bill-of- 
cost increaser. Miss Brass — a kind of Amazon at 
common law, of whom it may be desirable to 
offer a brief description. 

Miss Sally Brass, then, was a lady of thirty- 
five or thereabouts, of a gaunt and bony figure, 
and a resolute bearing, which, if it repressed the 
softer emotions of love, and kept admirers at a 
distance, certainly inspired a feeling akin to awe 
in the breasts of those male strangers who had 
the happiness to approach her. In face she bore 
a striking resemblance to her brother Sampson — 
so exact, indeed, was the likeness between them, 
that had it consorted with Miss Brass's maiden 
modesty and gentle womanhood to have assumed 
her brother's clothes in a frolic and sat down be- 
side him, it would have been difficult for the old- 
est friend of the family to determine which was 
Sampson and which Sally, especially as the lady 
carried xx^oxv her upper lip certain reddish 
demonstrations, which, if the imagination had 
been assisted by her attire, might have been 
mistaken for a beard. These were, however, in 
all probability, nothing more than eye-lashes in a 
wrong place, as the eyes of Miss Brass were free 
quite liom any such natural impertinencies. In 
complexion Miss Brass was sallow — rather a 
dirty sallow, so to speak— but this hue was 
agreeably relieved by the healthy glow which 
mantled in the extreme tip of her laughing nose. 
Pier voice was exceedingly impressive — deep and 
rich in quality, and, once heard, not easily for- 
gotten. Her usual dress was a green gown, in 
color not unlike the curtain of the office-window, 
made tight to the figure, and terminating at the 
throat, where it was fastened behind by a pe- 
culiarly large and massive button. Feeling, no 
doubt, that simplicity and plainness are the soul 
of elegance. Miss Brass wore no collar or ker- 
chief except upon her head, which was invariably 
ornamented with a brown gauze scarf, like the 
wing of the fabled vampire, and which, twisted 
into any form that happened to suggest itself, 
formed an easy and graceful head-dress. 

Old CutioHty Shop, Chap, 33. 



CHARACTERS AND 



64 



CHAEACTEEISTICS 



ROSA DA RTZE.— There M?ii^ a second lady 
in the dining-room, of a slight, short figure, dark, 
and not agreeable to look at, but with some ap- 
pearance of good looks too, who attracted my 
attention : perhaps because I had not expected to 
see her ; perhaps because I found myself sitting 
opposite to her: perhaps because of something 
really remarkable in her. She had black hair and 
eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar 
upon her lip. It was an old scar — I should 
rather call it seam, for it was not discolored, and 
had healed years ago — which had once cut 
through her mouth, downward towards the chin, 
but was now barely visible across the table, ex- 
cept above and on her upper lip, the shape of 
which it had altered. I concluded in my own 
mind that she was about thirty years of age, and 
that she wished to be married She was a little 
dilapidated — like a house — with having been so 
long to let ; yet had, as I have said, an appear- 
ance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be 
the effect of some wasting fire within her. which 
found a vent in her gaunt eyes. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 20. 

MADAME DEFARGE.—M2idi^me Defarge, 
his wife, sat in the shop -behind the counter as 
he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout 
woman of about his own age, with a watchful 
eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a 
large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong 
features, and great composure of manner. There 
was a character about Madame Defarge, from 
which one might have predicted that she did not 
often make mistakes against herself in any of 
the reckonings over which she presided. Madame 
Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in 
fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined 
about her head, though not to the concealment 
of her large ear-rings. Her knitting was before 
her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth 
with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right 
elbow supported by her left hand, Madame De- 
farge said nothing when her lord came in, but 
coughed just one grain of cough. This, in com- 
bination with the lifting of her darkly-defined 
eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a 
line, suggested to her husband that he would do 
well to look round the shop among the custom- 
ers, for any new customer who had dropped Jn 
while he stepped over the way. 

Tale of Two Cities^ Chap. 5. 

LJ TTLE DORRIT.—li was not easy to make 
out Little Dorrit's face ; she was so retiring, 
plied her needle in such removed corners, and 
started away so scared if encountered on the 
stairs. But it seemed to be a pale transparent 
face, quick in expression, though not beautiful in 
feature, its soft hazel eyes excepted. A delicately 
bent head, a tiny form, a quick little pair of 
busy hands, and a shabby dress — it must needs 
have been very shabby to look at all so, being so 
neat — were Little Doririt as she sat at work. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 5. 

SAIRE Y GAMR.—She was a fat old wo- 
man, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and a 
moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of 
turning up, and only showing the white of it. 
Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble 
to look over herself, if one may say so, at those 
to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty 



black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a 
shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these 
dilapidated articles of dress she had, on prin- 
ciple, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such 
occasions as the present ; for this at once ex- 
pressed a decent amount of veneration for the 
deceased, and invited the next of kin to present 
her with a fi-esher suit of weeds ; an appeal so 
frequently successful, that the very fetch and 
ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be 
seen hanging up, any hour in the day, in at least 
a dozen of the second-hand clothes shops about 
Holborn. The face of Mrs. Gamp — the nose in 
particular — was somewhat red and swollen, and 
it was difficult to enjoy her society without be- 
coming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like 
most persons who have attained to great emi- 
nence in their profession, she took to hers very 
kindly ; insomuch, that setting aside her natural 
predilections as a woman, she went to a lying-in 
or a laying-out with equal zest and relish. 

Martin Chuzzlezuit, Chap. 19. 

Mrs. JOE GARGERY.— My sXsXer, Mrs. Joe 
Gargery, was more than twenty years older than 
I, and had established a great reputation with 
herself and the neighbors because she had brought 
me up " by hand." Having at that time to find 
out for myself what the expression meant, and 
knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, 
and to be much in the habit of laying it upon 
her husband as well as upon me, I supposed 
that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by 
hand. 

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister ; 
and I had a general impression that she must 
have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe 
was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each 
side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a 
very undecided blue that they seemed to have 
somehow got mixed with their own whites. He 
was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy- 
going, foolish, dear fellow — a sort of Hercules in 
strength, and also in weakness. 

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, 
had such a prevailing redness of skin that I some- 
times used to wonder whether it was possible she 
washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of 
soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always 
wore a coarse apron, fastened over her figure be- 
hind with two loops, and having a square impreg- 
nable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins 
and needles. She made it a powerful merit in 
herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that 
she wore this apron so much. Though I really 
see no reason why she should have worn it at all ; 
or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not 
have taken it off every day of her life. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 2. 

" And she ain't over-partial to having scholars 
on the premises," Joe continued, " and in par- 
tickler would not be over-partial to my being a 
scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of 
rebel, don't you see ? " 

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had 
got as far as " Why — " when Joe stopped me. 

" Stay a bit. I know what you're a going to 
say, Pip ; stay a bit ! I don't deny that your 
sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again. 
I don't deny that she do throw us back-falls, and 
that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such 
times as when your sister is on the Ram-page, 



CHARACTERS AND 



85 



CHARACTERISTICS 



Pip," Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced 
at the door, " candor compels fur to admit that 
she is a buster." 

Joe pronounced this word as if it began with 
at least twelve capital B's. 

" Why don't I rise ? That were your observa- 
tion when I broke it off, Pip ? " 

" Yes, Joe." 

" Well," said Joe, passing the poker into his 
left hand, tliat he might feel his whisker ; and I 
had no hope of him whenever he took to that 
placid occupation ; " your sister's a master-mind. 
A master-mind." 

"What's that?" I asked, in some hope of 
bringing him to a stand. But Joe was readier 
with his definition than I had expected, and com- 
pletely stopped me by arguing circularly, and 
answering with a fixed look, " her." 

" And I ain't a master-mind," Joe resumed, 
when he had unfixed his look, and got back to 
his whisker. " And last of all, Pip — and this I 
want to say very serous to you, old chap — I see 
so much in my poor mother, of a woman drudg- 
ing and slaving and breaking her honest hart 
and never getting no peace in her mortal days, 
that I'm dead afeerd of going wrong in the way 
of not doing what's right by a woman, and I'd 
fur rather of the two go wrong the 'tother way, 
and be a little ill-conwenienced myself. I wish 
it was only me that got put out, Pip ; I wish 
there warn't no tickler for you, old chap ; I wish 
I could take it all on myself; but this is the up- 
and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope 
you'll overlook shortcomings." 

Great Expectations^ Chap. 7. 

MRS. GENERAL.— In person, Mrs. Gen- 
eral, including her skirts, which had much to do 
with it, was of a dignified and imposing appear- 
ance ; ample, rustling, gravely voluminous ; al- 
ways upright behind the proprieties. She might 
have been taken — had been taken — to the top of 
the Alps and the bottom of Herculaneum, without 
disarranging a fold in her dress, or displacing a 
pin. If her countenance and hair had rather a 
floury appearance, as though from living in some 
transcendently genteel Mill, it was rather because 
she was a chalky creation altogether, than be- 
cause she mended her complexion with violet 
powder, or had turned gray. If her eyes had 
no expression, it was probably because they had 
nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it 
was because her mind had never traced its name 
or any other inscription on her face. A cool, 
waxy, blown-out woman, who had never lighted 
well. 

Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of 
forming a mind was to prevent it from forming 
opinions. She had a little circular set of mental 
grooves or rails, on which she started little trains 
of other people's opinions, which never overlook 
one another, and never got anywhere. Even 
her propriety could not dispute that there was im- 
propriety in the world ; but Mrs. General's way 
of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, 
and make believe that there was no such thing. 
This was another of her ways of forming a mind 
— to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, 
lock them up, and say they had no existence. It 
was the easiest way, and, beyond all comparison, 
the properest. 

Mrs. General was not to be told of anything 
shocking. Accidents, miseries, and ofi'ences, 



were never to be mentioned before her. Passion 
was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. Gen- 
eral, and blood was to change to milk and water. 
The little that was left in the world, when all 
these deductions were made, it was Mrs. Gen- 
eral's province to varnish. In that formation 
process of hers, she dipped the smallest of 
brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished 
the surface of every object that came under con- 
sideration. The more cracked it was, the more 
Mrs. General varnished it. 

There was varnish in Mrs. General's voice, 
varnish in Mrs. General's touch, an atmosphere 
of varnish round Mrs. General's figure. Mrs. 
General's dreams ought to have been varnished — 
if she had any — lying asleep in the arms of the 
good Saint Bernard, with the feathery snow fall- 
ing on his house-top. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 2. 

" GUSTER," Mrs. Snagsby's Maid.— Guster, 
really aged three or four and twenty, but looking 
a round ten years older, goes cheap with this un- 
accountable drawback of fits ; and is so appre- 
hensive of being returned on the hands of her 
patron saint, that, except when she is found with 
her head in the pail, or the sink, or the copper, 
or the dinner, or anything else that happens to 
be near her at the time of her seizure, she is al- 
ways at work. She is a satisfaction to the 
parents and guardians of the 'prentices, who feel 
that there is little danger of her inspiring tender 
emotions in the breast of youth ; she is a satis- 
faction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can always find 
fault with her ; she is a satisfaction to Mr. 
Snagsby, who thinks it a charity to keep her. 
The law-stationer's establishment is, in Guster's 
eyes, a Temple of plenty and splendor. She be- 
lieves the little drawing-room up-stairs, always 
kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and 
its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apart- 
ment in Christendom. 

jB/eak House, Chap. 10. 

MRS. HUBBLE.— \ remember Mrs. Hubble 
as a little, curly, sharp-edged person in sky-blue, 
who held a conventionally juvenile position, be- 
cause she had married Mr. Hubble — I don't 
know at what remote period — when she was 
much younger than he. I remember Mr. Hub- 
ble as a tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man, 
of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraor- 
dinarily wide apart ; so that in my short days I 
always saw some miles of open country between 
them when I met him coming up the lane. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

TILL Y SLO WBO K— It may be noted of 
Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting the cau- 
tion with some vivacity, that she had a rare and 
surprising talent for getting this baby into diffi- 
culties ; and had several times imperilled its 
short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own. 
She was of a spare and straight shape, this 
young lady, insomuch that her garments appeared 
to be in constant danger of sliding off those 
sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were 
loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for 
the partial development, on all possible occa- 
sions, of some flannel vestment of a singular 
structure ; also for affording glimpses, in the 
region of the back, of a corset, or pair of stays, 
in color a dead-green. Being always in a state 



CHARACTERS AND 



86 



CHARACTERISTICS 



of gaping admiration at everything, and ab- 
sorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation 
of her mistress's perfections and the baby's. 
Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment 
may be said to have done equal honor to her 
head and to her heart ; and though these did 
less honor to the baby's head, which they were 
the occasional means of bringing into contact 
with deal-doors, dressers, stair-rails, bedposts, 
and other foreign substances, still they were the 
honest results of Tilly Slowboy's constant aston- 
ishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and 
installed in such a comfortable home. For the 
maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike un- 
known to Fame, and Tilly had been bred by 
public charity, a foundling ; which word, though 
only differing from fondling by one vowel's 
length, is very different in meaning, and ex- 
presses quite another thing. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 

MRS. KITTERBELL. — Mrs. Kitterbell 
was a tall, thin young lady, with very light hair, 
and a particularly white face — one of those 
young women who almost invariably, though one 
hardly knows why, recall to one's mind the idea 
of a cold fillet of veal. — Tales, Chap. ii. 

MISS MARTIN.— Miss Amelia Martin was 
pale, tallish, thin, and two-and-thirty — what ill- 
natured people would call plain, and police re- 
ports interesting. She was a milliner and dress- 
maker, living on her business, and not above it. 
Sketches {Characters), Chap. 8. 

MRS. MIFF, The Fezv-Opener.—Mrs. Miff, 
the wheezy little pew-opener — a mighty dry old 
lady, sparely dressed, with not an inch of fullness 
anywhere about her — is also here, and has been 
waiting at the church-gate half-an-hour, as her 
place is, for the beadle. 

A vinegary face has Mrs. Miff, and a mortified 
bonnet, and eke a thirsty soul for sixpences and 
shillings. Beckoning to stray people to come 
into pews, has given Mrs. Miff an air of mystery ; 
and there is reservation in the eye of Mrs. Miff, 
as always knowing of a softer seat, but having 
her suspicions of the fee. There is no such fact 
as Mr. Miff, nor has there been these twenty 
years, and Mrs. Miff would rather not allude to 
him. — Dombey df Son, Chap. 31. 

" Well, well," .says Mrs. Miff, " you might do 
worse. For you're a tidy pair ! " 

There is nothing personal in Mrs. Miff's re- 
mark. She merely speaks of stock in trade. She 
is hardly more curious in couples than in coffins. 
She is such a spare, straight, dry old lady — such 
a pew of a woman — that you should find as 
many individual sympathies in a chip. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap, 57. 

MISS MIGGS.—Kxs. Varden's chief aider and 
abettor, and at the same time her principal vic- 
tim and object of wrath, was her single domestic 
servant, one Miss Miggs ; or, as she was called, 
in conformity with those prejudices of society 
which lop and top from poor handmaidens all 
sucVz genteel excrescences — Miggs. This Miggs 
waf- a tall young lady, very much addicted to 
pa<tens in private life ; slender and shrewish, of 
a rather uncomfortable figure, and though not 
al'solutely ill-looking, of a sharp and acid visage. 



As a general principle and abstract proposition, 
Miggs held the male sex to be utterly contempti- 
ble and unworthy of notice ; to be fickle, false, 
base, sottish, inclined to perjury, and wholly 
undeserving. When particularly exasperated 
against them (which, scandal said, was when Sim 
Tappertit slighted her most) she was accustomed 
to wish with great emphasis that the whole race 
of women could but die off, in order that the 
men might be brought to know the real value 
of the blessings by which they set so little store ; 
nay, her feeling for her order ran so high, that 
she sometimes declared, if she could only have 
good security for a fair, round number — say ten 
thousand — of young virgins following her exam- 
ple, she would, to spite mankind, hang, drown, 
stab, or poison herself, with a joy past all ex- 
pression. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 7. 

MRS. MARKLEHAM.—yix%. Strong's mam- 
ma was a lady I took great delight in. Her 
name was Mrs. Markleham ; but our boys used 
to call her the Old Soldier, on account of her 
generalship, and the skill with which she mar- 
shalled great forces of relations against the Doc- 
tor. She was a little, sharp-eyed woman, who 
used to wear, when she was dressed, one un- 
changeable cap, ornamented with some artificial 
flowers, and two artificial butterflies supposed to 
be hovering about the flowers. There was a 
superstition among us that this cap had come 
from France, and could only originate in the 
workmanship of that ingenious nation ; but all 
I certainly know about it is, that it always made 
its appearance of an evening, wheresoever Mrs. 
Markleham made her appearance ; that it was 
carried about to friendly meetings in a Hindoo 
basket ; that the butterflies had the gift of trem- 
bling constantly ; and that they improved the 
shining hours at Dr. Strong's expense, like busy 
bees. — David Copperjield, Chap. 16. 

MAGGIE. — She was about eight-and-twenty, 
with large bones, large features, large feet and 
hands, large eyes, and no hair. Her large eyes 
were limpid and almost colorless ; they seemed 
to be very little affected by light, and to stand 
unnaturally still. There was also that attentive, 
listening expression in her face, which is seen in 
the faces of the blind ; but she was not blind, 
having one tolerably serviceable eye. Her face 
was not exceedingly ugly, though it was only 
redeemed from being so by a smile ; a good- 
humored smile, and pleasant in itself, but ren- 
dered pitiable by being constantly there. A 
great white cap, with a quantity of opaque frill- 
ing that was always flapping about, apologized 
for Maggy's baldness, and made it so very diffi- 
cult for her old black bonnet to retain its place 
upon her head, that it held on round her neck 
like a gypsy's baby. A commission of haber- 
dashers could alone have reported what the rest 
of her poor dress was made of; but it had a 
strong general resemblance to sea-weed, with 
here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her shawl 
looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long in- 
fusion. — Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 9> 

MISS MO WCHER.—l looked at the door- 
way and saw nothing. I wiis still looking 
at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher 
was a long while making her appearance, 
when, to my infinite astonishment there came 




I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MiSS MoWCHER. 



86 



CHAMBERMAID 



87 



CHEEK 



waddling round a sofa which stood between me 
and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, 
with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish 
gray eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, 
to enable herself to lay a finger archly against 
her snub nose as she ogled Steerforth, she was 
. obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her 
I nose against it. Her chin, which was what is 
called a double-chin, was so fat that it entirely 
swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and 
all. Throat she had none ; waist she had none ; 
legs she had none, worth mentioning ; for though 
she was more than full-sized down to where her 
waist would have been, if she had had any, and 
though she terminated, as human beings gener- 
ally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that 
she stood at a common-sized chair as at a table, 
resting a bag she carried on the seat. This 
lady, dressed in an off-hand, easy style ; bring- 
ing her nose and her forefinger together, with the 
difficulty I have described ; standing with her 
head necessarily on one side, an^, with one of 
her sharp eyes shut up, making an uncommonly 
knowing face ; after ogling Steerforth for a few 
moments, broke into a torrent of words. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 22. 

CHAMBERMAID. 

I rang the chambermaid's bell ; and Mrs. 
Pratchett marched in, according to custom, de- 
murely carrying a lighted flat candle before her, 
as if she was one of a long public procession, all 
the other members of which were invisible. 

Somebody s Luggage, Chap. 3. 

CHANGE-The Results of. 

Change begets change. Nothing propagates 
so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle 
of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom 
travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief 
a space, his departure from the monotonous 
scene on which he has been an actor of impor- 
tance, would seem to be the signal for instant 
confusion. As if, in the gap he had left, the 
wedge of change were driven to the head, rend- 
ing what was a solid mass to fragments ; things 
cemented and held together by the usages of 
years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The 
mine which Time has slowly dug beneath famil- 
iar objects, is sprung in an instant ; and what 
was rock before, becomes but sand and dust. 
Most men, at one time or other, have proved 
this in some degree. 

Martin Chuzzkwit, Chap. 18. 

CHARITY-of the Poor. 

The man came running after them, and press- 
ing her hand left something in it — two old, bat- 
tered, smoke-encrusted penny pieces. Who knows 
but they shone as brightly in the eyes of angels, 
as golden gifts that have been chronicled on 
tombs ? — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 45. 

CHARITY— Held by Main Force. 

\ Mr. Wegg smokes and looks at the fire with a 
most determined expression of Charity ; as if he 
had caught that cardinal virtue by the skirts as 
she felt it her painful duty to depart from him, 
and held her by main force. 

Our Mutual Frietui, Book II,, Chap. 7. 

CHARITY— Speculators in. 

In short, we heard of a great many Missions, 
of various sorts, among this set of people ; but, 

9 



nothing respecting them was half so clear to us. 
as that it was Mr. Quale's mission to be in ec- 
stasies with everybody else's mission, and that 
it was the most popular mission of all. 

Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company, in 
the tenderness of his heart, and his earnest desire 
to do all the good in his power ; but, that he 
felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, 
where benevolence took spasmodic forms ; where 
charity was assumed, as a regular uniform, by 
loud professors and speculators in cheap notori- 
ety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in 
action, servile in the last degree of meanness to 
the great, adulatory of one another, and intolera 
ble to those who were anxious quietly to help the 
weak from falling, rather than with a f^reat deal 
of bluster and self-laudation to raise tTIem up a 
little way when they were down ; he plainly fold 
us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. 
Quale, by Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, 
originated by Mr. Quale), and when Mr. Gusher 
spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a 
meeting, including two charity-schools of small 
boys and girls, who were specially reminded of 
the widow's mite, and requested to come forward 
with halfpence, and be acceptable sacrifices ; I 
think the wind was in the east for three whole 
weeks. — Bleak House, Chap. 15. 

CHARITY— The Romance of. 

There are many lives of much pain, hardship, 
and suffering, which, having no stirring interest 
for any but those who lead them, are disregarded 
by persons who do not want thought or feeling, 
but who pamper their compassion, and need high 
stimulants to rouse it. 

There are not a few among the disciples of 
charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely 
less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in 
theirs ; and hence it is that diseased sympathy 
and compassion are every day expended on out- 
of-the-way objects, when only too many demands 
upon the legitimate exercise of the same virtues 
in a healthy state, are constantly within the sight 
and hearing of the most unobservant person alive. 
In short, chaxity must have its romance, as the 
novelist or playwright must have his. A thief in 
fustian is a vulgar character, scarcely to be thought 
of by persons of refinement ; but dress him in 
green velvet, with a high-crowned hat, and change 
the scene of his operations from a thickly, 
peopled city to a mountain road, and you shall 
find in him the very soul of poetry and adven- 
ture. So it is with the one great cardinal virtue, 
which, properly nourished and exercised, leads 
to, if it does not necessarily include, all the 
others. It must have its romance ; and the less 
of real, hard, struggling, work-a-day life there is 
in that romance the better. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 18. 

CHEEK— An Unsympathetic. 

" My child is welcome, though unlooked for," 
said she, at the time presenting her cheek as if 
it were a cool slate for visitors to enroll them- 
selves upon. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 16. 

" This," said Mrs. Wilfer, presenting a cheeic 
to be kissed, as sympathetic and responsive as 
the back of the bowl of a spoon, " is quite 
an honor !" 

Our Mutual Fnend, Book II., Chap. 8. 



CHEER 



88 



CHILD 



CHEER— An English. 

No men on earth can cheer like Englishmen, 
who do so rally one another's blood and spirit 
when they cheer in earnest, that the stir is like 
the rush of their whole history, with all its stand- 
ards waving at once, from Saxon Alfred's down- 
ward. — Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 22. 

CHEERFTJIiNESS— Kit's Religion. 

" I don't believe, mother, that harmless cheer- 
fulness and good humor are thought greater sins 
in Heaven than shirt-collars are, and I do be- 
lieve that those chaps are just about as right and 
sensible in putting down th-e one as in leaving 
off the other — that's my belief. Whenever a Lit- 
tle Bethel parson calls you a precious lamb, or 
says your brother's one, you tell him it's the 
truest thing he's said for a twelvemonth, and 
that if he'd got a little more of the lamb himself, 
and less of the mint-sauce — not being quite so 
sharp and sour over it — I should like him all 
the better." — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 41. 

CHEERFTJLNESS-Kit's Philosophy of. 

" Can you suppose there's any harm in looking 
as cheerful and being as cheerful as our poor cir- 
cumstances will permit ? Do I see anything in 
the way I'm made, which calls upon me to be a 
snivelling, solemn, whispering chap, sneaking 
about as if I couldn't help it, and expressing 
myself in a most unpleasant snuffle ? on the con- 
trary, don't I see every reason why I shouldn't ? 
Just hear this ! Ha ha ha ! Ain't that as nat'ral 
as walking, and as good for the health ? Ha ha 
ha ! Ain't that as nat'ral as a sheep's bleating, 
or a pig's grunting, or a horse's neighing, or a 
bird's singing? Ha ha ha ! Isn't it, mother? " 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 22. 

CHEMIST-The. 

Who that had seen him m his inner chamber, 
part library and part laboratory — for he was, as 
the world knew, far and wide, a learned man in 
chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands 
a crowd of aspiring ears and eyes hung daily — 
who that had seen him there, upon a winter 
night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instru- 
ments and books ; the shadow of his shaded 
lamp a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless 
among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by 
the flickering of the fire upon the quaint objects 
around him ; some of these phantoms (the re- 
flections of glass vessels that held liquids) trem- 
bling at heart like things that knew his power 
to uncombine them, and to give back their com- 
ponent parts to fire and vapor ; who that had 
seen him then, his work done, and he pondering 
in his chair before the rusted grate and red 
flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech, 
but silent as the dead, would not have said that 
the man seemed haunted and the chamber too ? 
Haunted Man, Chap. i. 

CHESTERFIELD— as a Man of the "World. 

" Shakespeare was undoubtedly very fine in 
his way ; Milton good, though prosy ; Lord Ba 
con deep, and decidedly knowing ; but the writer 
who should be his country's pride, is my Lord 
Chesterfield." 

He became thoughtful again, and the tooth- 
pick was in requisition. 

" I thought I was tolerably accomplished as a 
man of the world," he continued ; " I flattered 



myself that I was pretty well versed in all those 
little arts and graces which distinguish men of 
the world from boors and peasants, and separate 
their character from those intensely vulgar sen- 
timents which are called the national character. 
Apart from any natural prepossession in my own 
favor, I believed I was. Still, in every page of 
this enlightened writer, I find some captivating 
hypocrisy which has never occurred to me be- 
fore, or some superlative piece of selfishness to 
which I was utterly a stranger. I should quite 
blush for myself before this stupendous creature, 
if, remembering his precepts, one might blush at 
anything. An amazing man ! a nobleman in 
deed ! any king or queen may make a lord, but 
only the Devil himself — and the Graces — can 
make a Chesterfield." 

Many who are thoroughly false and hollow, 
seldom try to hide those vices from themselves ; 
and yet, in the very act of avowing them, they 
lay claim to the virtues they feign most to de- 
spise. " For," say they, " this is honesty, this is 
truth. All mankind are like us, but they have 
not the candor to avow it." The more they af- 
fect to deny the existence of any sincerity in the 
world, the more they would be thought to pos- 
sess it in its boldest shape ; and this is an un- 
conscious compliment to Truth on the part of 
these philosophers, which will turn the laugh 
against them to the Day of Judgment. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 23. 

CHILD— A matured (Mr. Grewgrious). 

" Young ways were never my ways. I was the 
only offspring of parents far advanced in life, 
and I half believe I was born advanced in life 
myself. No personality is intended towards the 
name you will so soon change, when I remark 
that while the general growth of people seem to 
have come into existence buds, I seem to have 
come into existence a chip. I was a chip — and 
a very dry one — when I first became aware of 
myself." — Edwin Drood, Chap. 9. 

CHILD — Sickness of Johnny Harmon — 
Sloppy's accotint. 

Mr. Sloppy being introduced, remained close 
to the door ; revealing, in various parts of his 
form, many surprising, confounding, and incom- 
prehensible buttons. 

" I am glad to see you," said John Rokesmith, 
in a cheerful tone of welcome. " I have been 
expecting you." 

Sloppy explained that he had meant to come 
before, but that the orphan (of whom he made 
mention as Our Johnny) had been ailing, and he 
had waited to report him well. 

" Then he is well now ? " said the Secretary. 

" No he ain't," said Sloppy. 

Mr. Sloppy having shaken his head to a con- 
siderable extent, proceeded to remark that he 
thought Johnny " must have took 'em from the 
Minders." Being asked what he meant, he an- 
swered, them that come out upon him and par- 
tickler his chest. Being requested to explain 
himself, he stated that there was some of 'em 
wot you couldn't kiver with a sixpence. Pressed 
to fall back upon a nominative case, he opined 
that they wos about as red as ever red could be. 
" But as long as they strikes out'ards, sir," con- 
tinued Sloppy, " they ain't so much. It's their 
striking in'ards that's to be kep off." 

John Rokesmith hoped the child had had 



CHILD 



CHILD 



medical attendance ? Oh, yes, said Sloppy, he 
had been took to the doctor's shop once. And 
what did the doctor call it ? Rokesmith asked 
him. After some perplexed reflection. Sloppy 
answered, brightening, " He called it something 
as was wery long for spots." Rokesmith sug- 
gested measles. " No," said Sloppy, with con- 
fidence, '* ever so much longer than them, sir ! " 
(Mr. Sloppy was elevated by this fact, and seem- 
ed to consider that it reflected credit on the poor 
little patient.) 

SjC 5jC ^ TP ^ 3fC 

" Last night," said Sloppy, '* when I was a- 
turning at the wheel pretty late, the mangle 
seemed to go like our Johnny's breathing. It 
begun beautiful, then as it went out it shook a 
little and got unsteady, then as it took the turn 
to come home it had a rattle-like and lumbered 
a bit, then it come smooth, and so it went on till 
I scarce know'd which was mangle and which 
was Our Johnny. Nor Our Johnny, he scarce 
know'd either, for sometimes when the mangle 
lumbers he says, ' Me choking. Granny ! ' and 
Mrs. Higden holds him up in her lap and says 
to me, ' Bide a bit. Sloppy,' and we all stops to- 
gether. And when Our Johnny gets his breath- 
ing again, 1 turns again, and we all goes on 
together." 

Sloppy had gradually expanded with this de- 
scription into a stare and a vacant grin. He now 
contracted, being silent, into a half-repressed 
gush of tears, and, under pretence of being 
heated, drew the under part of his sleeve across 
his eyes with a singularly awkward, laborious, 
and roundabout smear. 

" So bad as that ! " cried Mrs. Boffin. " And 
Betty Higden not to tell me of it sooner ! " 

" I think she might have been mistrustful, 
mum," answered Sloppy, hesitating. 

"Of what, for Heaven's sake?" 

" I think she might have been mistrustful, 
mum," returned Sloppy, with submission, " of 
standing in Our Johnny's light. There's so much 
trouble in illness, and so much expense, and she's 
seen such a lot of its being objected to." 

" But she never can have thought," said Mrs. 
Boffin, " that I would grudge the dear child any- 
thing ? " 

" No, mum, but she might have thought (as a 
habit-like) of its standing in Johnny's light, and 
might have tried to bring him through it unbe- 
knownst." 

Sloppy knew his ground well. To conceal 
herself in sickness, like a lower animal ; to creep 
out of sight and coil herself away, and die ; had 
become this woman's instinct. To catch up in 
her arms the sick child who was dear to her, and 
hide it as if it were a criminal, and keep off all 
ministration but such as her own ignorant ten- 
derness and patience could supply, had become 
this woman's idea of maternal love, fidelity, and 
duty. The shameful accounts we read, every 
week in the Christian year, my Lords and Gen- 
tlemen and Honorable Boards, the infamous re- 
cords of small official inhumanity, do not pass 
by the people as they pass by us. And hence 
these irrational, blind, and obstinate prejudices, 
so astonishing to our magnificence, and having 
no more reason in them — God save the Queen 
and confound their politics — no, than smoke has 
in coming from fire ! 

Our Mutual Friend^ Book 11.^ Chap. 9. 



CHILD— Death of Little Johnny Harmon. 

At the Children's Hospital, the gallant steed, 
the Noah's ark, the yellow bird, and the officer 
in the Guards, were made as welcome as their 
child-owner. But the doctor said aside to Roke- 
smith, " This should have been days ago. Too 
late!" 

However, they were all carried up into a fresh 
airy room, and there Johnny came to himself, 
out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was, to 
find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a 
little platform over his breast, on which were al- 
ready arranged, to give him heart and urge him 
to cheer up, the Noah's ark, the noble steed, and 
the yellow bird ; with the officer in the Guards 
doing duty over the whole, quite as much to the 
satisfaction of his country as if he had been 
upon Parade. And at the bed's head was a col- 
ored picture beautiful to see, representing as it 
were another Johnny seated on the knee of some 
Angel surely, who loved little children. And, 
marvellous fact, to lie and stare at : Johnny had 
become one of a little family, all in little quiet 
beds (except two playing dominoes in little arm- 
chairs at a little table on the hearth) ; and on all 
the little beds were little platforms whereon were 
to be seen dolls' houses, woolly dogs with me- 
chanical barks in them, not very dissimilar from 
the artificial voice pervading the bowels of the 
yellow bird, tin armies, Mooi-ish tumblers, 
wooden tea-things, and the riches of the earth. 

As Johnny murmureql something in his placid 
admiration, the ministering women at his bed's 
head asked him what he said. It seemed that 
he wanted to know whether all these were 
brothers and sisters of his ? So they told him 
yes. It seemed then, that he wanted to know 
whether God had brought them all together 
there ? So they told him yes again. They made 
out then, that he wanted to know whether they 
would all get out of pain? So they answered 
yes to that question likewise, and made him un- 
derstand that the reply included himself. 

Johnny's powers of sustaining conversation 
were as yet so very imperfectly developed, even 
in a state of health, that in sickness they were 
little more than monosyllabic. But, he had to 
be washed and tended, and remedies were ap- 
plied, and though those offices were far, far 
more skillfully and lightly done than ever any- 
thing had been done for him in his little life, so 
rough and short, they would have hurt and tired 
him but for an amazing circumstance which laid 
hold of his attention. This was no less than the 
appearance on his own little platform in pairs, 
of All Creation, on its way into his own particu- 
lar ark : the elephant leading, and the fly, with 
a diffident sense of his size, politely bringing up 
the rear. A very little brother lying in the next 
bed wiih a broken leg, was so enchanted by tliis 
spectacle that his delight exalted its enthralling 
interest ; and so came rest and sleep. 

" I see you are not afraid to leave the dear 
child here, Betty," whispered Mrs. Boffin. 

" No, ma'am. Most willingly, most thankful- 
ly, with all my heart and soul." 

So, they kissed him, and left him there, and 
old Betty was to come back early in the morn- 
ing, and nobody but Rokesmith knew for certain 
how that the doctor had said, " This should have 
been days ago. Too late ! " 

But, Rokesmith knowing it, and knowing that 
his bearing it in mind would be acceptable there- 



CHILD 



90 



CHILDHOOD 



after to that good woman who had been the only 
light in the childhood of desolate John Harmon 
dead and gone, resolved that late at night he 
would go back to the bedside of John Harmon's 
namesake, and see how it fared with him. 

The family whom God had brought together 
were not all asleep, but were all quiet. From 
bed to bed, a light womanly tread and a pleasant 
fresh face passed in the silence of the night. A 
little head would lift itself up into the softened 
light here and there, to be kissed as the face 
went by — for these little patients are very loving 
— and would then submit itself to be composed 
to rest again. The mite with the broken leg 
was restless, and moaned ; but after a while 
turned his face towards Johnny's bed, to fortify 
himself with a view of the ark, and fell asleep. 
Over most of the beds, the toys were yet grouped 
as the children had left them when they last 
laid themselves down, and, in their innocent 
grotesqueness and incongruity, they might have 
stood for the children's dreams. 

The doctor came in too, to see how it fared 
with Johnny. And he and Rokesmith stood to- 
gether, looking down with compassion upon 
him. 

" What is it, Johnny ? " Rokesmith was the 
questioner, and put an arm round the poor baby 
as he made a struggle, 



Hi 



said the little fellow. " Those ! " 



The doctor was quick to understand children, 
and, taking the horse, the ark, the yellow bird, 
and the man in the Guards, from Johnny's bed, 
softly placed them on that of his next neighbor, 
the mite with the broken leg. 

With a weary and yet a pleased smile, and 
with an action as if he stretched his little figure 
out to rest, the child heaved his body on the 
sustaining arm, and seeking Rokesmith's face 
with his lips, said : 

" A kiss for the boofer lady." 

Having now bequeathed all he had to dispose 
of, and arranging his affairs in this world, John- 
ny, thus speaking, left it. 

Our Mutual Friend^ Book II., Chap. 9. 

CHILD— A Fashionable. 

There was a Miss Podsnap. And this young 
rocking-horse was being trained in her mother's 
art of prancing in a stately manner without ever 
getting on. But the high parental action was not 
yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an 
undersized damsel, with high shoulders, low 
spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of 
nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty 
peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to 
shrink back again, overcome by her mother's 
head-dress, and her father from head to foot 
— crushed by the mere dead-weight of Podsnap- 
pery — Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 11. 

CHILD— Of a Female Philanthropist. 

I was sitting at the window with my guardian, 
on the following morning, and Ada was busy writ- 
ing- -of course to Richard — when Miss Jellyby 
was announced, and entered, leading the identical 
Peepy, whom she had made some endeavors to 
render presentable, by wiping the dirt into cor- 
ners of his face and hands, and making his hair 
very wet, and then violently frizzing it with her 
fingers. Everything the dear child wore was 
either too large for him or too small. Among his 
other contradictoiy decorations he had the hat of 



a bishop, and the little gloves of a baby. His 
boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a plough- 
man; while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with 
scratches that they looked like maps, were bare, 
below a very short pair of plaid drawers, finished 
off with two frills of perfectly different patterns. 
The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evi- 
dently been supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's 
coats, they were so extremely brazen and so much 
too large. Most extraordinary specimens of nee- 
dlework appeared on several parts of his dress, 
where it had been hastily mended ; and I recog- 
nized the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. 

" Oh, dear me ! " said my guardian, " Due 
East ! " — Bleak Hotise, Chap. 14. 

CHILD AND FATHER-A Contrast. 

Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened 
room, in the great arm-chair by the bed-side, and 
Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bed- 
stead, carefully disposed on a low settee immedi- 
ately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his 
constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, 
and it was essential to toast him brown while he 
was very new. 

Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. 
Son about eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was 
rather bald, rather red, and though a handsome, 
well-made man, too stern and pompous in appear- 
ance to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, 
and very red, and though (of course) an undeniably 
fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his 
general effect, as yet. On the brow of Dombey, 
Time and his brother Care had set some marks, 
as on a tree that was to come down in good time 
— remorseless twins they are for striding through 
their human forests, notching as they go — while 
the countenance of Son was crossed and recrossed 
with a thousand little creases, which the same 
deceitful Time would take delight in smoothing 
out and wearing away with the flat part of his 
scythe, as a preparation of the surface for his 
deeper operations. 

Dombey, exulting in the long-looked for event, 
jingled and jingled the heavy gold watch-chain 
that depended from below his trim blue coat, 
whereof the buttons sparkled phosphorescently 
in the feeble rays of the distant fire. Son, with 
his little fists curled up and clenched, seemed, in 
his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for 
having come upon him so unexpectedly. 

Dombey S' Son, Chap. i. 

CHILDHOOD— The Power of Observation in. 

I believe the power of observation in numbers 
of very young children to be quite wonderful for 
its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that 
most grown men who are remarkable in this 
respect, may, with greater propriety, be said not 
to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it ; 
the rather, as I generally observe such men to 
retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and 
capacity of being pleased, which are also an in- 
heritance they have preserved from their child- 
hood. — David Copperjield, Chap. 2. 

CHILDHOOD— The Fortitude of Little NeU. 

In the pale moonlight, which lent a wanness 
of its own to the delicate face, where thoughtful 
care already mingled with the winning grace and 
loveliness of youth, the too bright eye, the spirit- 
ual head, the lips that pressed each other with 
such high resolves and courage of the heart, the 



CHILDHOOD 



91 



CHILDBEN 



slight figure, firm in its bearing, and yet so very 
weak, told their silent tale ; but told it only to 
the wind that rustled by, which, taking up its 
burden, carried, perhaps to some mother's pillow, 
faint dreams of childhood fading in its bloom, 
and resting in the sleep that knows no waking. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 43. 

CHILDHOOD— The early experience of. 

" It always grieves me to contemplate the in- 
itiation of children into the ways of life, when 
they are scarcely more than infants. It checks 
iheir confidence and simplicity — two of the best 
qualities that Heaven gives them — and demands 
that they share our sorrows before they are ca- 
pable of entering into our enjoyments." 

" It will never check hers," said the old man, 
looking steadily at me ; " the springs are too 
deep. Besides, the children of the poor know 
but few pleasures. Even the cheap delights of 
childhood must be bought and paid for." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. i. 

CHILDHOOD— in a city. 

I don't know where she was going, but we saw 
her run, such a little, little creature, in her wo- 
manly bonnet and apron, through a covered way 
at the bottom of the court ; and melt into the 
city's strife and sound, like a dewdrop in an 
ocean. — Bleak House, Chap. 15. 

CHILDHOOD— Sad remembrances of. 

The dreams of childhood — its airy fables ; its 
graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adorn- 
ments of the world beyond ; so good to be be- 
lieved in once, so good to be remembered when 
outgrown, for then the least among them rises to 
the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suf- 
fering little children to come into the midst of 
it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in 
the stony ways of this world, wherein it was 
better for all the children of Adam that they 
should oftener sun themselves, simple and trust- 
ful, and not worldly-wise — what had she to do 
with these? Remembrances of how she had 
journeyed to the little that she knew, by the en- 
chanted roads of what she and millions of inno- 
cent creatures had hoped and imagined ; and how 
first coming upon Reason through the tender 
light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, 
deferring to gods as great as itself ; not a grim 
Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand 
to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a 
sightless stare, never to be moved by anything 
but so many calculated tons of leverage — what 
had she to clo with these ? Her remembrances of 
home and childhood were remembrances of the 
drying up of every spring and fountain in her 
young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters 
were not there. They were flowing for the ferti- 
lization of the land where grapes are gathered 
from thorns, and figs from thistles. 

Hard Times, Book If., Chap. 9. 

CHILDHOOD— The Dreams of. 

The room was a pleasant one, at the top of 
the house, overlooking the sea, on which the 
moon was^shining brilliantly. After I had said 
my prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I 
remember how I still sat looking at the moon- 
light on the water, as if I could hope to read my 
fortune in it, as in a bright book ; or to see my 
mother with her child, coming from Heaven, 



along that shining path, to look upon me as she 
had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I 
remember how I seemed to float, then, down 
the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, 
away into the world of dreams. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 13. 

CHILDHOOD— Neglected. 

The girl belonged to a class — unhappily but 
too extensive — the very existence of which 
should make men's hearts bleed. Barely past 
her childhood, it required but a glance to dis- 
cover that she was one of those children, born 
and bred in neglect and vice, who have never 
known what childhood is : who have never been 
taught to love and court a parent's smile, or to 
dread a parent's frown. The thousand nameless 
endearments of childhood, its gayety and its in- 
nocence, are alike unknown to them. They 
have entered at once upon the stern realities 
and miseries of life, and to their better nature it 
is almost hopeless to appeal in after-times, by 
any of the references which will awaken, if it be 
only for a moment, some good feeling in ordi- 
nary bosoms, however corrupt they may have 
become. Talk to them of parental solicitude, 
the happy days of childhood, and the merry 
games of infancy ! Tell them of hunger and 
the streets, beggary and stripes, the gin-shop, 
the station-house, and the pawnbroker's, and 
they will understand you. — Scenes, Chap. 25. 

CHILDISHNESS- A Misnomer. 

We call this a state of childishness, but it is 
the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death 
is of sleep. Where, in the dull eyes of doting 
men, are the laughing light and life of child- 
hood, the gayety that has known no check, the 
frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has 
never withered, the joys that fade in blossom- 
ing? Where, in the sharp lineaments of rigid 
and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slum- 
ber, telling of rest for the waking hours that are 
past, and gentle hopes and loves for those which 
are to come ? Lay death and sleep down, side 
by side, and say who shall find the two akin. 
Send forth the child and childish man together, 
and blush for the pride that libels our own old 
happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and 
distorted image. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 12. 

CHILDREN— The blessing- of. 

Humanity is indeed a happy lot, when we 
can repeat ourselves in others, and still be young 
as they. — Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 27. 

CHILDREN-Injustice to. 

In the little world in which children have 
their existence, whosoever brings them up, there 
is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, 
as injustice. It may be only small injustice that 
the child can be exposed to ; but the child is 
small, and its world is small, and its rocking- 
horse stands as many hands high, according to 
scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within my- 
self, I had sustained, from my biibyhood, a per- 
petual conflict with injustice. I had known, 
from the time when I could speak, that my sis- 
ter, in her capricious and violent coercion, was 
unjust to me. I had cherished a profound con- 
viction that her bringing me up by hand gave 
her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through 
all my punishments, disgraces, fasts, and vigils 



CHILDREN 



92 



CHILDREN 



and other penitential performances, I had nursed 
this assurance ; and to my communing so much 
with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I in 
great part refer the fact that I was morally timid 
and very sensitive. 

Great Expectations y Chap. 8. 

CHILDREN— Keeping and losing:. 

" You have a son, I believe? " said Mr. Dom- 
bey. 

" Four on 'em, sir. Four hims and a her. All 
alive ! " 

" Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep 
them ! " said Mr. Dombey. 

" I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the 
world less, sir." 

" What is that ? " 

" To lose 'em, sir." — Dombey &> Son^ Ck. 2. 

CHILDREN— A lawyer's view of. 

Pretty nigh all the children he saw in his 
daily business life, he had reason to look upon 
as so much spawn, to develop into the fish that 
were to come to his net — to be prosecuted, de- 
fended, forsworn, made orphans, be-devilled 
somehow. — Great Expectations ^ Chap. 51. 

CHILDREN— Tlie sympathy of. 

No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, 
and knew her with a blameless though an un- 
changed mind, when she was a wife and a moth- 
er, but her children had a strange sympathy with 
him — an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 21. 

CHILDREN— at chtirch. 

Here is our pew in the church. What a high- 
backed pew ! With a window near it, out of 
which our houSe can be seen, and is seen many 
times during the morning's service, by Peg- 
gotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she 
can that it's not being robbed, or is not in flames. 
But though Peggotty's eye wanders, she is much 
offended if mine does, and frowns to me, as I 
stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the 
clergyman. But I can't always look at him — I 
know him without that white thing on, and I am 
afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and per- 
haps stopping the service to inquire — and what 
am I to do? It's a dreadful thing to gape, but I 
must do something. I look at my mother, but 
she pretends not to see me. I look at a boy in 
the aisle, and he makes faces at me. I look at 
the sunlight coming in at the open door through 
the porch, and there I see a stray sheep — I don't 
mean a sinner, but mutton — half making up his 
mind to come into the church. I feel that if I 
looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to 
say something out loud ; and what would become 
of me then ? I look up at the monumental tab- 
lets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers, 
late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. 
Bodgers must have been, when affliction sore, 
long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were 
in vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr. 
Chillip, and he was in vain ; and if so, how he 
likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look 
from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the 
pulpit ; and think what a good place it would be 
to play in, and what a castle it would make, with 
another boy coming up the stairs to attack it, 
and having the velvet cushion with the tassels 
thrown down on his head. In time my eyes 



gradually shut up ; and, from seeming to hear 
the clergyman singing a drowsy song in the heat, 
I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with a 
crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive, 
by Peggotty. — David Copperfield^ Chap, 2. 

CHILDREN— of Nature. 

There was once a child, and he strolled about 
a good deal, and thought of a number of things. 
He had a sister, who was a child too, and his 
constant companion. These two used to won- 
der all day long. They wondered at the beauty 
of the flowers ; they wondered at the height and 
blueness of the sky ; they wondered at the depth 
of the bright water ; they wondered at the good- 
ness and the power of GoD, who made the lovely 
world. 

They used to say to one another, sometimes, 
Supposing all the children upon earth were to 
die, would the flowers, and the water, and the 
sky be sorry ? They believed they would be 
sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children 
of the flowers, and the little playful streams that 
gambol down the hill-sides are the children 
of the water ; and the smallest bright specks 
playing at hide and seek in the sky all night, 
must surely be the children of the stars ; and 
they would all be grieved to see their playmates, 
the children of men, no more. 

Child s Dream of a Star. — Reprinted Pieces. 

CHILDREN, Neglected— Their footprints. 

I looked at him, and I looked about at the 
disorderly traces in the mud, and I thought of 
the drops of rain and the footprints of an ex- 
tinct creature, hoary ages upon ages old, that 
geologists have identified on the face of a cliff; 
and this speculation came over me : If this mud 
could petrify at this moment, and could lie con- 
cealed here for ten thousand years, I wonder 
whether the race of men then to be our succes- 
sors on the earth could, from these or any marks, 
by the utmost force of the human intellect, un- 
assisted by tradition, deduce such an astounding 
inference as the existence of a polished state of 
society that bore with the public savagery of 
neglected children in the streets of its capital 
city, and was proud of its power by sea and 
land, and never used its power to seize and save 
them ! — An Amateur Beat — New Uncommercial 
Samples. 

CHILDREN— Who are doted upon. 

The couple who dote upon their children 
recognize no dates but those connected with 
their births, accidents, illnesses, or remarkable 
deeds. They keep a mental almanac with a 
vast number of Innocents' days, all in red let- 
ters. They recollect the last coronation, because 
on that day little Tom fell down the kitchen 
stairs ; the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, 
because it was on the fifth of November that 
Ned asked whether wooden legs were made in 
heaven and cocked hats grew in gai'dens. Mrs. 
Whiffler will never cease to recollect the last 
day of the old year as long as she lives, for it 
was on that day that the baby had the four red 
spots on its nose which they took for measles. 
* * * The children of this couple can know no 
medium. They are either prodigies of good 
health or prodigies of bad health ; whatever they 
are, they must be prodigies. — Sketches of Couples, 



CHILiDREN 



CHUiDRElT 



CHUiDREN— Their legs calendars of dis- 
tress. 

The children tumbled about, and notched 
memoranda of their accidents in their legs, 
which were perfect little calendars of distress. 
Bleak House, Chap. 5. 

CHILDREN— The love of. 

I love these little people ; and it is not a slight 
thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love 
us. — Old Cuiiosity Shop, Chap. I. 

CHILDREN— In the hospitals. 

In its seven-and-thirty beds I saw but little 
beauty, for starvation in the second or third gen- 
eration takes a pinched look ; but I saw the suf- 
ferings both of infancy and childhood tenderly 
assuaged ; I heard the little patients answering 
to pet, playful names ; the light touch of a deli- 
cate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for 
me to pity ; and the claw-like little hands, as 
she did so, twined themselves lovingly around 
her wedding-ring. 

One baby mite there was as pretty as any of 
Raphael's angels. The tiny head was bandaged 
for water on the brain, and it was suffering with 
acute bronchitis too, and made from time to 
time a plaintive, though not impatient or com- 
plaining, little sound. The smooth curve of the 
cheeks and of the chin was faultless in its con- 
densation of infantine beauty, and the large 
bright eyes were most lovely. It happened, as I 
stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes 
rested upon mine with that wistful expression of 
wondering thoughtfulness which we all know 
sometimes in very little children. They re- 
mained fixed on mine, and never turned from 
me while I stood there. When the utterance of 
that plaintive sound shook the little form, the 
gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as though 
the child implored me to tell the story of the lit- 
tle hospital in which it was sheltered to any gen- 
tle heart I could address. Laying my world- 
worn hand upon the little unmarked clasped 
hand at the chin, I gave it a silent promise that 
I would do so. — A Small Star in the East. New 
Uncommercial Samples. 

CHILDREN -Captain Cuttle's advice. 

" Hear him !" cried the Captain, " good moral- 
ity ! Wal'r, my lad. Train up a fig-tree in the 
way it should go, and when you are old sit un- 
der the shade on it. Overhaul the — Well," said 
the Captain, on second thoughts, " I ain't quite 
certain where that's to be found, but when found 
make a note of. Sol Gills, heave ahead again ! " 
Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 19. 

CHILDREN— Their martyrdom. 

At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of 
the farinaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss 
Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child, 
who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed 
in danger of being rubbed away altogether) was 
led in from captivity by the ogress herself, and 
instructed that nobody who sniffed before visit- 
ors ever went to Heaven. — Dombey dr' Son, Ch. 8. 



ness. Therefore, after vainly endeavoring to 
convince his reason by shakes, pokes, bawlings- 
out, and similar applications to his head, bhe led 
him into the air, and tried another method ; 
which was manifested to the marriage-party by a 
quick succession of sharp sounds, resembling 
applause, and, subsequently, by their seeing 
Alexander in contact with the coolest paving- 
stone in the court, greatly flushed, and loudly 
lamenting. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 60. 



However touching these marks of a tender 
disposition were to his mother, it was not in the 
character of that remarkable woman to permit 
her recognition of them to degenerate into weak- 



" The fine little boy with the blister on his 
nose is the eldest. The blister, I believe," said 
' Miss Tox, looking round upon the family, " i<; 
not constitutional, but accidental." 

The apple-faced man was understood to growl. 
" Flat-iron." 

*' I beg your pardon, sir," said Miss Tox, " did 
you — " 

" Flat-iron," he repeated. 

" Oh yes," said Miss Tox. " Yes ! quite true. 
I forgot. The little creature, in his mother's 
absence, smelt a warm flat-iron. You're quite 
right, sir." — Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 2. 

CHILDREN— The Gauntlet of their diseases. 

All this vigilance and care could not make 
little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, 
perhaps, he pined and wasted after the dismissal 
of his nurse, and for a long time seemed but to 
wait his opportunity of gliding through their 
hands, and seeking his lost mother. This dan- 
gerous ground in his steeple-chase towards man- 
hood passed, he still found it very rough riding, 
and was grievously beset by all the obstacles in 
his course. Every tooth was a break-neck fence, 
and every pimple in the measles a stone-wall to 
him. He was down in eveiy fit of the whooping- 
cough, and rolled upon and crushed by a whole 
field of small diseases, that came trooping on 
each other's heels to prevent his getting up again. 
Some bird of prey got into his throat instead of 
the thrush ; and the very chickens, turning fero- 
cious — if they have anything to do with that in- 
fant malady to which they lend their name — wor- 
ried him like tiger-cats. — Dombey 6^ Son, Ch. 8. 

CHILDREN— In love. 

Boots could assure me that it was better than 
a picter, and equal to a play, to see them babies, 
with their long, bright, curling hair, their spark- 
ling eyes, and their beautiful, light tread, a ram- 
bling about the garden, deep in love. Boots 
was of opinion that the birds believed they was 
birds, and kept up wiLh 'em, singing to please 
'em. Sometimes they would creep under the 
Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms 
round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks 
touching, a reading about the Prince, and the 
Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and 
the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would 
hear them planning about having a house in a 
forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living en- 
tirely on milk and honey. Once he came upon 
them by the pond, and heard Master Marry say, 
'* Adorable No rah, kiss me and say you love me 
to distraction, or I'll jump in head-foremost." 
And Boots made no question ho would hnve done 
it if she hadn't complied. On the whole. Boots 
said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he 
was in love himself— only he didn't exactly know 
who \\\\\\.— The Holly Tree. 



CHILDREN-HATER 



94 



CHRISTIAN 



I 



CHILDREN-HATER-Tackleton, the. 

Tackleton, the Toy merchant, pretty generally 
known as Gruff & Tackleton — for that was the 
firm, though Gruff had been bought out long 
ago ; only leaving his name, and as some said 
his nature, according to its Dictionary meaning, 
in the business — Tackleton, the Toy merchant, 
was a man whose vocation had been quite mis- 
understood by his Parents and Guardians. If 
they had made him a Money-Lender, or a sharp 
Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer, or a Broker, he 
might have sown his discontented oats in his 
youth, and, after having had the full-run of him- 
self in ill-natured transactions, might have 
turned out amiable, at last, for the sake of a lit- 
tle freshness and novelty. But, cramped and 
chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toy-making, 
he was a domestic Ogre, who had been living on 
children all his life, and was their implacable 
enemy. He despised all toys ; wouldn't have 
bought one for the world ; delighted, in his 
malice, to insinuate grim expressions into the 
faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to 
market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers' 
consciences, movable old ladies who darned 
stockings or carv'ed pies ; and other like samples 
of his stock in trade. In appalling masks ; 
hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes ; Vam- 
pire Kites ; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn't 
lie down, and were perpetually flying forward, to 
stare infants out of countenance ; his soul per- 
fectly revelled. They were his only relief and 
safety-valve. He was great in such inventions. 
Anything suggestive of a Pony nightmare was 
delicious to him. He had even lost money (and 
he took to that toy very kindly) by getting up 
Goblin slides for magic lanterns, whereon the 
Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of 
supernatural shell fish, with human faces. In 
intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had 
sunk quite a little capital ; and, though no 
painter himself, he could indicate, for the in- 
struction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a 
certain furtive leer for the countenances of those 
monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace 
of mind of any young gentleman between the 
ages of six and eleven, for the whole Christmas 
or Midsummer Vacation. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 

CHIN-A double. 

" That," repeated Mrs. Gowan, furling her 
green fan for the moment and tapping her chin 
with it (it was on the way to being a double 
chin ; might be called a chin and a half at pres- 
ent), " that's all ! " 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 33. 

CHRISTIAN— A conventional (Mrs. Sprodg- 
kin). 
She was a member of the Reverend Frank's 
congregation, and made a point of distinguish- 
ing herself in that body, by conspicuously weep- 
ing at everything, however cheering, said by the 
Reverend Frank in his public ministration ; also 
by applying to herself the various lamentations 
of David, and complaining in a personally in- 
jured manner (much in arrear of the clerk and 
the rest of the respondents) that her enemies 
were digging pit-falls about her, and breaking 
her with rods of iron. Indeed, this old widow 
discharged herself of that portion of the Morn- 
ing and Evening Service as if she were lodging 



a complaint on oath and applying for a warrant 
before a magistrate. But this was not her most 
inconvenient characteristic, for that took the 
form of an impression, usually recurring in in- 
clement weather and at about daybreak, that she 
had something on her mind, and stood in im- 
mediate need of the Reverend Frank to come 
and take it off. Many a time had that kind 
creature got up, and gone out to Mrs. Sprodgkin 
(such was the disciple's name), suppressing a 
strong sense of her comicality by his strong 
sense of duty, and perfectly knowing that noth- 
ing but a cold would come of it. However, be- 
yond themselves, the Reverend Frank Milvey 
and Mrs. Milvey seldom hinted that Mrs. 
Sprodgkin was hardly worth the trouble she 
gave ; but both made the best of her, as they did 
of all their troubles. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 11. 

CHRISTIAN— A professing (Mrs. Varden). 

" Let us be sincere, my dear madam — " 

" — and Protestant," murmured Mrs. Varden. 

" — and Protestant above all things. Let us 
be sincere and Protestant, strictly moral, strictly 
just (though always with a leaning towards mer- 
cy), strictly honest, and strictly true, and we gain 
— it is a slight point, certainly, but still it is 
something tangible ; we throw up a groundwork 
and foundation, so to speak, of goodness, on 
which we may afterwards erect some worthy 
superstructure." 

Now, to be sure, Mrs. Varden thought, here is 
a perfect character. Here is a meek, righteous, 
thoroughgoing Christian, who, having m.astered 
all these qualities, so difficult of attainment ; 
who, having dropped a pinch of salt on the tails 
of all the cardinal virtues, and caught them 
every one ; makes light of their possession, 
and pants for more morality. For the good 
woman never doubted (as many good men and 
women never do) that this slighting kind of 
profession, this setting so little store by great 
matters, this seeming to say, " I am not proud, I 
am what you hear, but I consider myself no bet- 
ter than other people ; let us change the subject, 
pray " — was perfectly genuine and true. He so 
contrived it, and said it in that way that it ap- 
peared to have been forced from him, and its 
effect was marvellous. 

Aware of the impression he had made — few 
men were quicker than he at such discoveries — 
Mr. Chester followed up the blow by propound- 
ing certain virtuous maxims, somewhat vague 
and general in their nature, doubtless, and occa- 
sionally partaking of the character of truisms, 
worn a little out at elbow, but delivered in so 
charming a voice and with such uncommon 
serenity and peace of mind, that they answered 
as well as the best. Nor is this to be w^ondered 
at ; for as hollow vessels produce a far more 
musical sound in falling than those which are 
substantial, so it will oftentimes be found that 
sentiments which have nothing in them make 
the loudest ringing in the world, and are the 
most relished. — Barnaby Rtidge, Chap. 27. 

CHRISTIAN - A rigid {Esther's God- 
mother). 

I was brought up, from my earliest remem- 
brance — like some of the princesses in the fairy 
stories, only I was not charming — by my god- 
mother. At least I only knew her as such. SJie 



CEP-ISTMAb 



95 



CHRISTMAS 



was a good, good woman ! She went to church 
three times every Sunday, and to morning prayers 
on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures 
whenever there were lectures ; and never missed. 
She was handsome ; and if she had ever smiled, 
would have been (I used to think) like an angel — 
but she never smiled. She was always grave 
and strict. She was so very good herself, I 
thought, that the badness of other people made 
her frown all her life. I felt so different from 
her, even making every allowance for the differ- 
ences between a child and a woman ; I felt so 
poor, so trifling, and so far off; that I never 
could be unrestrained with her — no, could never 
love her as I wished. — Bleak House^ Chap. 3. 

CHRISTMAS. 

Christmas time ! That man must be a mis- 
anthrope indeed, in whose breast something like 
a jovial feeling is not roused — in whose mind 
some pleasant associations are not awakened — 
by the recurrence of Christmas. There are peo- 
ple who will tell you that Christmas is not to 
them what it used to be ; that each succeeding 
Christmas has found some cherished hope or 
happy prospect of the year before, dimmed or 
passed away ; that the present only serves to re- 
mind them of reduced circumstances and strait- 
ened incomes — of the feasts they once bestowed 
on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that 
meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. 
Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There 
are few men who have lived long enough in the 
world, who cannot call up such thoughts any 
day in the year. Then do not select the merriest 
of the three hundred and sixty-five for your 
doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer 
the blazing fire — fill the glass and send round 
the song — and if your room be smaller than it 
was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled 
with reeking punch instead of sparkling wine, 
put a good face on the matter, and empty it off- 
hand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty 
you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. 
Look on the merry faces of your children (if you 
have any) as they sit round the fire. One little 
seat may be empty ; one slight form that glad- 
dened the father's heart, and roused the mother's 
pride to look upon, may not be there. Dwell 
not upon the past ; think not that one short year 
ago, the fair child now resolving into dust, sat 
before you, with the bloom of health upon its 
cheek, and the gayety of infancy in its joyous 
eye. Reflect upon your present blessings — of 
which every man has many — not on your past 
misfortunes, of which all men have some. Pill 
your glass again, with a merry face and con- 
tented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas 
shall be merry, and your new-year a happy one. 

Who can be insensible to the outpourings of 
good feeling, and the honest interchange of 
affectionate attachment, which abound at this 
season of the year ? A Christmas family party ! 
We know nothing in nature more delightful ! 
There seems a magic in the very name of Christ- 
mas. Petty jeal9usies and discords are forgot- 
ten ; social feelings are awakened in bosoms to 
which they have long been strangers ; father 
and son, or brother and sister, who have met and 
passed with averted gaze, or a look of cold 
recognition, for months before, proffer and re- 
turn the cordial embrace, and bury their past 
animosities in their present happiness. Kindly 



hearts that have yearned towards each other, but 
have been withheld by false notions of pride and 
self-dignity, are again re-united, and all is kind- 
ness and benevolence ! Would that Christmas 
lasted the whole year through (as it ought), and 
that the prejudices and passions which deform 
our better nature were never called into action 
among those to whom they should e^er be 
strangers ! — Sketches {Characters), Chap. 2. 

CHRISTMAS— Its Associations. 

But, hark ! The Waits are playing, and they 
break my childish sleep ! What images do I as- 
sociate with the Christmas music as I see them 
set forth on the Christmas tree ? Known before 
all the others, keeping far apart from all the 
others, they gather round my little bed. An 
angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a 
field ; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, follow- 
ing a star ; a baby in a manger ; a child in a 
spacious temple, talking with grave men ; a 
solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, 
raising a dead girl by the hand ; again, near a 
city-gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his 
bier, to life ; a crowd of people looking through 
the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and 
letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes ; 
the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to 
a ship ; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great 
multitude ; again, with a child upon his knee, 
and other children round ; again, restoring sight 
to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the 
deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, 
knowledge to the ignorant ; again, dying upon a 
Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick dark- 
ness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, 
and only one voice heard : " Forgive them, for 
they know not what they do ! " 

Still, on the lower and maturer branches of 
the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick. 
School books are shut up ; Ovid and Virgil si- 
lenced ; the Rule of Three, with its cool imperti- 
nent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and 
Plautus acted no more, in an arena of huddled 
desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and 
inked ; cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher 
up, with the smell of trodden grass and the soft- 
ened noise of shouts in the evening air ; the tree 
is still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home 
at Christmas time, there will be girls and boys 
(thanfc Heaven) while the world lasts. 

* * * * * * 

Among the later toys and fancies hanging 
there — as idle often, and less pure — be the 
images once associated with the sweet old Waits, 
the softened music in the night, ever unalterable ! 
Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas 
time, still let the benignant figure of my child- 
hood stand unchanged ! In every cheerful image 
and suggestion that the season brings, may the 
bright star that rested above the poor roof, be 
the star of all the Christian world ! A moment's 
pause, oh, vanishing tree, of which the lower 
boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look 
once more ! I know there are blank spaces on 
thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have 
shone and smiled ; from which they are de- 
parted. But, far above, I see the raiser of the 
dead girl, and the widow's son ; and God is 
good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen 
portion of thy downward growtli, oh, may I, with 
a gray head, turn a child's henrt to that figure 
yet, and a child's trustfulness and confidence ! 



CHRISTMAS 



96 



CHRISTMAS 



Now, the tree is decorated with bright merri- 
ment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. 
And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome 
be they ever held, beneath the branches of the 
Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow ! 
But, as it sinks into the gi'ound, I hear a whisper 
going through the leaves : " This, in com- 
memoration of the law of love and kindness, 
mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance 
of Me ! " — Christmas Tree — Reprinted Pieces. 

CHRISTMAS DAY. 

They stood in the city-streets on Christmas 
morning, where (for the weather was severe) the 
people made a rough, but brisk and not un- 
pleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow 
from the pavement in front of their dwellings, 
and from the tops of their houses, whence it was 
mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping 
down into the road below, and splitting into 
artificial little snow-storms. 

The house-fronts looked black enough, and 
the windows blacker, contrasting with the 
smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and 
with the dirtier snow upon the ground ; which 
last deposit had been ploughed up in deep fur- 
rows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons ; 
furrows that crossed and recrossed each other 
hundreds of times where the great streets branch- 
ed off; and made intricate channels, hard to 
trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. 
The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets 
were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, 
half frozen, whose heavier particles descended 
in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chim- 
neys in Great Britain had, by one consent, 
caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear 
hearts' content. There was nothing very cheer- 
ful in the climate or the town, and yet there was 
an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest 
summer air, and brightest summer sun, might 
have endeavored to diffuse in vain. 

For, the people who were shovelling away on 
the housetops were jovial and full of glee ; calling 
out to one another from the parapets, and now 
and then exchanging a facetious snowball— bet- 
ter-natured missile far than many a wordy jest — 
laughing heartily if it went right, and not less 
heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops 
were still half open, and the fruiterers' shops 
were radiant in their glory. There were great 
round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped 
like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling 
at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in 
their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, 
brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, 
shining, in the fatness of their growth, like 
Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves 
in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, 
and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. 
There were pears and apples, clustered high in 
blooming pyramids ; there were bunches of 
grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, 
to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's 
mouths might water gratis as they passed ; there 
were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, 
in their fragrance, ancient walks among the 
woods, and pleasant shufflings, ankle-deep, 
through withered leaves; there were Norfolk 
Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow 
of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great 
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently en- 
treating and beseeching to be carried home in 



paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very 
gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice 
fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and 
stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that 
there was something going on : and, to a fish, 
went gasping round and round their little world 
in slow and passionless excitement. 

The grocers ! oh, the grocers ! nearly closed, 
with perhaps two shutters down, or one ; but 
through those gaps such glimpses ! It was not 
alone that the scales descending on the counter 
made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller 
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters 
were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or 
even that the blended scents of tea and coffee 
were so grateful to the nose, or even that the rai- 
sins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so 
extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long 
and straight, the other spices so delicious, the 
candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten 
sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel 
faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that 
the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French 
plums blushed in modest tartness from their 
highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was 
good to eat and in its Christmas dress ; but the 
customers were all so hurried and so eager in the 
hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up 
against each other at the door, crashing their 
wicker-baskets wildly; and left their purchases 
upon the counter, and came running back to fetch 
them; and committed hundreds of the like mis- 
takes, in the best humor possible ; while the 
grocer and his people were so frank and fresh 
that the polished hearts with which they fastened 
their aprons behind might have been their own, 
worn outside for general inspection, and for 
Christmas daws to peck at if they chose. 

But soon the steeples called good people all 
to church and chapel, and away they came, flock- 
ing through the streets in their best clothes, and 
with their gayest faces. And at the same time 
there emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes, 
and nameless turnings, innumerable people, car- 
rying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The 
sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest 
the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge 
beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off 
the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled in- 
cense on their dinners from his torch. And it 
was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once 
or twice, when there were angry words between 
some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, 
he shed a few drops of water on them from it, 
and their good humor was restored directly. For 
they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christ- 
mas Day. And so it was ! God love it, so it 
was ! 

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were 
shut up ; and yet there was a genial shadowing 
forth of all these dinners and the progress of 
their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above 
each baker's oven ; where the pavement smoked 
as if its stones were cooking too. 

Christmas Carol, Stave 3. 

CHRISTMAS— Its lessons. 

" I will honor Christmas in my heart. I will live 
in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The 
Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will 
not shut out the lessons that they teach. O, tell 
me I may sponge away the writing on this stone ! " 
Christmas Carol, Stave 4 



CHRISTMAS 



97 



CHRISTMAS 



CHRISTMAS— Scroog-e's opinion of. 

" Don't be cross, uncle ! " said the nephew. 

" What else can I be," returned the uncle, 
"when I live in such a world of fools as this? 
Merry Christmas ! Out upon merry Christmas ! 
What's Christmas time to you but a time for pay- 
ing bills without money ; a time for finding your- 
self a year older, and not an hour richer ; a time 
for balancing your books and having every item 
in 'em through a round dozen of months pre- 
sented dead against you? If I could work my 
will," said Scrooge indignantly, " every idiot who 
goes about with ' Merry Christmas' on his lips, 
should be boiled with his own pudding, and 
buried with a stake of holly run through his 
heart. He should ! " — Christmas Carols Stave i. 

CHRISTMAS— Scenes . 

The noise in this room was perfectly tumul- 
tuous, for there were more children there than 
Scrooge, in his agitated state of mind, could 
count ; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the 
poem, they were not forty children conducting 
themselves like one, but every child was con- 
ducting itself like forty. The consequences 
were uproarious beyond belief; but no one 
seemed to care ; on the contrary, the mother 
and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it 
very much ; and the latter, soon beginning to 
mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young 
brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not 
have given to be one of them ! Though I never 
could have been so rude, no, no ! I wouldn't 
for the wealth of all the world have crushed 
that braided hair, and torn it down ; and for 
the precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked 
it off, God bless my soul ! to save my life. As 
to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, 
bold young brood, I couldn't have done it ; I 
should have expected my arm to have grown 
round it for a punishment, and never come 
straight again. And yet I should have dearly 
liked, I own, to have touched her lips ; to have 
questioned her, that she might have opened 
them ; to have looked upon the lashes of her 
downcast eyes, and never raised a blush ; to 
have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which 
would be a keepsake beyond price ; in short, I 
should have liked, I do confess, to have had the 
lightest license of a child, and yet to have been 
man enough to know its value. 

***** 

But now a knocking at the door was heard, 
and such a rush immediately ensued that she, 
with laughing face and plundered dress, was 
borne towards it in the centre of a flushed and 
boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, 
who came home attended by a man laden with 
Christmas toys and presents. Then the shout- 
ing and the struggling, and the onslaught that 
was made on the defenceless porter ! The 
scaling him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into 
his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, 
hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the 
neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in 
irrepressible affection. The shouts of wonder 
and delight with which the development of 
every package was received ! The terrible an- 
nouncement that the baby had been taken in the 
act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, 
and was more than suspected of having swal- 
lowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden 
platter ! The inmiense relief of finding this a 



false alarm ! The joy, and gratitude, and ec- 
stasy ! They are all indescribable alike. It is 
enough that, by degrees, the children and their 
emotions got out of the parlor, and, by one stair 
at a time, up to the top of the house, where they 
went to bed, and so subsided. 

Christmas Carols Stave 2. 

CHRISTMAS— A charitable time. 

" There are many things from which I might 
have derived good, by which I have not profited, 
I dare say," returned the nephew, " Christmas 
among the rest. But I am sure I have always 
thought of Christmas time, when it has come 
round — apart from the veneration due to its 
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging 
to it can be apart from that — as a good time ; a 
kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time ; the 
only time I know of, in the long calendar of the 
year, when men and women seem by one con- 
sent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to 
think of people below them as if they really 
were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not 
another race of creatures bound on other jour- 
neys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never 
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I 
believe that it has done me good, and will do 
me good ; and I say, God bless it ! " 

Chtistmas Carol, Stave i. 

CHRISTMAS EVE. 

Christmas Eve in Cloisterham. A few 
strange faces in the streets ; a few other faces, 
half strange and half familiar, once the faces of 
Cloisterham children, now the faces of men and 
women who come back from the outer world 
at long intervals to find the city wonderfully 
shrunken in size, as if it had not washed by any 
means well in the meanwhile. To these, the 
striking of the Cathedral clock, and the cawing 
of the rooks from the Cathedral tower, are like 
voices of their nursery time. To such as these, 
it has happened in their dying hours afar off, 
that they have imagined their chamber floor to 
be strewn with the autumnal leaves fallen from 
the elm-trees in the Close ; so have the rustling 
sounds and fresh scents of their earliest impres- 
sions revived, when the circle of their lives was 
very nearly traced, and the beginning and the 
end were drawing close together. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 14. 

CHRISTMAS- At sea. 

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, 
some league or so from shore, on which the 
waters chafed and dashed the wild year through, 
there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps 
of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds — 
born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed 
of the water — rose and fell about it, like the 
waves they skimmed. 

But even here, two men who watched the 
light had made a fire, that through the loophole 
in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of bright- 
ness on the awful sea. Joining their horny 
hands over the rough table at which they sat, 
they wished each other Merry Christmas in their 
can of grog ; and one of them — the elder too, 
with his face all damaged and scarred with hard 
weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might 
be — struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale 
in itself. 

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and 



CHRISTMAS 



98 



CHRISTMAS DINNER 



heaving sea — on, on — until, being far away, as 
he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on 
a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the 
wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who 
had the watch ; dark, ghostly figures in their 
several stations ; but every man among them 
hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas 
thought, or spoke below his breath to his com- 
panion of some by-gone Christmas Day, with 
homeward hopes belonging to it. And every 
man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, 
had had a kinder word for one another on that 
day than on any day in the year ; and had 
shared to some extent in its festivities ; and had 
remembered those he cared for at a distance, 
and had known that they delighted to remem- 
ber him. — Christmas Carol, Stave 3. 

CHRISTMAS— The recollections of. 

Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff 
and hearty honesty : it was the season of hos- 
pitality, merriment, and open-heartedness ; the 
old year was preparing, like an ancient philoso- 
pher, to call his friends around him, and amidst 
the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently 
and calmly away. Gay and merry was the time, 
and gay and merry were at least four of the nu- 
merous hearts that were gladdened by its com- 
ing. 

And numerous indeed are the hearts to which 
Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and 
enjoyment. How many families, whose mem- 
bers have been dispersed and scattered far and 
wide in the restless struggles of life, are then 
re-united, and meet once again in that happy 
state of companionship and mutual good-will, 
which is a source of such pure and unalloyed 
delight ; and one so incompatible with the cares 
and sorrows of the world, that the religious be- 
lief of the most civilized nations, and the rude 
traditions of the roughest savages, alike number 
it among the first joys of a future condition of 
existence, provided for the blest and happy ! 
How many old recollections, and how many 
dormant sympathies, does Christmas time 
awaken ! 

We write these words now, many miles dis- 
tant from the spot at which, year after year, we 
met on that day a merry and joyous circle. 
Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, 
have ceased to beat ; many of the looks that 
shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow ; 
the hands we grasped have grown cold ; the 
eyes we sought have hid their lustre in the 
grave ; and yet the old house, the room, the 
merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the 
laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstances 
connected with those happy meetings, crowd 
upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, 
as if the last assemblage had been but yester- 
day ! Happy, happy Christmas, that can win 
us back to the delusions of our childish days ; 
that can recall to the old man the pleasures of 
his youth ; that can transport the sailor and the 
traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his 
own fireside and his quiet home ! 

Pickwick, Ch. 28. 

CHRISTMAS CAROIi-A. 

I care not for Sprini? ; on his fickle wing 
Let the blos^some and bmls be borne ; 
He W003 themamajn with hig treacherous rain, 
And he scatters them ere the mom. 



An inconstant elf, he knows not himself, 
Nor his own changing mind an hour, 
He'll smile in your iace, and, with wry grimace, 
He'll wither your youngest flower. 

Let the Summer sun to his bright home run, 

He ehall never be sought by me ; 

When he's? dimmed by a cloud I can laugh aloud, 

And care not how sulky he be ! 

For his darling child is the madness wild 

That sports in fierce fever's train ; 

And when love is too strong it don't last long, 

As many have found to their paiu. 

A mild harvest night, by the tranquil light 

Of the modest and gentle moon. 

Has a far sweeter sheen, for me, I ween, 

Than the broad and unblushing noon. 

But every leaf a\\ akens my grief, 

As it lieth beneath the tree ; 

So let Autumn air be never so fair. 

It by no means agrees with me. 

But my song I troll out, for Christmas stoat, 

The hearty, the true, and the bold ; 

A bumper I drain, and with might and main 

Give three cheers lor this Christmas old I 

We'll usher him in with a merry din 

That shall gladden his joyous heart, 

And we'll keep him up while there 's bite or sup, 

And in fellowship good we'll part. 

In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide 

One jot of his hard-weather scars ; 

They're no disgrace, for there 's much the same 

On the cheeks of our bravest tars. [trace 

Then again I'll sing till the roof doth ring, 

And it echoes from wall to wall — 

To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night, 

As the King of the Seasons all I 

Pickwick, Ch. 28. 



CHRISTMAS DINNER-Bob Cratchit's. 

"And how did little Tim behave ?" asked 
Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his 
credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to 
his heart's content. 

" As good as gold," said Bob, " and better. 
Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself 
so much, and thinks the strangest things you 
ever heard. He told me, coming home, that 
he hoped the people saw him in the church, be- 
cause he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant 
to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who 
made lame beggars walk and blind men see." 

Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them 
thi^ and trembled more when he said that Tiny 
Tim was growing strong and hearty. 

His active little crutch was heard upon the 
floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another 
word was spoken, escorted by his brother and 
sister to his stool beside the fire ; and while 
Bob, turning up his cuffs — as if, poor fellow, 
they were capable of being made more shabby 
— compounded some hot mixture in a jug, with 
gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round 
and put it on the hob to simmer ; Master Peter 
and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went 
to fetch the goose, with which they soon re- 
turned in high procession. 

Such a bustle ensued that you might have 
thought a goose the rarest of all birds ; a 
feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan 
was a matter of course — and in truth it was 
something very like it in that house. Mrs. 
Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in 
a little saucepan) hissing hot ; Master Peter 
mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor; 
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce ; 
Martha dusted the hot plates ; Bob took Tiny 
Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table ; 
the two young Cratchits set chairs for every- 



I 



CHRISTMAS 



99 



CHRISTMAS 



body, not forgetting themselves, and mounting 
guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into 
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose 
before their turn came to be helped. At last 
the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It 
was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. 
Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving- 
knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast ; but 
when she did, and when the long-expected gush 
of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight 
arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, 
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the 
table with the handle of his knife, and feebly 
cried Hurrah ! 

There never was such a goose. Bob said he 
didn't believe there ever was such a goose 
cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and 
cheapness were the themes of universal admi- 
ration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed 
potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole 
family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great 
delight (surveying one small atom of a bone 
upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last ! 
Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest 
Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage 
and onion to the eyebrows I But now the 
plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. 
Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to 
bear witnesses— to take the pudding up, and 
bring it in. 

Suppose it should not be done enough ! Sup- 
pose it should break in turning out ! Suppose 
somebody should have got over the wall of the 
back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry 
with the goose— a supposition at which the two 
young Cratchits became livid ! All sorts of hor- 
rors were supposed. 

Hallo ! A great deal of steam ! The pud- 
ding was out of the copper. A smell like a 
washing-day ! That was the cloth. A smell 
like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next 
door to each other, with a laundress's next door 
to that 1 That was the pudding I In half a 
minute Mrs. Cratchit entered — flushed, but smil- 
ing proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled 
cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in' half 
of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and be- 
dight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. 

Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, 
and calmly too, that he regarded it as the great- 
est success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their 
marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the 
weight was off her mind, she would confess she 
had her doubts about the quantity of flour. 
Everybody had something to say about it, but 
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pud- 
ding for a large family. It would have been 
flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have 
blushed to hint at such a thing. 

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was 
cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. 
The compound in the jug being tasted, and con- 
sidered perfect, apples and oranges were put 
upon the table, and a shovel full of chestnuts 
on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew 
round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a 
circle, meaning half a one ; and at Bob Crat- 
chit's elbow stood the family display of glass, 
two tumblers and a custard-cup without a 
handle. 

These held the hot stuff" from the jug, how- 
ever, as well as golden goblets would have done ; 
and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while 



the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked 
noisily. Then Bob proposed, 

" A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God 
bless us." 

Which all the family re-echoed, 

" God bless us every one I " said Tiny Tim, 
the last of all. — Christmas Carol, Stave 3. 

CHRISTMAS-Of Scrooge. 

" I don't know what day of the month it is>," 
said Scrooge ; " I don't know how long I have 
been among the Spirits. I don't know any- 
thing. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I 
don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo ! 
Whoop ! Hallo here ! " 

He was checked in his transports by the 
churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had 
ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer ; ding, dong, 
bell. Bell, dong, ding ; hammer, clang, clash ! 
Oh, glorious, glorious ! 

Running to the window, he opened it, and 
put out his head. No fog, no mist ; clear, 
bright, jovial, stirring, cold ; cold, piping for 
the blood to dance to ; golden sunlight ; heav- 
enly sky ; sweet fresh air ; merry bells. Oh, 
glorious ! Glorious ! 

"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling 
downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who 
perhaps had loitered in to look about him. 

" Eh ? " returned the boy, with all his might 
of wonder. 

" What's to-day, my fine fellow ? " said 
Scrooge. 

" To-day I " replied the boy. " Why, Christ- 
mas Day." 

"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to him- 
self. " I haven't missed it. The Spirits have 
done it all in one night. They can do anything 
they like. Of course they can. Of course they 
can. Hallo, my fine fellow 1" 

" Hallo !" returned the boy. 

" Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next 
street but one, at the corner ? " Scrooge inquired. 

" I should hope I did," replied the lad. 

" An intelligent boy I " said Scrooge. " A re- 
markable boy ! Do you know whether they've 
sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up 
there ? — Not the little prize Turkey : the big 
one ? " 

"What, the one as big as me?" returned the 
boy. 

" What a delightful boy ! " said Scrooge. " It's 
a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck ! " 

" It's hanging there now," replied the boy. 

" Is it ?" said Scrooge. " Go and buy it." 

" Walk-ER !" exclaimed the boy. 

" No, no," said Scrooge, " I am in earnest. 
Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that 
I may give them the directions where to take it. 
Come back with the man, and I'll give you a 
shilling. Come back with him in less than five 
minutes, and I'll give half-a-crown !" 

The boy was off like a shot. He must have 
had a steady hand at a trigger who could have 
got a shot off" half so fast. 

"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered 
Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with 
a laugh. " He shan't know who sends it. It's 
twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never 
made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will 
be!" 

The hand in which he wrote the address was 
not a steady one ; but write it he did, somehow, 



CHRISTMAS 



100 



CHRISTMAS 



and went down stairs to open the street-door, 
ready for the coming of the poulterer's man. As 
he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker 
caught his eye. 

"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried 
Scrooge, patting it with his hand. "I scarcely 
ever looked at it before. What an honest ex- 
pression it has in its face ! It's a wonderful 
knocker! — Here's the Turkey. Hallo ! Whoop ! 
How are you ! Merry Christmas ! " 

It was a Turkey ! He never could have stood 
upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 
'em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing- 
wax. 

" Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden 
Town," said Scrooge. " You must have a cab." 

The chuckle with which he said this, and the 
chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and 
the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and 
the chuckle with which he recompensed the 
boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle 
with which he sat down breathless in his chair 
again, and chuckled till he cried. 

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand 
continued to shake very much ; and shaving re- 
quires attention, even when you don't dance 
while you are at it. But if he had cut the end 
of his nose off, he would have put a piece of 
sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied. 

He dressed himself " all in his best," and at 
last got out into the streets. The people were 
by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them 
with the Ghost of Christmas Present ; and walk- 
ing with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded 
every one with a delighted smile. He looked 
so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or 
four good-humored fellows said, "Good morn- 
ing, sir ! A merry Christmas to you ! " And 
Scrooge said often afterward, that of all the 
blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the 
blithest in his ears. 

He went to church, and walked about the 
streets, and watched the people hurrying to and 
fro, and patted the children on the head, and 
questioned beggars, and looked down into the 
kitchens of houses, and up to the windows ; and 
found that everything could yield him pleasure. 
He had never dreamed that any walk — that 
anything — could give him so much happiness. 
In the afternoon, he turned his steps toward his 
nephew's house. 

He passed the door a dozen times, before he 
had the courage to go up and knock. But he 
made a dash, and did it. 

" Is your master at home, my dear ? " said 
Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl ! Very. 

" Yes, sir." 

" Where is he, my love ? " said Scrooge. 

" He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mis- 
tress. I'll show you up stairs, if you please." 

"Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, 
with his hand already on the dining-room lock. 
" I'll go in here, my dear." 

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, 
round the door. They were looking at the table 
(which was spread out in great array) ; for these 
young housekeepers are always nervous on such 
points, and like to see that everything is right. 

" Fred ! " said Scrooge. 

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage 
started. Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, 
about her sitting in the corner with the foot- 



stool, or he wouldn't have done it, on any ac- 
count. 

" Why, bless my soul ! " cried Fred. " Who's 
that?" 

" It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come 
to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?" 

Let him in ! It's a mercy he didn't shake his 
arm off. He was at home in five minutes. 
Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked 
just the same. So did Topper when he came. 
So did the plump sister, when she came. So 
did every one when they came. Wonderful par- 
ty, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity. won- 
der-ful happiness. 

But he was early at the office next morning. 
Oh, he was early there. If he could only be 
there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late. 
That was the thing he had set his heart upon. 

And he did it ; yes, he did ! The clock struck 
nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He 
was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his 
time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that 
he might see him come into the Tank. 

His hat was off before he opened the door ; 
his comforter too. He was on his stool in a 
jiffy, driving away with his pen, as if he were 
trying to overtake nine o'clock. 

" Hallo ! " growled Scrooge, in his accustomed 
voice as near as he could feign it. " What do 
you mean by coming here at this time of day ? " 

" I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. " I am 
behind my time." 
~""You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I 
think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please." 

" It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, ap- 
pearing from the Tank. " It shall not be re- 
peated. I was making rather merry, yesterday, 
sir." 

" Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said 
Scrooge, " I am not going to stand this sort of 
thing any longer. And therefore," he continued, 
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a _ 
dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back intoB 
the Tank again : " and therefore I am about X.o\ 
raise your salary ! " 

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the 
ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking 
Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling 
to the people in the court for help and a strait- 
waistcoat. 

" A merry Christmas, Bob ! " said Scrobge, 
with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, 
as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier 
Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have 
given you for many a year ! I'll raise your 
salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling 
family, and we will discuss your affairs this very 
afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking 
bishop, Bob ! Make up the fires and buy an- 
other coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob 
Cratchit ! " 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it 
all, and infinitely more ; and to Tiny Tim, who 
did NOT die, he was a second father. He be- 
came as good a friend, as good a master, and as 
good a man as the good old city knew, or any 
other good old city, town, or borough in the 
good old world. Some people laughed to see 
the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, 
and little heeded them ; for he was wise enough 
to know that nothing ever happened on this 
globe, for good, at which some people did not 
have their fill of laughter in the outset ; and 



CHURCHES 



101 



CHTJRCHES 



knowing that such as these would be blind any- 
way, he thought it quite as well that they should 
wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the mala- 
dy in less attractive forms. His own heart 
laughed : and that was quite enough for him. 

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, 
but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle 
ever afterward ; and it was always said of him, 
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any 
man alive possessed the knowledge. May that 
be truly said of us, aad all of us ! And so, as 
Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One ! 
Christmas Carol, Stave 5. 

CHURCHES— A Sunday experience among-. 

There is a pale heap of books in the corner 
of my pew, and while the organ, which is hoarse 
and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear 
more of the rusty working of the stops than of 
any music, I look at the books, which are mostly 
bound in faded baize and stuff. 

***** 

The opening of the service recalls my wander- 
ing thoughts. I then find, to my astonishment, 
that I have been, and still am, taking a strong 
kind of invisible snuff up my nose, into my 
eyes, and down my throat, I wink, sneeze, and 
cough. The clerk sneezes, the clergyman winks, 
the unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and 
probably winks) ; all our little party wink, 
sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made 
of the decay of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, 
earth, and something else. Is the something 
else the decay of dead citizens in the vaults be- 
low? As sure as Death it is ! Not only in the 
cold, damp February day do we cough and 
sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but 
dead citizens have got into the very bellows of 
the organ, and half-choked the same. We 
stamp our feet to warm them, and dead citizens 
arise in heavy clouds Dead citizens stick upon 
the walls, and lie pulverized on the sounding- 
board over the clergyman's head, and, when a 
gust of air comes, tumble down upon him. 

* * * * « 

But we receive the signal to make that unan- 
imous dive which surely is a little conven- 
tional — like the strange rustlings and settlings 
and clearings of throats and noses which are 
never dispensed with at certain points of the 
Church service, and are never held to be neces- 
sary under any other circumstances. In a min- 
ute more it is all over, and the organ expresses 
itself to be as glad of it as it can be of anything 
in its rheumatic state, and in another minute we 
are all of us out of the church, and Whity- 
brown has locked it up. Another minute or little 
more, and, in the neighboring churchyard — not 
the yard of that church, but of another — a 
churchyard like a great shabby old mignonette 
box, with two trees in it, and one tomb — I meet 
Whity-brown, in his private capacity, fetching 
a pint of beer for his dinner from the public- 
house in the corner, where the keys of the rotting 
fire-ladders are kept and were never asked for, 
and where there is a ragged, white-seamed, out- 
at-elbowed bagatelle-board on the first floor. 

***** 

In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon 
one obscure church which had broken out in 
the melodramatic style, and was got up with 
various tawdry decorations, much after the man- 
ner of the extinct London Maypoles. These 



attractions had induced several young priests or 
deacons, in black bibs for waistcoats, and several 
young ladies interested in that holy order (the 
proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen 
young ladies to a deacon), to come into the City 
as a new and odd excitement. It was wonder- 
ful to see how these young people played out 
their little play in the heart of the City, all 
among themselves, without the deserted City's 
knowing anything about it. It was as if you 
should take an empty counting-house on a Sun- 
day, and act one of the old Mysteries there. They 
had impressed a small school (from what neigh- 
borhood I don't know) to assist in the perform- 
ances ; and it was pleasant to notice frantic 
garlands of inscription on the walls, especially 
addressing those poor innocents, in characters 
impossible for them to decipher. There was a 
remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this 
congregation. 

But in other cases rot and mildew and dead 
citizens formed the uppermost scent, while in- 
fused into it, in a dreamy way not at all dis- 
pleasing, was the staple character of the neigh- 
borhood. In the churches about Mark Lane, 
for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat ; 
and I accidentally struck an airy sample of bar- 
ley out of an aged hassock in one of them. From 
Rood Lane to Tower Street, and thereabouts, 
there was often a subtle flavor of wine ; some- 
times of tea. One church near Mincing Lane 
smelt like a druggist's drawer. Behind the 
Monument the service had a flavor of damaged 
oranges, which a little farther down towards the 
river tempered into herrings, and gradually 
toned into a cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one 
church, the exact counterpart of the church in 
the Rake's Progress where the hero is being 
married to the horrible old lady, there was no 
specialty of atmosphere, until the organ shooK 
a perfume of hides all over us from some ad- 
jacent warehouse. 

Be the scent what it would, however, there 
was no specialty in the people. There were 
never enough of them to represent any calling 
or neighborhood. They had all gone elsewhere 
overnight, and the few stragglers in the many 
churches languished there inexpressively. 

Among the uncommercial travels in which I 
have engaged, this year of Sunday travel oc- 
cupies its own place apart from all the rest. 
Whether I think of the church where the sails 
of the oyster-boats in the river almost flapped 
against the windows, or of the church where the 
railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed 
by above the roof, I recall a curious experience. 
On summer Sundays, in the gentle rain or the 
bright sunshine — either deepening the idleness of 
the idle city — I have sat, in that singular silence 
which belongs to resting-places usually astir, in 
scores of buildings, at the heart of the world's 
metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers of 
people speaking the English tongue than the an- 
cient edifices of the Eternal City, or the Pyramids 
of Egypt. The dark vestries and registries into 
which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in 
churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have 
left impressions on my memory as distinct and 
quaint as any it has in that way received. In 
all those dusty registers that the worms are eat- 
ing, there is not a line but made some hearts 
leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still and 
dry now, still aod dry ! and the old tree at the 



CHURCH 



102 



CHURCH 



window, with no room for its branches, has seen 
them all out. So with the tomb of the old 
Master of the old Company, on which it drips. 
His son restored it and died, his daughter re- 
stored it and died, and then he had been re- 
membered long enough, and the tree took pos- 
session of him, and his name cracked out. 

There are few more striking indications of 
the changes of manners and customs that two or 
three hundred years have brought about, than 
these deserted churches. Many of them are 
handsome and costly structures, several of them 
were designed by Wrbn, many of them arose 
from the ashes of the great fire, others of them 
outlived the plague and the fire too, to die a 
slow death in these later days. No one can be 
sure of the coming time ; but it is not too much 
to say of it that it has no sign, in its outsetting 
tides, of the reflux to these churches of their 
congregations and uses. They remain, like the 
tombs of the old citizens who lie beneath them 
and around them. Monuments of another age. 
Uncommercial Traveller , Chap. 9. 

CHURCH. 

We have a church, by the bye, a hideous tem- 
ple of flint, like a great, petrified hay-stack. 
Reprinted Pieces. 

CHURCH AND PREACHER— A cMld's 
first experiences of. 

Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful 
preachers. Time was, when I was dragged by 
the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear too 
many. On summer evenings, when every 
flower and tree and bird might have better ad- 
dressed my soft young heart, I have in my day 
been caught in the palm of a female hand by 
the crown, have been violently scrubbed from 
the neck to the roots of the hair as a purifica- 
tion for the Temple, and have then been 
carried off, highly charged with saponaceous 
electricity, to be steamed like a potato in the 
un ventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges 
Boiler and his congregation, until what small 
mind I had was quite steamed out of me. In 
which pitiable plight I have been haled out of 
the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the 
exercises, and catechised respecting Boanerges 
Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, and his seventhly, 
until I have regarded that reverend person in 
the light of a most dismal and oppressive 
Charade. Time was, when I was carried off to 
platform assemblages at which no human child, 
whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep 
its eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep 
stealing, stealing over me, and when I gradually 
heard the orator in possession spinning and 
humming like a great top, until he rolled, col- 
lapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered, to 
my burning shame and fear, that as to that last 
stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under 
Boanerges when he has specifically addressed 
himself to us — us, the infants — and at this pres- 
ent writing I hear his lumbering jocularity 
(which never amused us, though we basely pre- 
tended that it did), and I behold his big round 
face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched 
coat-sleeve, as if it were a telescope, with the 
stopper on, and I hate him with an unwhole- 
some hatred for two hours. Through such 
means did it come to pass that I knew the 
powerful preacher from beginning to end, all 



over and all through, while I was very young, 
and that I left him behind at an early period of 
life. Peace be with him ! More peace than he 
brought to me ! 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 9. 

CHURCH-A hideous. 

A very hideous church with four towers 
at the four corners, generally resembling some 
petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its 
back, with its legs in the air. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. i. 

CHURCH— An apologry to Heaven. 

* * * * Laying violent hands 
upon a quantity of stone and timber which be- 
longed to a weaker baron, he built a chapel as 
an apology, and so took a receipt from Heaven, 
in full of all demands. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6. 

CHURCHES-In Italy. 

Sitting in any of the churches toward evening, 
is like a mild dose of opium. 

Pictures from Italy. 

CHURCH— A wedding in. 

Her heart beats quicker now, for Walter tells 
her that their church is very near. They pass a 
few great stacks of warehouses, with wagons at 
the doors, and busy carmen stopping up the way 
— but Florence does not see or hear them — and 
then the air is quiet, and the day is darkened, 
and she is trembling in a church which has a 
strange smell, like a cellar. 

The shabby little old man, ringer of the dis- 
appointed bell, is standing in the porch, and has 
put his hat in the font — for he is quite at home 
there, being sexton. He ushers them into an 
old, brown, panelled, dusty vestry, like a corner- 
cupboard with the shelves taken out ; where the 
wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff, 
which has set the tearful Nipper sneezing. 

Youthful, and how beautiful the young bride 
looks, in this old dusty place, with no kindred 
object near her but her husband. There is a 
dusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated 
news-shop underneath an archway opposite, be- 
hind a perfect fortification of posts. There is a 
dusty old pew-opener who only keeps herself, 
and finds that quite enough to do. There is a 
dusty old beadle (these are Mr. Toots's beadle 
and pew-opener of last Sunday), who has some- 
thing to do with a worshipful Company who 
have got a Hall in the next yard, with a stained- 
glass window in it that no mortal ever saw. 
There are dusty wooden ledges and cornices 
poked in and out over the altar, and over the 
screen, and round the gallery, and over the in- 
scription about what the Master and Wardens^ 
of the Worshipful Company did in one thou 
sand six hundred and ninety-four. There are 
dusty old sounding-boards over the pulpit and 
reading-desk, looking like lids to be let down 
on the officiating ministers, in case of their giv- 
ing offence. There is every possible provision 
for the accommodation of dust, except in the 
churchyard, where the facilities in that respect 
are very limited. 

* * * * * 

No gracious ray of light is seen to fall on Flor- 
ence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head 
bowed down. The morning luminary is built 



i 



CHURCHES 



103 



CHURCHY ARU 



out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre 
tree outside, where the sparrows are chirping a 
little ; and there is a blackbird in an eyelet-hole 
of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the win- 
dow, who whistles loudly whilst the service is 
performing ; and there is the man with the 
wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the 
dusty clerk appear, like Macbeth's, to stick in 
his throat a little ; but Captain Cuttle helps him 
out, and does it with so much good-will that he 
interpolates three entirely new responses of that 
word, never introduced into the service before. 
They are married, and have signed their 
names in one of the old sneezy registers, and 
the clergyman's surplice is restored to the dust, 
and the clergyman is gone home. 

Dombey b' Son, Chap. 57. 

CHURCHES-Old. 

The tall shrouded pulpit and reading-desk ; 
the dreary perspective of empty pews stretching 
away under the galleries, and empty benches 
mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of 
the great grim organ ; the dusty matting and 
cold stone slabs ; the grisly free seats in the 
aisles ; and the damp corner by the bell-rope, 
where the black tressels used for funerals were 
stowed away, along with some shovels and 
baskets, and a coil or two of deadly-looking 
rope ; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable 
smell, and the cadaverous light, were all in 
unison. It was a cold and dismal scene. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 28. 

The church was a mouldy old church in a 
yard, hemmed in by a labyrinth of back streets 
and courts, with a little burying-ground round 
it, and itself buried in a kind of vault, formed 
by the neighboring houses, and paved with 
echoing stones. It was a great, dim, shabby 
pile, with high old oaken pews, among which 
about a score of people lost themselves every 
Sunday ; while the clergyman's voice drowsily 
resounded through the emptiness, and the organ 
rumbled and rolled as if the church had got the 
colic, for want of a congregation to keep the 
wind and damp out. But so far was this city 
church from languishing for the company of 
other churches, that spires were clustered round 
it, as the masts of shipping cluster on the river. 
It would have been hard to count them from 
its steeple-top, they were so many. In almost 
every yard and blind-place near, there was a 
church. The confusion of bells when Susan 
and Mr. Toots betook themselves towards it on 
the Sunday morning, was deafening. There 
were twenty churches close together, clamoring 
for people to come in. — Dombey 6r" Son, Chap. 56. 

CHURCH— Windows. 

So little light lives inside the churches in my 
churchyards, when the two are coexistent, that 
it is often only by an accident and after long 
acquaintance that I discover their having stained 
glass in some odd window. The westering sun 
slants into the churchyard by some unwonted 
entry, a few prismatic tears drop on an old 
tombstone, and a window that I thought was 
only dirty is for the moment all bejewelled. 
Then the light passes, and the colors die. 
Though even then, if there be room enough for 
me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to 
the top of the church tower, I see the rusty 



vane new burnished, and seeming to look out 
with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at the 
distant shore of country. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 21. 

CHURCHYARDS— In London 

Such strange churchyards hide in the City of 
London — churchyards sometimes so entirely 
detached from churches, always so pressed upon 
by houses ; so small, so rank, so silent, so for- 
gottcM, except by the few people who ever look 
down into them from their smoky windows. 
As I stand peeping in through the iron gates 
and rails, I can peel the rusty metal off like bark 
from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are 
all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape 
in the rains of a hundred years ago, the Lom- 
bardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a dry- 
salter's daughter and several common council- 
men, has withered like those worthies, and its 
departed leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion 
of slow ruin overhangs the place. The dis- 
colored tiled roofs of the environing buildings 
stand so awry that they can hardly be proof 
against any stress of weather. Old crazy stacks 
of chimneys seem to look down as they over- 
hang, dubiously calculating how far they will 
have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what 
was once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots 
away, incrusted with toadstools. Pipes and 
spouts for carrying off the rain from the encom- 
passing gables, broken or feloniously cut for old 
lead long ago, now let the rain drip and splash 
as it list upon the weedy earth. Sometimes 
there is a rusty pump somewhere near, and, as 
I look in at the rails and meditate, I hear it 
working under an unknown hand with a creak- 
ing protest, as though the departed in the 
churchyard urged, '* Let us lie here in peace ; 
don't suck us up and drink us ! " 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 21. 

CHURCHYARD- A. 

A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man 
whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath 
the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in 
by houses ; overrun by grass and weeds, the 
growth of vegetation's death, not life ; choked 
up with too much burying ; fat with repleted 
appetite. A worthy place ! 

Christmas Carol, Stave 4. 

CHURCHYARD-Iiittle Nell in an old. 

The sun was setting when they reached the 
wicket-gate at which the path began, and, as the 
rain falls upon the just and unjust alike, it shed 
its warm tint even upon the resting-places of the 
dead, and bade them be of good hope for its 
rising on the morrow. The cliurch was old and 
gray, with ivy clinging to the walls, and round 
the porch. Shunning the tombs, it crept about 
the mounds, beneath which slept poor humble 
men ; twining for them the first wreaths they 
had ever won, but wreaths less liable to wither 
and far more lasting in their kind, than some 
which were graven deep in stone and marble, 
and told in pompous terms of virtues meekly 
hidden for many a year, and only revealed at 
last to executors and mourning legatees. 

The clergyman's horse, stumbling with a dull 
blunt sound among the graves, was cropping the 
grass ; at once deriving orthodox consolation 
from the dead parishioners, and enforcing last 



CmCTTS 



104 



CITY 



I 



Sunday's text that this was what all flesh came 
to ; a lean ass who had sought to expound it 
also, without being qualified and ordained, was 
pricking his ears in an empty pound hard by, 
and looking with hungry eyes upon his priestly 
neighbor. — Old Cufiosity Shop, Chap. i6. 

CmCUS— The philosophy of the. 

" People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thome- 
how," continued Sleary, rendered more pursy 
than ever, by so much talking ; " they can't be 
alwayth a working, nor yet they can't be alwayth 
a learning. Make the betht of uth ; not the 
wurtht. I've got my living out of the horthe- 
riding all my life, I know ; but I conthider that 
I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when 
I thay to you, Thquire, make the betht of uth ; 
not the wurtht ! " 

The Sleary philosophy was propounded as 
they went down stairs ; and the fixed eye of 
Philosophy — and its rolling eye, too — soon lost 
the three figures and the basket in the darkness 
of the street.— ZTflir^ Times , Book /., Chap. 6. 

CIRCUS-PEOPLE-Mr. Sleary on. 

" Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht ! 
Don't be croth with uth poor vagabondth. Peo- 
ple mutht be amuthed. They can't be alwayth 
a learning, nor yet they can't be alwayth a work- 
ing, they an't made for it. You mtitht have 
uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind 
thing too, and make the betht of uth ; not the 
wortht ! 

"And I never thought before," said Mr. 
Sleary, putting his head in at the door again to 
say it, " that I wath tho muth of a Cackler !" 
Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 8. 

CIRCUS— The performers. 

We defy any one who has been to Astley's 
two or three times, and is consequently capable 
of appreciating the perseverance with which 
precisely the same jokes are repeated night after 
night, and season after season, not to be amused 
with one part of the performances at least — we 
mean the scenes in the circle. For ourself, we 
know that when the hoop, composed of jets of 
gas, is let down, the curtain drawn up for the 
convenience of the half-price on their ejectment 
from the ring, the orange-peel cleared away, and 
the sawdust shaken, with mathematical preci- 
sion, into a complete circle, we feel as much 
enlivened as the youngest child present ; and 
actually join in the laugh which follows the 
clown's shrill shout of " Here we are !" just for 
old acquaintance sake. Nor can we quite divest 
ourself of our old feeling of reverence for the 
riding-master, who follows the clown with a 
long whip in his hand, and bows to the audience 
with graceful dignity. He is none of your sec- 
ond-rate riding-masters, in nankeen dressing- 
gowns, with brown frogs, but the regular gen- 
tleman-attendant on the principal riders, who 
always wears a military uniform with a table- 
cloth inside the breast of the coat, in which 
costume he forcibly reminds one of a fowl 
trussed for roasting. He is — but why should 
we attempt to describe that of which no de- 
scription can convey an adequate idea? Every- 
body knows the man, and everybody remembers 
his polished boots, his graceful demeanor, stiff, 
as some misjudging persons have in their jeal- 
ousy considered it, and the splendid head of 



black hair, parted high on the forehead, to im- 
part to the countenance an appearance of deep 
thought and poetic melancholy. His soft and 
pleasing voice, too, is in perfect unison with his 
noble bearing, as he humors the clown by in- 
dulging in a little badinage ; and the striking 
recollection of his own dignity with which he 
exclaims, " Now, sir, if you please, inquire for 
Miss Woolford, sir," can never be forgotten. 
The graceful air, too, with which he introduces 
Miss Woolford into the arena, and after assist- 
ing her to the saddle, follows her fairy courser 
round the circle, can never fail to create a deep 
impression in the bosom of every female servant 
present. — Scenes, Chap. ii. 

CITY— An old and drowsy. 

An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet 
dwelling-place for any one with hankerings after 
the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, 
deriving an earthy flavor throughout from its 
Cathedral crypt, and so abounding in vestiges 
of monastic graves, that the Cloisterham chil- 
dren grow small salad in the dust of abbots and 
abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars ; 
while every ploughman in its outlying fields 
renders to once puissant Lord Treasurers, Arch- 
bishops, Bishops, and such-like, the attention 
which the Ogre in the storj'-book desired to 
render to his unbidden visitor, and grinds their 
bones to make his bread. 

A drowsy city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants 
seem to suppose, with an inconsistency more 
strange than rare, that all its changes lie behind 
it, and that there are no more to come. A 
queer moral to derive from antiquity, yet older 
than any traceable antiquity. So silent are the 
streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on 
the smallest provocation), that of a summer-day 
the sunblinds of its shops scarce dare to flap in 
the south wand ; Avhile the sun-browned tramps 
who pass along and stare, quicken their limp a 
little, that they may the sooner get beyond the 
confines of its oppressive respectability. This 
is a feat not difficult of achievement, seeing that 
the streets of Cloisterham city are little more 
than one narrow street by w-hich you get into it 
and get out of it : the rest being mostly disap- 
pointing yards with pumps in them and no 
thoroughfare — exception made of the Cathedral 
close, and a paved Quaker settlement, in color 
and general conformation very like a Quakeress's 
bonnet, up in a shady corner. 

In a word, a city of another and a bygone 
time is Cloisterham, with its hoarse Cathedral 
bell, its hoarse rooks hovering about the Cathe- 
dral tow^er, its hoarser and less distinct rooks in 
the stalls far beneath. Fragments of old wall, 
saint's chapel, chapter-house, convent, and mon- 
astery have got incongruously or obstructively 
built into many of its houses and gardens, much 
as kindred jumbled notions have become incor- 
porated into many of its citizens' minds. All 
things in it are of the past. Even its single 
pawnbroker takes in no pledges, nor has he for 
a long time, but offers vainly an unredeemed 
stock for sale, of which the costlier articles are 
dim and pale old watches apparently in a slow 
perspiration, tarnished sugar-tongs with ineffec- 
tual legs, and odd volumes of dismal books. 
The most abundant and the most agreeable 
evidences of progressing life in Cloisterham are 
the evidences of vegetable life in its many gar- 



CITY 



105 



CITY 



dens ; even its drooping and despondent little 
theatre has its poor strip of garden, receiving 
the foul fiend, when he ducks from its stage into 
the infernal regions, among scarlet beans or 
oyster-shells, according to the season of the 
year. — Edwin Drood^ Chap, 3. 

CITY— A qxiiet nook in London. 

Behind the most ancient part of Holborn, 
London, where certain gabled houses some cen- 
turies of age still stand looking on the public 
way, as if disconsolately looking for the Old 
Bourne that has long run dry, is a little nook 
composed of two irregular quadrangles, called 
Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turn- 
ing into which out of the clashing street imparts 
to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of hav- 
ing put cotton in his ears and velvet soles on 
his boots. It is one of those nooks where a few 
smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as 
though they called to one another, " Let us play 
at country," and where a few feet of gax'den 
mould and a few yards of gravel enable them to 
do that refreshing violence to their tiny under- 
standings. Moreover, it is one of those nooks 
which are legal nooks ; and it contains a little 
Hall, with a little lantern in its roof; to what 
obstructive purposes devoted, and at whose ex- 
pense, this history knoweth not. 

Edwin Drood, Chap, ii. 

CITY CI10"WD— Its expressions. 

The throng of people hurried by, in two op- 
posite streams, with no symptom of cessation or 
exhaustion ; intent upon their own affairs ; and 
undisturbed in their business speculations by 
the roar of carts and wagons laden with clash- 
ing wares, the slipping of horses' feet upon the 
wet and greasy pavement, the rattling of the 
rain on windows and umbrella-tops, the jostling 
of the more impatient passengers, and all the 
noise and tumult of a crowded street in the high 
tide of its occupation ; while the two poor 
strangers, stunned and bewildered by the hurry 
they beheld but had no part in, looked mourn- 
fully on ; feeling, amidst the crowd, a solitude 
which has no parallel but in the thirst of the 
shipwrecked mariner, who, tost to and fro upon 
the billows of a mighty ocean, his red eyes 
blinded by looking on the water which hems 
him in on every side, has not one drop to cool 
his burning tongue. 

They withdrew into a low archway for shelter 
from the rain, and watched the faces of those 
who passed, to find in one among them a ray of 
encouragement or hope. Some frowned, some 
smiled, some muttered to themselves, some made 
slight gestures, as if anticipating the conversa- 
tion in which they would shortly be engaged, 
some wore the cunning look of bargaining and 
plotting, some were anxious and eager, some 
Blow and dull ; in some countenances were 
written gain ; in others loss. It was like being 
in the confidence of all these people to stand 
quietly there, looking into their faces as they 
flitted past. In busy places, where each man 
has an object of his own, and feels assured that 
every other man has his, his character and pur- 
pose are written broadly in his face. In the 
public walks and lounges of the town, people 
go to see and to be seen, and there the 
same expression, with little variety, is repeated 
a hundred times. The working-day faces 



come nearer to the truth, and let it out more 
plainly. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 44. 

CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. 

It is a handsome city, but distractingly regu- 
lar. After walking about it for an hour or two, 
I felt that I would have given the world for a 
crooked street. The collar of my coat appeared 
to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, 
beneath its Quakerly influence. My hair shrunk 
into a sleek short crop, my hands folded them- 
selves upon my breast of their own calm accord, 
and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane, 
over against the Market Place, and of making 
a large fortune by speculations in corn, came 
over me involuntarily. — America7t Notes, Chap. 7. 

CITY— The approach to New York. 

We were now in a narrow channel, with slo- 
ping banks on either side, besprinkled with plea- 
sant villas, and made refreshing to the sight by 
turf and trees. Soon we shot in quick succes- 
sion past a light-house, a mad-house (how the 
lunatics flung up their caps and roared in 
sympathy with the headlong engine and the 
driving tide !), a jail, and other buildings, and 
so emerged into a noble bay, whose waters 
sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine, like 
Nature's eyes turned up to Heaven. 

Then there lay stretched out before us to the 
right, confused heaps of buildings, with here 
and there a spire or steeple, looking down upon 
the herd below : and here and there again a 
cloud of lazy smoke ; and in the foreground a 
forest of ships' masts, cheery with flapping sails 
and waving flags. Crossing from among them 
to the opposite shore; were steam ferry-boats 
laden with people, coaches, horses, wagons, bas- 
kets, boxes ; crossed and recrossed by other ferry- 
boats ; all travelling to and fro, and never idle. 
Stately among these restless Insects were two 
or three large ships, moving with slow, majestic 
pace, as creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful 
of their puny journeys, and making for the 
broad sea. Beyond were shining heights, and 
islands in the glancing river, and a distance 
scarcely less blue and bright than the sky it 
seemed to meet. The city's hum and buzz, the 
clinking of capstans, the ringing of bells, the 
barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels, tin- 
gled in the listening ear. All of which life and 
stir, coming across the stirring water, caught 
new life and animation from its free companion- 
ship ; and, sympathizing with its buoyant spirits, 
glistened, as it seemed, in sport upon its surface, 
and hemmed the vessel round, and plashed the 
water high about her sides, and, floating her 
gallantly into the dock, flew off" again to wel- 
come other comers and speed before them to 
the busy port. — American Notes, Chap. 5. 

CITY-Travellers to the. 

Day after day, such travellers crept past, but 
always, as she thought, in one direction — always 
towards the town. Swallowed up in one phase 
or other of its immensity, towards which they 
seemed impelled by a desperate fascination, they 
never returned. Food for the hospitals, the 
churchyards, the prisons, the river, fever, mad- 
ness, vice, and death, — they passed on to the 
monster, roaring in the distance, and were lost. 
Dombey «Sr» Son^ Chap. 33. 



CITY 



106 



CITY SaXJARE 



1 



CITY— Approach to a. 

And now he approached the great city, which 
lay outstretched before him like a dark shadow 
on the ground, reddening the sluggish air with 
a deep, dull light, that told of labyrinths of pub- 
lic ways and shops, and swarms of busy people. 
Approaching nearer and nearer yet, this halo 
began to fade, and the causes which produced 
it slowly to develop themselves. Long lines 
of poorly lighted streets might be faintly traced, 
with here and there a lighter spot, where lamps 
were clustered about a square or market, or 
round some great buildings ; after a time these 
grew more distinct, and the lamps themselves 
were visible ; slight yellow specks, that seemed 
to be rapidly snuffed out, one by one, as inter- 
vening obstacles hid them from the sight. Then 
sounds arose — the striking of church clocks, the 
distant bark of dogs, the hum of traffic in the 
streets ; then outlines might be traced — tall 
steeples looming in the air, and piles of unequal 
roofs oppressed by chimneys ; then, the noise 
swelled into a louder sound, and forms grew 
more distinct and numerous still, and London — 
visible in the darkness by its own faint light, 
and not by that of Heaven — ^was at hand. 

Barnaby-jRudge, Chap. 3. 

CITY— liondon in old times. 

A series of pictures representing the streets 
of London in the night, even at the compara- 
tively recent date of this tale, would present to 
the eye something so very different in character 
from the reality which is witnessed in these 
times, that it would be difficult for the beholder 
to recognize his most familiar walks in the al- 
tered aspect of little more than half a century 
ago. 

They were, one and all, from the broadest and 
best to the narrowest and least freqiiented, very 
dark. The oil and cotton lamps, though regu- 
larly trimmed twice or thrice in the long winter 
nights, burnt feebly at the best ; and at a late 
hour, when they were unassisted by the lamps 
and candles in the shops, cast but a narrow track 
of doubtful light upon the footway, leaving the 
projecting doors and house-fronts in the deepest 
gloom. Many of the courts and lanes were left 
in total darkness ; those of the meaner sort, 
where one glimmering light twinkled for a score 
of houses, being favored in no slight degree. 
Even in these places, the inhabitants had often 
good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon 
as it was lighted ; and the watch being utterly 
inefficient, and powerless to prevent them, they 
did so at their pleasure. Thus, in the lightest 
thoroughfares, there was at every turn some ob- 
scure and dangerous spot whither a thief might 
fly for shelter, and few would care to follow ; and 
the city being belted round by fields, green 
lanes, waste grounds, and lonely roads, dividing 
it at that time from the suburbs that have joined 
it since, escape, even when the pursuit was hot, 
was rendered easy. 

There were many other characteristics — not 
quite so disagreeable — about the thoroughfares 
of London then, with which they had been long 
familiar. Some of the shops, especially those 
to the eastward of Temple Bar, still adhered to 
the old practice of hanging out a sign, and the 
creaking and swinging of these boards in their 
iron frames on windy nights, formed a strange 
and mournful concert for the ears of those who 



lay awake in bed or hurried through the streets. 
Long stands of hackney-chairs and groups of 
chairmen, compared with whom the coachmen 
of our day are gentle and polite, obstructed the 
way and filled the air with clamor ; night-cel- 
lars, indicated by a little stream of light cross- 
ing the pavement, and stretching out half-way 
into the road, and by the stifled roar of voices 
from below, yawned for the reception and enter- 
tainment of the most abandoned of both sexes ; 
under every shed and bulk small groups of link- 
boys gamed away the earnings of the day ; or 
one, more weary than the rest, gave way to sleep, 
and let the fragment of his torch fall hissing on 
the puddled ground. 

Then there was the watch, with staff and Ian- 
thorn, crying the hour, and the kind of weather ; 
and those who woke up at his voice and turned 
them round in bed, were glad to hear it rained 
or snowed, or blew, or froze, for very comfort's 
sake. The solitary passenger was startled by 
the chairmen's cry of "By your leave there ! " 
as two came trotting past him with their empty 
vehicle — carried backwards to show its being 
disengaged — and hurried to the nearest stand. 
Many a private chair too, inclosing some fine 
lady, monstrously hooped and furbelowed, and 
preceded by running footmen bearing flambeaux 
— for which extinguishers are yet suspended be- 
fore the doors of a few houses of the better sort — 
made the way gay and light as it danced along, 
and darker and more dismal when it had passed. 
It was not unusual for these running gentry, who 
carried it with a very high hand, to quarrel in 
the servants' hall while waiting for their masters 
and mistresses ; and, falling to blows either 
there or in the street without, to strew the place 
of skirmish with hair-powder, fragments of bag- 
wigs, and scattered nosegays. Gaming, the vice 
which ran so high among all classes (the fashion 
being of course set by the upper), was generally 
the cause of these disputes ; for* cards and dice 
were as openly used, and worked as much mis- 
chief, and yielded as much excitement below 
stairs, as above. While incidents like these, 
arising out of drums and masquerades and 
parties at quadrille, were passing at the west 
end of the town, heavy stage-coaches and scarce 
heavier wagons were lumbering slowly toward 
the city, the coachmen, guard, and passengers 
armed to the teeth, and the coach — a day or so, 
perhaps, behind its time, but that was nothing — 
despoiled by highwaymen ; who made no 
scruple to attack, alone and single-handed, a 
whole caravan of goods and men, and some- 
times shot a passenger or two, and were some- 
times shot themselves, just as the case might be. 
On the morrow, rumors of this new act of dar- 
ing on the road yielded matter for a few hours' 
conversation through the town, and a Public 
Progress of some fine gentlemen (half drunk) 
to Tyburn, dressed in the newest fashion and 
damning the ordinary with unspeakable gal- 
lantry and grace, furnished to the populace at 
once a pleasant excitement and a wholesome 
and profound example. 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 16. 

CITY SaXTARE— The office of the Cheery- 
bles. 

The square in which the counting house of 
the brothers Cheeryble was situated, although 
it might not wholly realize the very sanguine 



CITY SaUARE 



107 



CITY NEIGHBORHOOD 



eA'pectations which a stranger would be disposed 
to form on hearing the fervent encomiums be- 
stowed upon it by Tim Linkinwater, was, never- 
theless, a sufficiently desirable nook in the heart 
of a busy town like London, and one which oc- 
cupied a high place in the affectionate remem- 
brances of several grave persons domiciled in 
the neighborhood, whose recollections, however, 
dated from a much more recent period, and 
whose attachment to the spot was far less ab- 
sorbing than were the recollections and attach- 
ment of the enthusiastic Tim. 

And let not those Londoners whose eyes have 
been accustomed to the aristocratic gravity of 
Grosvenor Square and Hanover Square, the 
dowager barrenness and frigidity of Fitzroy 
Square, or the gravel-walks and garden-seats of 
the Squares of Russell and Euston, suppose that 
the affections of Tim Linkinwater, or the infe- 
rior lovers of this particular locality, had been 
awakened and kept alive by any refreshing asso- 
ciations with leaves, however dingy, or grass, 
however bare and thin. The City Square has 
no enclosure, save the lamp-post in the middle ; 
and has no grass but the weeds which spring up 
round its base. It is a quiet, little-frequented, 
retired spot, favorable to melancholy and con- 
templation, and appointments of long-waiting ; 
and up and down its every side the Appointed 
saunters idly by the hour together, wakening the 
echoes with the monotonous sound of his foot- 
steps on the smooth, worn stones, and counting, 
first the windows, and then the very bricks of 
the tall silent houses that hem him round about. 
In winter-time, the snow will linger there, long 
after it has melted from the busy streets and 
highways. The summer's sun holds it in some 
respect, and, while he darts his cheerful ra^s 
sparingly into the Square, keeps his fiery heat 
and glare for noisier and less imposing pre- 
cincts. It is so quiet, that you can almost hear 
the ticking of your own watch when you stop to 
cool in its refreshing atmosphere. There is a 
distant hum — of coaches, not of insects — but no 
other sound disturbs the stillness of the square. 
The ticket porter leans idly against the post at 
the corner, comfortably warm, but not hot, al- 
though the day is broiling. His white apron 
flaps languidly in the air, his head gradually 
droops upon his breast, he takes very long winks 
with both eyes at once ; even he is unable to 
withstand the soporific influence of the place, 
and is gradually falling asleep. But now, he 
starts into full wakefulness, recoils a step or 
two, and gazes out before him with eager wild- 
ness in his eye. Is it a job, or a boy at mar- 
bles ? Does he see a ghost, or hear an organ ? 
No : sight more unwonted still — there is a but- 
terfly in the square — a real, live butterfly ! astray 
from flowers and sweets, and fluttering among 
the iron heads of the dusty area railings. 

But if there were not many matters immedi- 
ately without the doors of Cheeryble Brothers, 
to engage the attention or distract the thoughts 
of the young clerk, there were not a few within, 
to interest and amuse him. There was scarcely 
an object in the place, animate or inanimate, 
which did not partake in some degree of the 
scrupulous methbd and punctuality of Mr. Tim- 
othy Lnikinwater. Punctual as the counting- 
house dial, which he maintained to be the best 
time-keeper in London next after the clock of 
some old, hidden, unknown church hard by (for 



Tim held the fabled goodness of that at the 
Horse Guards to be a pleasant fiction, invented 
by jealous Westenders), the old clerk performed 
the minutest actions of the day, and arranged 
the minutest articles in the little room in a 
precise and regular order, which could not have 
been exceeded if it had actually been a real 
glass case, fitted with the choicest curiosities. 
Paper, pens, ink, ruler, sealing-wax, wafers, 
pounce-box, string-box, fire-box, Tim's hat, 
Tim's scrupulously folded gloves, Tim's other 
coat — looking precisely like a back view of 
himself as it hung against the wall — all had 
their accustomed inches of space. Except the 
clock, there was not such an accurate and un- 
impeachable instrument in existence as the 
little thermometer which hung behind the door. 
There was not a bird of such methodical and 
business-like habits in all the world, as the 
blind blackbird, who dreamed and dozed away 
his days in a large snug cage, and had lost his 
voice from old age, years before Tim first bought 
hion. There was not such an eventful story in 
the whole range of anecdote, as Tim could tell 
concerning the acquisition of that very bird ; 
how, compassionating his starved and suffering 
condition, he had purchased him, with the view 
of humanely terminating his wretched life ; how 
he determined to wait three days and see whether 
the bird revived ; how, before half the time was 
out, the bird did revive ; and how he went on 
reviving and picking up his appetite and good 
looks until he gradually became what — " what 
you see him now, sir ! " — Tim would say, glanc- 
ing proudly at the cage. And with that, Tim 
would utter a melodious chirrup, and cry 
" Dick ; " and Dick, who, for any sign of life he 
had previously given, might have been a wooden 
or stuffed representation of a blackbird, indiffer- 
ently executed, would come to the side of the 
cage in three small jumps, and, thrusting his 
bill between the bars, would turn his sightless 
head towards his old master — and at that mo- 
ment it would be very difficult to determine 
which of the two was the happier, the bird or 
Tim Linkinwater. 

Nor was this all. Everything gave back, be- 
sides, some reflection of the kindly spirit of the 
brothers. The warehousemen and porters were 
such sturdy, jolly fellows, that it was a treat to 
see them. Among the shipping-announcements 
and steam-packet lists which decorated the 
counting-house wall, were designs for alms- 
houses, statements of charities, and plans for 
new hospitals. A blunderbuss and two swords 
hung above the chimney-piece, for the terror of 
evil-doers ; but the blunderbuss was rusty and 
shattered, and the swnrds were broken and 
edgeless. Elsewhere, their open display in such 
a condition would have raised a smile ; but 
there, it seemed as though even violent and 
offensive weapons partook of the reigning influ- 
ence, and became emblems of mercy and for- 
bearance. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 37. 

CITY NEIQHBORHOOD-A. 

In that quarter of London in which Golden 
Square is situated, there is a by-gone, faded, 
tumble-down street, with two irregular rows of 
tall, meagre houses, which seem to have stared 
each other out of countenance years ago. The 
very chimneys appear to have grown dismal and 
melancholy, from having had nothing better to 



CLEANLINESS 



108 



CLEBK 



look at than the chimneys over the way. Their 
tops are battered, and broken, and blackened 
with smoke ; and, here and there, some taller 
stack than the rest, inclining heavily to one 
side, and toppling over the roof, seems to medi- 
tate taking revenge for half a century's neglect, 
by crushing the inhabitants of the garrets be- 
neath. 

The fowls who peck about the kennels, jerk- 
ing their bodies hither and thither with a gait 
which none but town fowls are ever seen to 
adopt, and which any country cock or hen would 
be puzzled to understand, are perfectly in keep- 
ing with the crazy habitations of their owners. 
Dingy, ill-plumed, drowsy flutterers, sent, like 
many of the neighboring children, to get a live- 
lihood in the streets, they hop from stone to 
stone, in forlorn search of some hidden eatable 
in the mud, and can scarcely raise a crow among 
them. The only one with anything approach- 
ing to a voice, is an aged bantam at the baker's ; 
and even he is hoarse, in consequence of bad 
living in his last place. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 14. 

CLEANLINESS— Uncomfortable. 

Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but 
had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness 
more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt 
itself. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and 
some people do the same by their religion. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

CLERK— A Lawyer's. 

" I'll take the opportunity, if you please, of 
entering your name in our Callers' Book for the 
day." Young Blight made another great show 
of changing the volume, taking up a pen, suck- 
ing it, dipping it, and running over previous en- 
tries before he wrote. " As, Mr. Alley, Mr. 
Bailey, Mr. Calley, Mr. Dalley, Mr. Falley, Mr. 
Galley, Mr. Halley, Mr. Lalley, Mr. Malley. 
And Mr. Boffin." 

" Strict system here ; eh, my lad ? " said Mr. 
Boffin, as he was booked. 

" Yes, sir," returned the boy. " I couldn't 
get on without it." 

By which he probably meant that his mind 
would have been shattered to pieces without this 
fiction of an occupation. Wearing in his soli- 
tary confinement no fetters that he could polish, 
and being provided with no drinking-cup that 
he could carve, he had fallen into the device of 
ringing alphabetical changes into the two vol- 
umes in question, or of entering vast numbers 
of persons out of the Directory as transacting 
business with Mr. Lightwood. It was the more 
necessary for his spirits, because, being of a 
sensitive temperament, he was apt to consider 
it personally disgraceful to himself that his 
master had no clients. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 8. 

CLERK— An indignaant {Newman Nogg-s). 

As the usurer turned for consolation to his 
books and papers, a performance was going on 
outside his office-door, which would have occa- 
sioned him no small surprise, if he could by 
any means have become acquainted with it. 

Newman Noggs was the sole actor. He 
stood at a little distance from the door, with his 
face towards it ; and with the sleeves of his 
coat turned back at the wrists, was occupied in 



bestowing the most vigorous, scientifi-:, and 
straightforward blows upon the empty air 

At first sight, this would have appeared mere- 
ly a wise precaution in a man of sedentary 
habits, with the view of opening the chest and 
strengthening the muscles of the arms. But 
the intense eagerness and joy depicted in the 
face of Newman Noggs, which was suffused 
with perspiration ; the surprising energy with 
which he directed a constant succession of blows 
towards a particular panel about five feet eight 
from the ground, and still worked away in the 
most untiring and persevering manner, would 
have sufficiently explained to the attentive ob- 
server, that his imagination was threshing, to 
within an inch of his life, his body's most active 
employer, Mr. Ralph Nickleby. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 29. 

CLERK— His oflB.ce. 

Every morning, with an air ever new, Her- 
bert went into the City to look about him. I 
often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in 
which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a 
coal-box, a string-box, an almanac, a desk and 
stool, and a ruler ; and I do not remember that 
I ever saw him do anything else but look about 
him. If we all did what we undertake to do, as 
faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a 
Republic of the Virtues. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 34. 

CLERKS— Oflices of merchants'. 

It appeared to me that the eggs from which 
young Insurers were hatched, were incubated in 
dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging 
from the places to which those incipient giants 
repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did the 
counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in 
my eyes as at all a good Observatory ; being a 
back second floor up a yard, of a grimy pres- 
ence in all particulars, and with a look into an- 
other back second floor, rather than a look-out. 
Great Expectations, Chap. 22. 

CLERK— The faithful old. 

" Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater," 
said brother Charles, looking at him without the 
faintest spark of anger, and with a countenance 
radiant with attachment to the old clerk. 
" Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater, what 
do you mean, sir? " 

" It's forty-four year," said Tim, making a 
calculation in the air with his pen, and drawing 
an imaginary line before he cast it up, " forty- 
four year, next May, since I first kept the books 
of Cheeryble Brothers, I've opened the safe 
every morning all that time (Sundays excepted) 
as the clock struck nine, and gone over the 
house every night at half-past ten (except on 
Foreign Post nights, and then twenty minute? 
before twelve) to see the doors fastened, and the 
fires out. I've never slept out of the back attic 
one single night. There's the same mignonette 
box in the middle of the window, and the same 
four flower-pots, two on each side, that I brought 
with me when I first came. There ain't — I've 
said it again and again, and I'll maintain it — 
there ain't such a square as this in the world. I 
know there ain't," said Tim, with sudden ener- 
gy, and looking sternly about him. " Not one. 
For business or pleasure, in summer-time or win- 
ter — I don't care which — there's nothing like it. 










'- -mm. 



CLERGYMEN. 



109 



CLERGYMAN. 



There's not such a spring in England as the 
pump under the archway. There's not such a 
view in England as the view out of my window. 
I've seen it every morning before I shaved, and 
I ought to know something about it. I have 
slept in that room," added Tim, sinking his 
voice a little, " for four-and-forty year ; and if 
it wasn't inconvenient, and didn't interfere 
with business, I should request leave to die 
there." 

" Damn you, Tim Linklnwater, how dare yoo 
talk about dying ? " roared the twins by one im- 
pulse, and blowing their old noses violently. 

" That's what I've got to say, Mr. Edwin and 
Mr. Charles," said Tim, squaring his shoulders 
again. " This isn't the first time you've talked 
about superannuating me ; but, if you please, 
we'll make it the last, and drop the subject for 
evermore." 

With those words, Tim Linkinwater stalked 
cut, and shut himself up in his glass-case, with 
the air of a man who had had his say, and was 
thoroughly resolved not to be put down. 

The brothers interchanged looks, and coughed 
some half-dozen times without speaking. 

" He must be done something with, brother 
Ned," said the other, warmly ; "we must disre- 
gard his old scruples ; they can't be tolerated 
or borne. He must be made a partner, brother 
Ned ; and if he won't submit to it peaceably, 
we must have recourse to violence." 

Nicholas Nickieby, Chap. 35. 

CLERGYMEN-Advice to. 

There is a third head, taking precedence of 
all others, to which my remarks on the discourse 
I heard have tended. In the New Testament 
there is the most beautiful and affecting history 
conceivable by man, and there are the terse 
models for all prayer, and for all preaching. As 
to the models, imitate them, Sunday preach- 
ers — else why are they there, consider? As to 
the history, tell it. Some people cannot read, 
some people will not read, many people (this 
especially holds among the young and ignorant) 
find it hard to pursue the verse form in which 
the book is presented to them, and imagine that 
those breaks imply gaps and wants of continuity. 
Help them over that first stumbling-block, by 
setting forth the history in narrative, with no 
fear of exhausting it. You will never preach 
so well, you will never move them so profoundly, 
you will never send them away with half so 
much to think of. Which is the better inter- 
est — Christ's choice of twelve poor men to help 
in those merciful wonders among the poor and 
rejected, or the pious bullying of a whole Union- 
ful of paupers? What is your changed philoso- 
pher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out 
of the mud of the streets and of my life, when 
you have the widow's son to tell me about, the 
ruler's daughter, the other figure at the door 
when the brother of the two sisters was dead, 
and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying, 
"The Master is come, and calleth for thee?" — 
Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget 
himself, and remember no individuality but 
one, and no eloquence but one, stand up iDefore 
four thousand men and women at the Britannia 
Theatre any Sunday night, recounting that nar- 
rative to them as fellow-creatures, and he shall 
see a sight ! 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 4. 



CLERGYMAN— The True. 

So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affecta- 
tion, as true practical Christianity ever is ! I 
read more of the New Testament in the fresh, 
frank face going up the village beside me, in 
five minutes, than I have read in anathematizing 
discourses (albeit put to press with enormous 
flourishing of trumpets) in all my life. I heard 
more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice 
that had nothing to say about its owner, than in 
all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that 
have ever blown conceit at me. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 2. 

CLERGYMAN— The Rev. Mr. Chadband. 

Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man, with a 
fat smile, and a general appearance of having a 
good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs. Chad- 
band is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. 
Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not 
unlike a bear who has been taught to walk up- 
right. He is very much embarrassed about the 
arms, as if they were inconvenient to him, and 
he wanted to grovel; is very much in a per- 
spiration about the head ; and never speaks 
without first putting up his great hand, as de- 
livering a token to his hearers that he is going 
to edify them. — Bleak House, Chap. ig. 

CLERGYMAN— The Exhortations of Mr. 
Chadband. 

" Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising 
and wiping the oily exudations from his reverend 
visage, "Peace be with us! My friends, why 
with us ? Because," with his fat smile, " it can- 
not be against us, because it must be for us ; 
because it is not hardening, because it is soften- 
ing; because it does not make war like the 
hawk, but comes home untoe us like the dove. 
Therefore, my friends, peace be with us ! My 
human boy, come forward !" 

Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband 
lays the same on Jo's arm, and considers where 
to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his re- 
verend friend's intentions, and not at all clear , 
but that something practical and painful is going 
to be done to him, mutters, " You let me alone. 
I never said nothink to you. You let me 
alone." 

"No, my young friend," says Chadband, 
smoothly, " I will not let you alone. And why ? 
Because I am a harvest-laborer, because I am a 
toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered 
over untoe me, and are become as a precious in- 
strument in my hands. My friends, may I so 
employ this instrument as to use it toe your ad- 
vantage, toe your profit, toe your gain, toe your 
welfare, toe your enrichment ! My young friend, 
sit upon this stool." 

Jo, apparently possessed by an impression 
that the reverend gentleman wants to cut his 
hair, shields his head with both arms, and is got 
into the required position with great ditticulty, 
and every possible manifestation of reluctance. 

When he is at last adjusted like a lay-ligure, 
Mr. Chadband, retiring behind the table, holds 
up his bear's-paw, and says, " My friends ! " 
This is the signal for a general settlement of the 
audience. The 'prentices giggle internally, and 
nudge each other. Guster falls into a sta.ing 
and vacant state, comiioundcd of a stunned ad- 
miration of Mr. Chadband and pity for the 
friendless outcast, whose condition touches her 



CliERGYMAN 



110 



CliERGYMAN 



nearly. jMrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of 
gunpowder. Mrs. Chadband composes herself 
grimly by the fire, and warms her knees ; find- 
ing that sensation favorable to the reception of 
eloquence. 

It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit 
habit of fixing some member of his congrega- 
tion with his eye, and fatly arguing his points 
with that particular person ; who is understood 
to be expected to be moved to an occasional 
grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression 
of inward working, which expression of inward 
working, being echoed by some elderly lady in 
the next pew, and so communicated, like a game 
of forfeits, through a circle of the more ferment- 
able sinners present, serves the purpose of par- 
liamentary cheetjng, and gets Mr. Chadband's 
steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chad- 
band, in saying " My friends ! " has rested his 
eye on Mr. Snagsby ; and proceeds to make that 
ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, 
the immediate recipient of his discourse. 
****** 

" We have here among us, my friends," says 
Chadband, " a Gentile and a Heathen, a dweller 
in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's, and a mover-on 
upon the surface of the earth. We have here 
among us, my friends," and Mr. Chadband, un- 
twisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail, be- 
stows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying 
that he will throw him an argumentative back- 
fall presently, if he be not already down, "a 
brother and a boy." 

****** 

" I say this brother, present here among us, is 
devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid 
of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, 
and of precious stones, because he is devoid of 
the light that shines in upon some of us. What 
is that light? What is it? I ask you what is 
that light." 

Mr. Chadband draws back his head and 
pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not to be lured on to 
his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning 
forward over the table, pierces what he has got 
to follow, directly into Mr. Snagsby, with the 
thumb-nail already mentioned. 

" It is," says Chadband, " the ray of rays, the 
sun of suns, the moon of moons, the star of 
stars. It is the light of Terewth." 

Mr. Chadband draws himself up again, and 
looks triumphantly at Mr. Snagsby, as if he 
would be glad to know how he feels after that. 

" Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hittmg 
him again. " Say not to me that it is not the 
lamp of lamps. I say to you, it is, I say to you, 
a million times over, it is. It is ! I say to you 
that I will proclaim it to you, whether you like 
it or not ; nay, that the less you like it, the more 
I will proclaim it to you. With a speaking- 
trumpet ! I say to you that if you rear your- 
self against it, you shall fall, you shall be bruised, 
you shall be battered, you shall be flawed, you 
shall be smashed." 

The present effect of this flight of oratory — 
much admired for its general power by Mr. Chad- 
band's followers — being not only to make Mr. 
Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent 
the innocent Mr. Snagsby in the light of a deter- 
mined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of brass 
and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate trades- 
man becomes yet more disconcerted ; and is in 
a very advanced state of low spirits and false 



position, when Mr. Chadband accidentally 
finishes him. — Bleak House, Chap. 25. 

CLERGYMAN— The fasMonable. 

Our curate is a young gentleman of such pre- 
possessing appearance and fascinating manners, 
that within one month after his first appearance 
in the parish, half the young-lady inhabitants 
were melancholy with religion, and the other 
half, desponding with love. Never were so 
many young ladies seen in our parish-church on 
Sunday before ; and never had the little round 
angels' faces on Mr. Tomkins's monument in the 
side aisle, beheld such devotion on earth as they 
all exhibited. He was about five-and-twenty 
when he first came to astonish the parishioners. 
He parted his hair on the centre of his forehead 
in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant 
of the first water on the fourth finger of his left 
hand (which he always applied to his left cheek 
when he read prayers), and had a deep sepul- 
chral voice of unusual solemnity. Innumerable 
were the calls made by prudent mammas on our 
new curate, and innumerable the invitations 
with which he was assailed, and which, to do 
him justice, he readily accepted. If his manner 
in the pulpit had created an impression in his 
favor, the sensation was increased tenfold, by 
his appearance in private circles. Pews in the 
immediate vicinity of the pulpit or reading- 
desk rose in value ; sittings in the centre aisle 
were at a premium ; an inch of room in the 
front row of the gallery could not be procured 
for love or money, and some people even went 
so far as to assert, that the three Miss Browns, 
who had an obscure family pew just behind the 
churchwardens', were detected, one Sunday, in 
the free seats by the communion-table, actually 
lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the 
vestry ! He began to preach extempore ser- 
mons, and even grave papas caught the infection. 
He got out of bed at half-past twelve o'clock 
one winter's night, to half-baptize a washer- 
woman's child in a slop-basin, and the gratitude 
of the parishioners knew no bounds — the very 
churchwardens grew generous, and insisted on 
the parish defraying the expense of the watch- 
box on wheels which the new curate had ordered 
for himself, to perform the funeral service in, in 
wet weather. He sent three pints of gruel and 
a quarter of a pound of tea to a poor woman 
who had been brought to bed of four small 
children, all at once — the parish was charmed. 
He got up a subscription for her — the woman's 
fortune was made. He spoke for one hour and 
twenty-five minutes, at an anti-slavery meeting 
at the Goat and Boots — the enthusiasm was at 
its height. A proposal was set on foot for pre- 
senting the curate with a piece of plate, as a 
mark of esteem for his valuable services rendered 
to the parish. The list of subscriptions was 
filled up in no time ; the contest was, not who 
should escape the contribution, but who should 
be the foremost to subscribe. A splendid silver 
inkstand was made, and engraved with an ap- 
propriate inscription ; the curate was invited to 
a public breakfast, at the before-mentioned Goat 
and Boots ; the inkstand was presented in a 
neat speech by Mr. Gubbins, the ex-church- 
warden, and acknowledged by the curate in 
terms which drew tears into the eyes of all pre- 
sent — the very waiters were melted. 

One would have supposed that, by this time 



CliOCK 



111 



COACH 



the theme of universal admiration was lifted to 
the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. 
The curate began to cough ; four fits of cough- 
ing one morning between the Litany and the 
Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here 
was a discovery — the curate was consumptive. 
How interestingly melancholy! If the young 
ladies were energetic before, the sympathy and 
solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man 
as the curate — such a dear — such a perfect love 
— to be consumptive ! It was too much. Anony- 
mous presents of black-currant jam, and lozen- 
ges, elastic waistcoats, bosom friends, and warm 
stockings, poured in upon the curate until he 
was as completely fitted out with winter cloth- 
ing, as if he were on the verge of an expedition 
to the North Pole ; verbal bulletins of the state 
of his health were circulated throughout the 
parish half-a-dozen times a day ; and the curate 
was in the very zenith of his popularity. 

(Scenes J Sketches, Chap. 2. 

CLOCK— Its expression. 

There was the large, hard-featured clock on 
the sideboard, which he used to see bending its 
figured brows upon him Math a savage joy when 
he was behind-hand with his lessons, and which, 
when it was wound up once a week with an iron 
handle, used to sound as if it were growling in 
ferocious anticipation of the miseries into which 
it would bring him. 

Little Dorrit, Book /,, Chap, 3. 

CLOCK— What it said. 

The Doctor was sitting in his portentous 
study, with a globe at each knee, books all 
round him. Homer over the door, and Minerva 
on the mantel-shelf. " And how do you do, 
Sir?" he said to Mr. Dombey ; "and how is 
my little friend ? " Grave as an organ was the 
Doctor's speech ; and when he ceased the great 
clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least) to 
take him up, and to go on saying, " how, is, my, 
lit, tie, friend ? how, is. my, lit, tie, friend?" over 
and over and over again. 

Dombey dr' Son, Chap. Ii. 

CLOCKS. 

We have a faint remembrance of an unearthly 
collection of clocks, purporting to be the work 
of Parisian and Genevese artists — chiefly bilious- 
faced clocks, supported on sickly. white crutches, 
with their pendulums dangling like lame legs — 
to which a similar course of events occurred for 
several years, until they seemed to lapse away 
of mere imbecility. 

Reprinted Pieces, English Watering Place, 

COACH— Riding: in a. 

Every shake of the coach in which I sat, half 
dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new 
recollection out of its place, and to jerk some 
other new recollection into it ; and in this state 
I fell asleep. — Pictures from Italy. 

COACH— Experiences in a Virginia. 

The coach holds nine inside, having a seat 
across from door to door, where we in England 
put our legs : so that there is only one feat more 
difficult in the performance than getting in, 
and that is getting out again. There is only 
one outside passenger, and he sits upon the 
box. As I am that one, I climb up, and, while 



they are strapping the luggage on the roof, and 
heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a 
good opportunity of looking at the driver. 

He is a negro — very black indeed. He is 
dressed in a coarse pepper-and-salt suit, exces- 
sively patched and darned (particularly at the 
knees), gray stockings, enormous unblacked 
high-low shoes, and very short trousers. He 
has two odd gloves — one of party-colored 
worsted, and one of leather. He has a veiy 
short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged 
up with string. And yet he wears a low- 
crowned, broad-brimmed black hat, faintly 
shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of 
an English coachman ! But somebody in au- 
thority cries, "Go ahead!" as I am making 
these observations. The mail takes the lead in 
a four-horse wagon, and all the coaches follow 
in procession, headed by No. i. 

By the way, whenever an Englishman would 
cry, " All right ! " an American cries, " Go 
ahead ! " which is somewhat expressive of the 
national character of the two countries. 

The first half-mile of the road is over bridges 
made of loose planks laid across two parallel 
poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over them, 
and IN the river. The river has a clayey bot- 
tom and is full of holes, so that half a horse is 
constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can't 
be found again for some time. 

But we get past even this, and come to the 
road itself, which is a series of alternate swamps 
and gravel-pits. A tremendous place is close 
before us ; the black driver rolls his eyes, screws 
his mouth up very round, and looks straight 
between the two leaders, as if he were saying to 
himself, " We have done this often before, but 
now I think we shall have a crash." He takes 
a rein in each hand, jerks and pulls at both, and 
dances on the splashboard with both feet (keep- 
ing his seat, of course) like the late lamented 
Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers. We come 
to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the 
coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of 
forty-five degrees, and stick there. The insides 
scream dismally ; the coach stops ; the horses 
flounder ; all the other six coaches stop ; and 
their four-and-twenty horses flounder likewise, — 
but merely for company, and in sympathy with 
ours. Then the following circumstances occur : 

Black Driver (to the horses). " Hi !" 

Nothing happens. Insides scream again. 

Black Driver (to the horses). " Ho ! " 

Horses plunge, and splash the black driver. 

Gentleman inside (looking out). "Why, 
what on airth — " 

Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and 
draws his head in again, without finishing his 
question, or waiting for an answer. 

Black Driver (still to the horses). " Jiddy ! 
Jiddy!" 

Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of 
the hole, and draw it up a bank, so steep that 
the black driver's legs fly up into the air, and 
he goes back among the luggage on the roof. 
But he immediately recovers himself, and cries 
(still to the horses), — 

"Pill!" 

No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins 
to roll back upon No. 2, which rolls back upon 
No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on, 
until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, n'^arly 
a quarter of a mile behind. 



COACH 



113 



COACHES 



Black Driver (louder than before). " Pill !" 

Horses make another struggle to get up the 
bank, and again the coach rolls backward. 

Black Driver (louder than before). " Pe-e- 
e-ill!" 

Horses make a desperate struggle. 

Black Driver (recovering spirits). " Hi, 
Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill!" 

Horses make another effort. 

Black Driver (with great vigor). "Ally 
Loo! Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo!" 

Horses almost do it. 

Black Driver (with his eyes starting out of 
his head). " Lee, den, Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy, 
Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. Lee-e-e-e-e I " 

They run up the bank and go down again on 
the other side at a fearful pace. It is impossi- 
ble to stop them, and at the bottom there is a 
deep hollow, full of water. The coach rolls 
frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and 
water fly about us. The black driver dances 
like a madman. Suddenly we are all right by 
some extraordinary means, and stop to breathe. 

A black friend of the black driver is sitting 
on a fence. The black driver recognizes him by 
twirling his head round and round like a harle- 
quin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, 
and grinning from ear to ear. He stops short, 
turns to me, and says : 

" We shall get you through, sa, like a fiddle, 
and hope a please you when we get you through, 
sa. Old 'ooman at home, sir," — chuckling very 
much, "outside gentleman, sa, he often re- 
member old 'ooman at home, sa," grinning 
again. 

"Ay, ay, we'll take care of the old woman. 
Don't be afraid." 

The black driver grins again, but there is an- 
other hole, and beyond that another bank, close 
before us. So he stops short ; cries (to the 
horses again), " Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady. 
Hi. Jiddy. Pill. Ally. Loo," but never "Lee !" 
until we are reduced to the very last extremity, 
and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication 
from which appears to be all but impossible. 

And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts 
in two hours and a half ; breaking no Lones, 
though bruising a great many ; and, in short, 
getting through the distance " like a fiddle." 

This singular kind of coaching terminates at 
Fredericksburg, whence there is a railway to 
Richmond. — American Notes, Chap, 9. 

COACH— The early moming. 

The frosty night wears away, and the dawn 
breaks, and the post-chaise comes rolling on 
through the early mist, like the ghost of a chaise 
departed. It has plenty of spectral company, in 
ghosts of trees and hedges, slowly vanishing and 
giving place to the realities of day. 

Bleak House, Chap. 55. 

COACH— An old style. 

We are as great friends to horses, hackney- 
coach and otherwise, as the renowned Mr. Mar- 
tin, of costermonger notoriety, and yet we never 
ride. We keep no horse, but a clothes-horse ; 
enjoy no saddle so much as a saddle of mutton ; 
and, following our own inclinations, have never 
followed the hounds. Leaving these fleeter 
means of getting over the ground, or of de- 

Eositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, 
y hackney-coach stands we take our stand. 



There is a hackney-coach stand under the 
very window at which we are writing ; there is 
only one coach on it now, but it is a fair speci- 
men of the class of vehicles to which we have 
alluded — a great, lumbering, square concern, of 
a dingy yellow color (like a bilious brunette), 
with very small glasses, but very large frames ; 
the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of 
arms, in shape something like a dissected bat ; 
the axletree is red, and the majority of the 
wheels are green. The box is partially covered 
by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of 
capes, and some extraordinary-looking clothes ; 
and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is 
stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in 
rivalry of the hay, which is peeping through the 
chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping 
heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty 
and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking- 
horse, are standing patiently on some damp 
straw, occasionally wincing, and rattling the 
harness , and, now and then, one of them lifts 
his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he 
were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to 
assassinate the coachman. The coachman him- 
self is in the watering-house ; and the water- 
man, with his hands forced into his pockets as 
far as they can possibly go, is dancmg the " dou- 
ble shuffle" in front of the pump, to keep his 
feet warm. — Scenes, Chap. 7. 

COACHES— The g-hosts of mail. 

" I wonder what these ghosts of mail-coaches 
carry in their bags," said the landlord, who had 
listened to the whole story with profound atten- 
tion. 

" The dead letters, of course," said the Bag- 
man. 

" Oh, ah ! To be sure," rejoined the landlord, 
" I never thought of that." 

Pickwick, Chap. 49. 

COACHES— decayed— the associations of. 

" There might be a dozen of them, or there 
might be more — my uncle was never quite cer- 
tain on this point, and being a man of very 
scrupulous veracity about numbers, didn't like 
to say — but there they stood, all huddled toge- 
ther in the most desolate condition imaginable. 
The doors had been torn from their hinges and 
removed ; the linings had been stripped off, 
only a shred hanging here and there by a rusty 
nail ; the lamps were gone ; the poles had long 
since vanished ; the iron-work was rusty ; the 
paint was worn away ; the wind whistled through 
the chinks in the bare wood-work ; and the rain, 
which had collected on the roofs, fell, drop by 
drop, into the insides, with a hollow and melan- 
choly sound. They were the decaying skeletons 
of departed mails, and in that lonely place, at 
that time of night, they looked chill and dismal. 

" My uncle rested his head upon his hands, 
and thought of the busy bustling people who 
had rattled about, years before, in the old coaches, 
and were now as silent and changed ; he thought 
of the numbers of people to whom one of those 
crazy, mouldering vehicles had borne, night after 
night, for many years, and through all weathers, 
the anxiously-expected intelligence, the eagerly 
looked-for remittance, the promised assurance 
of health and safety, the sudden announcement 
of sickness and death. The merchant, the 
lover, the wife, the widow, the mother, the 



COACHES 



113 



coachi»:an 



schoolboy, the very child who tottered to the 
door at the postman's knock — how had they all 
looked forward to the arrival of the old coach ! 
And where were they all now ? " 

Pickwick, Chap. 49. 

COACHES— Mr. Weller's opinion of. 

" Coaches, Sammy, is like guns — they requires 
to be loaded with wery great care, afore they go 
off." — Pickwick, Chap. 23. 

COACHES— Their autobiography. 

What an interesting book a hackney-coach 
might produce, if it could carry as much in its 
head as it does in its body ! The autobiography 
of a broken-down hackney-coach would surely 
be as amusing as the autobiography of a broken- 
down hackneyed dramatist, and it might tell as 
much of its travels with the pole, as others have 
of their expeditions to it. How many stories 
might be related of the different people it had 
conveyed on matters of business or profit- 
pleasure or pain ! And how many melancholy 
tales of the same people at different periods ! 
The country-girl — the showy, over-dressed wo- 
man — the drunken prostitute ! The raw ap- 
prentice — the dissipated spendthrift — the thief ! 

Talk of cabs ! Cabs are all very well in cases 
of expedition, when it's a matter of neck or 
nothing, life or death, your temporary home or 
your long one. But, beside a cab's lacking that 
gravity of deportment which so peculiarly dis- 
tinguishes a hackney-coach, let it never be for- 
gotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and 
that he never was anything better. A hackney- 
cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first 
entry into public life ; whereas a hackney-coach 
is a remnant of past gentility, a victim to fashion, 
a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing 
their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by 
men wearing their livery, stripped of his finery 
and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart 
footman when he is no longer sufficiently juve- 
nile for his office, progressing lower and lower in 
the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at 
last it comes to — a stand ! — Scenes, Chap. 7. 

COACH-TRAVELLING-The miseries of. 

We have often wondered how many months' 
incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would 
take to kill a man ; and, wondering by anal- 
ogy, we should very much like to know how 
many months of constant travelling in a suc- 
cession of early coaches an unfortunate mortal 
could endure. Breaking a man alive upon the 
wheel would be nothing to breaking his rest, 
his peace, his heart — everything but his fast — 
upon four ; and the punishment of Ixion (the 
only practical person, by-the-bye, who has dis- 
covered the secret of the perpetual motion) 
would sink into utter insignificance before the 
one we have suggested. If we had been a 
powerful churchman in those good times when 
ulood was shed as freely as water and men were 
mowed down like grass, in the sacred cause of 
religion, we would have lain by very quietly 
till we got hold of some especially obstinate 
mi.screani, who positively refused to be converted 
to our faith, and then we would have booked 
him for an inside place in a small coach which 
travelled day and night : and securing the re- 
mainder of the places for stout men with a 
slight tendency to coughing and spitting, we 



would have started him forth on his last travels ; 
leaving him mercilessly to all the tortures which 
the waiters, landlords, coachmen, guards, boots, 
chambermaids, and other familiars on his line 
of road might think proper to inflict. 

Scenes, Chap. 15. 

COACHMAN— A representative of pomp. 

There were some stately footmen ; and there 
was a perfect picture of an old coachman, who 
looked as if he were the official representative 
of all the pomps and vanities that had ever been 
put into his coach. — Bleak House, Chap. 18. 

COACHMAN— Tom Pinch's journey with 
the. 

And really it might have confused a less mod- 
est man than Tom to find himself sitting next 
that coachman ; for of all the swells that ever 
flourished a whip, professionally, he might have 
been elected emperor. He didn't handle his 
gloves like another man, but put them on — even 
when he was standing on the pavement, quite 
detached from the coach — as if the four grays 
were, somehow or other, at the end of the fin- 
gers. It was the same with his hat. He did 
things with his hat which nothing but an un- 
limited knowledge of horses, and the wildest 
freedom of the road, could ever have made him 
perfect in. Valuable little parcels were brought 
to him with particular instructions, and he 
pitched them into his hat, and stuck it on again ; 
as if the laws of gravity did not admit of such 
an event as its being knocked off or blown off, 
and nothing like an accident could befall it. 
The guard, too ! Seventy breezy miles a day 
were written in his very whiskers. His man- 
ners were a canter ; his conversation a round 
trot. He was a fast coach upon a down-hill 
turnpike road ; he was all pace. A wagon 
couldn't have moved slowly, with that guard and 
his key-bugle on the top of it. 

These were all foreshadowings of London, 
Tom thought, as he sat upon the box, and looked 
about him. Such a coachman and such a guard 
never could have existed between Salisbury and 
any other place. The coach was none of youi 
steady-going, yokel coaches, but a swaggering, 
rakish, dissipated London coach ; up all night, 
and lying by all day, and leading a devil of a 
life. It cared no more for Salisbury than if it 
had been a hamlet. It rattled noisily through 
the best streets, defied the Cathedral, took the 
worst corners sharpest, went cutting in every- 
where, making everything get out of its way ; 
and spun along the open country-road, blowing 
a lively defiance out of its key-bugle, as its last 
glad parting legacy. 

It was a charming evening, mild and bright. 
And even with the weight upon his mind which 
arose out of the immensity and uncertainty of 
London, Tom could not resist the captivating 
sense of rapid motion through the pleasant air. 
The four grays skimmed along, as if they liked 
it quite as well as Tom did ; the bugle was in as 
high spirits as the grays ; the coachman chimed 
in sometimes with his voice ; the wheels hum- 
med cheerfully in unison ; th*. bras.< work on the 
harness was an orchestra of little bells ; and thus, 
as they went clinking, jingling, rattling smoothly 
on, the whole concern, from the buckles of the 
leaders' coupling-reins to the handle of the hind 
boot, was one great iivstrumeut of music. 



COIiD 



114 



COMMON SENSJfi 



Yoho ! past hedges, gates, and trees ; past cot- 
tages, and bams, and people going home from 
work. Yoho ! past donkey-chaises, drawn aside 
into the ditch, and empty carts with rampant 
horses, whipped up at a bound upon the little 
water-course, and held by struggling carters 
close to the five-barred gate, until the coach had 
passed the narrow turning in the road. Yoho ! 
by churches dropped down by themselves in 
quiet nooks, with rustic burial-grounds about 
them, where the graves are green, and daisies 
sleep — for it is evening — on the bosoms of the 
dead. Yoho ! past streams, in which the cattle 
cool their feet and where the rushes grow ; past 
paddock-fences, farms, and rick-yards ; past last 
year's stacks, cut, slice by slice, away, and show- 
ing, in the waning light, like ruined gables, old 
and bro\vn. Yoho ! down the pebbly dip, and 
through the merry water-splash, and up at a 
canter to the level road again. Yoho ! Yoho ! 

See the bright moon ! High up before we 
know it ; making the earth reflect the objects on 
its breast like water. Hedges, trees, low cotta- 
ges, church steeples, blighted stumps, and flour- 
ishing young slips, have all grown vain upon the 
sudden, and mean to contemplate their own fair 
images until morning. The poplars yonder rus- 
tle, that their quivering leaves may see them- 
selves upon the ground. Not so the oak ; trem- 
bling does not become him j and he watches 
himself in his stout old burly steadfastness, 
without the motion of a twig. The moss-grown 
gate, ill-poised upon its creaking hinges, crip- 
pled and decayed, swings to and fro before its 
glass, like some fantastic dowager ; while our 
own ghostly likeness travels on, Yoho ! Yoho ! 
through ditch and brake, upon the ploughed 
land and the smooth, along the steep hill-side 
and steeper wall, as if it were a phantom 
Hunter. 

Clouds too ! And a mist upon the Hollow ! 
Not a dull fog that hides it, but a light, airy, 
gauze-like mist, which in our eyes of modest 
admiration gives a new charm to the beauties 
it is spread before : as real gauze has done ere 
now, and would again, so please you, though 
we were the Pope. Yoho ! Why now we travel 
like the Moon herself Hiding this minute in 
a grove of trees ; next minute in a patch of 
vapor ; emerging now upon our broad, clear 
course ; withdrawing now, but always dashing 
on, our journey is a counterpart of hers. Yoho ! 
A match against the moon. 

The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when 
Day comes leaping up. Yoho ! Two stages, 
and the country roads are almost changed to a 
continuous street. Yoho ! past market-gardens, 
rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and 
squares ; past wagons, coaches, carts ; past early 
workmen, late stragglers, drunken men, and 
sober carriers of loads ; past brick and mortar 
in its every shape ; and in among the rattling 
pavements, where a jaunty seat upon a coach is 
not so easy to preserve ! Yoho ! down countless 
turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until 
an old Inn-yard is gained, and Tom Pinch, get- 
ting down, quite stunned and giddy, is in 
T^ondon ! — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 36. 

COLD— Mrs. Nickleby's cure for a. 

"I had a cold once," said Mrs. Nickleby, "I 
think it was in the year eighteen hundred and 



seventeen ; let me see, four and five are nine, 
and — ^yes, eighteen hundred and seventeen, that 
I thought I never should get rid of; actually 
and seriously, that I thought I should never get 
rid of; I was only cured at last by a remedy 
that I don't know whether you ever happened 
to hear of, Mr. Pluck. You have a gallon of 
water as hot as you can possibly bear it, with a 
pound of salt and six pen'orth of the finest bran, 
and sit with your head in it for twenty minutes 
every night just before going to bed ; at least, I 
don't mean your head — your feet. It's a most 
extraordinary cure — a most extraordinary cure. 
I used it for the first time, I recollect, the day 
after Christmas Day, and by the middle of April 
following the cold was gone. It seems quite a 
miracle, when you come to think of it, for I had 
it ever since the beginning of September." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap, 26. 

COLLECTOR-Mr. Pancks, the. 

Throughout the remainder of the day. Bleed- 
ing Heart Yard was in consternation, as the grim 
Pancks cruised in it ; haranguing the inhabitants 
on their backslidings in respect of payment, de- 
manding his bond, breathing notices to quit and 
executions, running down defaulters, sending a 
swell of terror on before him, and leaving it in 
his wake. Knots of people, impelled by a fatal 
attraction, lurked outside any house in which 
he was known to be, listening for fragments of 
his discourses to the inmates ; and, when he was 
rumored to be coming down the stairs, often 
could not disperse so quickly but that he would 
be prematurely in among them, demanding their 
own arrears, and rooting them to the spot. 
Throughout the remainder of the day, Mr. 
Pancks's What were they up to? and What did 
they mean by it ? sounded all over the Yard. 
Mr. Pancks wouldn't hear of excuses, wouldn't 
hear of complaints, wouldn't hear of repairs, 
wouldn't hear of anything but unconditional 
money down. Perspiring and puffing and dart- 
ing about in eccentric directions, and becoming 
hotter and dingier every moment, he lashed the 
tide of the Yard into a most agitated and turbid 
state. It had not settled down into calm water 
again, full two hours after he had been seen 
fuming away on the horizon at the top of the 
steps. — Little DorHt, Book /., Chap. 23. 

COMMON SENSE- Skimpole's idea of. 

*' It was very unfortunate for Richard," I said. 

" Do you think so ? " returned Mr. Skimpole. 
" Don't say that, don't say that. Let us suppose 
him keeping company with Common Sense — an 
excellent man — a good deal wrinkled — dread- 
fully practical — change for a ten-pound note in 
every pocket — ruled account-book in his hand — 
say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. 
Our dear Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleap- 
ing obstacles, bursting with poetry like a young 
bud, says to this highly respectable companion, 
' I see a golden prospect before me ; it's very 
bright, it's very beautiful, it's very joyous ; here 
I go, bounding over the landscape to come 
at it ! ' The respectable companion instantly 
knocks him down with the ruled account-book ; 
tells him, in a literal, prosaic way, that he sees 
no such thing ; shows him it's nothing but fees, 
fraud, horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now 
you know that's a painful change ; — sensible in 
the last degree, I have no doubt, but disagreea- 



COMPROMISE 



115 



CONCEIT 



ble. / can't do it. I haven't got the ruled 
account-book, I have none of the tax-gathering 
elements in my composition, I am not at all 
respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd, per- 
haps, but so it is !" — Bleak House, Chap. 37. 

COMPROMISE— With cleanliness— An in- 
comprehensible. 

Durdles then gives the Dean a good evening, 
and adding, as he puts his hat on, " You'll find 
me at home. Mister Jarsper, as agreed, when you 
want me ; I'm a going home to clean myself," 
soon slouches out of sight. This going home to 
clean himself is one of the mlUi's incomprehen- 
sible compromises with inexorable facts ; he, 
and his hat, and his boots, and his clothes, 
never showing any trace of cleaning, but being 
uniformly in one condition of dust and grit. 
Edwin Drood, Chap. 12. 

COMPLIMENTS-Of a lawyer. 

It was a maxim with Mr. Brass that the habit 
of paying compliments kept a man's tongue 
oiled without any expense ; and, as that useful 
member ought never to grow rusty or creak in 
turning on its hinges in the case of a practitioner 
of the law, in whom it should be always glib 
and easy, he lost few opportunities of improving 
himself by the utterance of handsome speeches 
and eulogistic expressions. And this had passed 
into such a habit with him, that, if he could not 
be correctly said to have his tongue at his fin- 
gers' ends, he might certainly be said to have it 
anywhere but in his face : which being, as we 
have already seen, of a harsh and repulsive 
character, was not oiled so easily, but frowned 
above all the smooth speeches — one of nature's 
beacons, warning off those who navigated the 
shoals and breakers of the World, or of that 
dangerous strait the Law, and admonishing 
them to seek less treacherous harbors and try 
their fortune elsewhere. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 35. 

CONCEIT— Mr. Podsnap a type of. 

Mr. Podsnap was well to do, and stood very 
high in Mr. Podsnap's opinion. Beginning with 
a good inheritance, he had married a good in- 
heritance, and had thriven exceedingly in the 
Marine Insurance way, and was quite satisfied. 
He never could make out why everybody was 
not quite satisfied, and he felt conscious that he 
set a brilliant social example in being particu- 
larly well satisfied with most things, and, above 
all other things, with himself. 

Thus happily acquainted with his own merit 
and importance, Mr. Podsnap settled that what- 
ever he put behind him he put out of existence. 
There was a dignified conclusiveness — not to 
add a grand convenience — in this way of get- 
tmg rid of disagreeables, which had done much 
towards establishing Mr. Podsnap in his lofty 
place in Mr. Podsnap's satisfaction. " I don't 
want to know about it ; I don't choose to dis- 
cuss it; I don't admit it !" Mr. Podsnap had 
even acquired a peculiar flourish of his right arm 
in often clearing the world of its most difficult 
problems, by sweeping them behind him (and 
consequently sheer away) with those words and 
a flushed face. For they aff"ronted him. 

Mr. Podsnap's world was not a very large 
world, morally ; no, nor even geographically ; 
seeing that although his business was sustained 



upon commerce with other countries, he con- 
sidered other countries, with that important re- 
servation, a mistake, and of their manners and 
customs would conclusively observe, " Not Eng- 
lish ! " when. Presto ! with a flourish of the 
arm, and a flush of the face, they were swept 
away. Elsewise, the world got up at eight, 
shaved close at a quarter-past, breakfasted at 
nine, went to the City at ten, came home at 
half-past five, and dined at seven. Mr. Pod- 
snap's notions of the Arts in their integrity 
might have been stated thus. Literature ; large 
print, respectfully descriptive of getting up at 
eight, shaving close at a quarter-past, breakfast- 
ing at nine, going to the City at ten, coming 
home at half-past five, and dining at seven. 
Painting and sculpture ; models and portraits 
representing professors of getting up at eight, 
shaving close at a quarter-past, breakfasting at 
nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at 
half-past five, and dining at seven. Music ; a 
respectable performance (without variations) on 
stringed and wind instruments, sedately expres- 
sive of getting up at eight, shaving close at a 
quarter-past, breakfasting at nine, going to the 
City at ten, coming home at half-past five, and 
dining at seven. Nothing else to be permitted to 
those same vagrants the Arts, on pain of excom- 
munication. Nothing else To Be — anywhere ! 

As a so eminently respectable man, Mr. Pod- 
snap was sensible of its being required of him to 
take Providence under his protection. Conse- 
quently he always knew exactly what Providence 
meant. Inferior and less respectable men might 
fall short of that mark, but Mr. Podsnap was 
always up to it. And it was very remarkable 
(and must have been very comfortable) that 
what Providence meant was invariably what Mr. 
Podsnap meant. 

These may be said to have been the articles 
of faith of a school which the present chapter 
takes the liberty of calling after its representa- 
tive man, Podsnappery. They were confined 
within close bounds, as Mr. Podsnap's own head 
was confined by his shirt-collar ; and they were 
enunciated with a sounding pomp that smacked 
of the creaking of Mr. Podsnap's own boots. 
Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. ii. 

CONCEIT— The grandetir of Podsnappery. 

That they, when unable to lay hold of him, 
should respectfully grasp at the hem of his man- 
tle ; that they, when they could not bask in the 
glory of him, the sun, should take up with the 
pale reflected light of the watery young moon, 
his daughter, appeared quite natural, becom- 
ing, and proper. It gave him a better opinion 
of the discretion of the Lammles than he had 
heretofore held, as showing that they appreciated 
the value of the connection. So. Georgiana re- 
pairing to her friend, Mr. Podsnap went out to 
dinner, and to dinner, and yet to dinner, arm in 
arm with Mrs. Podsnap ; settling his obstinate 
head in his cravat and shirt-collar, much as if he 
were performing on the Pandean pipes, in his 
own honor, the triumphal march, See the con- 
quering Podsnap comes, Sound the trumpets, 
beat the drums ! 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 4. 

CONCEIT- SPIRITTTAIi-The Experience 
of Charles Dickens. 
I had experiences of spiritual conceit, for 



CONCEIT 



116 



CONSUMPTION 



which, as giving me a new warning against that 
curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful to 
the supposition that I was too far gone to pro- 
test against playing sick lion to any stray don- 
key with an itching hoof. All sorts of people 
seemed to become vicariously religious at my 
expense. I received the most uncompromising 
warning that I was a Heathen ; on the conclu- 
sive authority of a field preacher, who, like the 
most of his ignorant and vain and daring class, 
could not construct a tolerable sentence in his 
native tongue or pen a fair letter. This in- 
spired individual called me to order roundly, 
and knew in the freest and easiest way where I 
was going to, and what would become of me if 
I failed to fashion myself on his bright exam- 
ple, and was on terms of blasphemous confi- 
dence with the Heavenly Host. He was in 
the secrets of my heart, and in the lowest 
soundings of my soul — he! — and could read 
the depths of my nature better than his ABC, 
and could turn me inside out, like his own 
clammy glove. But what is far more extraordi- 
nary than this — for such dirty water as this 
could alone be drawn from such a shallow and 
muddy source — I found, from the information 
of a beneficed clergyman, of whom I never 
heard, and whom I never saw, that I had not, 
as I rather supposed I had, lived a life of some 
reading, contemplation, and inquiry ; that I 
had not studied, as I rather supposed I had, to 
inculcate some Christian lessons in books ; that 
I had never tried, as I rather supposed I had, 
to turn a child or two tenderly towards the 
knowledge and love of our Saviour ; that I had 
never had, as I rather supposed I had had, de- 
parted friends, or stood beside open graves ; 
but that I had lived a life of " uninterrupted 
prosperity," and that I needed this " check, 
overmuch," and that the way to turn it to ac- 
count was to read these sermons and these 
poems, enclosed, and written and issued by my 
correspondent ! I beg it may be understood 
that I relate facts of my own uHcommercial ex- 
perience, and no vain imaginings. The docu- 
ments in proof lie near my hand. 
A Fly-leaf in a life — New Uncom. Samples. 

CONCEIT-Self (Theodosius Butler). 

Mr. Theodosius Butler was one of those im- 
mortal geniuses who are to be met with in almost 
every circle. They have, usually, very deep, 
monotonous voices. They always persuade 
themselves that they are wonderful persons, 
and that they ought to be very miserable, 
though they don't precisely know why. They 
are veiy conceited, and usually possess half an 
idea ; but, with enthusiastic young ladies, and 
silly young gentlemen, they are very wonderful 
persons. The individual in question, Mr. Theo- 
dosius, had written a pamphlet containing 
some very weighty considerations on the expe- 
diency of doing something or other ; and as 
every sentence contained a good many words 
of four syllables, his admirers took it for grant- 
ed that he meant a good deal. 

Tales, Chap. 3. 

CONPTJSION— Sometimes agreeable. 

Confusion is not always necessarily awk- 
ward, but may sometimes present a very plea- 
sant appearance.- -£'^wm Drood, Chap. 22. 



CONGUIESS of the United States. 

Did I recognize in this assembly a body of 
men, who, applying themselves in a new world 
to correct some of the falsehoods and vices of 
the old, purified the avenues to Public Life, 
paved the dirty ways to Place and Power, de- 
bated and made laws for the Common Good, 
and had no party but their Country ? 

I saw in them the wheels that move the 
meanest perversion of virtuous Political Ma-- 
chinery that iLe worst tools ever wrought. 
Despicable trickery at elections ; underhanded 
tamperings with public officers ; cowardly at- 
tacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspa- 
pers for shields, and hired pens for daggers ; 
shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose 
claim to be considered is, that every day and 
week they sow new crops of ruin with their 
venal types, which are the dragon's teeth of 
yore, in everything but sharpness ; aidings and 
abettings of every bad inclination in the popu- 
lar mind, and artful suppressions of all its good 
influences : such things as these, and, in a word, 
Dishonest Faction in its most depraved and 
most unblushing form, stared out from every 
corner of the crowded hall. 

Did I see among them the intelligence and 
refinement, the true, honest, patriotic heart of 
America? Here and there were drops of its 
blood and life, but they scarcely colored the 
stream of desperate adventurers which sets that 
way for profit and for pay. It is the game of 
these men, and of their profligate organs, to 
make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal, 
and so destructive of all self-respect in worthy 
men, that sensitive and delicate-minded persons 
shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, 
be left to battle out their selfish views unchecked. 
And thus this lowest of all scrambling fights 
goes on, and they who in other countries would, 
from their intelligence and station, most aspire 
to make the laws, do here recoil the furthest 
from that degradation. 

That there are, among the representatives of 
the people in both Houses, and among all par- 
ties, some men of high character and great abil- 
ities, I need not say. The foremost among 
these politicians who are known in Europe have 
been already described, and I see no reason to 
depart from the rule I have laid down for my 
guidance, of abstaining from all mention of in- 
dividuals. It will be sufficient to add, that to 
the most favorable accounts that have been 
written of them I more than fully and most 
heartily subscribe ; and that personal inter- 
course and free communication have bred with- 
in me, not the result predicted in the very 
doubtful proverb, but increased admiration and 
respect. They are striking men to look at, 
hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, 
Crichtons in varied accomplishments, Indians 
in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong 
and generous impulse ; and they as well repre- 
sent the honor and wisdom of their country at 
home as the distinguished gentleman who is 
now its minister at the British Court sustains 
its highest character abroad. 

American Notes, Chap. 8. 

CONSUMPTION. 

There is a dread disease which so prepare? 
its victim, as it were, for death ; which so refines 
it of its grosser aspect, and throws around fami- 



CONSCIENCE 



117 



CONVICT 



liar looks unearthly indications of the coming 
change ; a dread disease, in which the struggle 
between soul and body is so gradual, quiet, and 
solemn, and the result so sure, that day by day, 
and grain by grain, the mortal part wastes and 
withers away, so that the spirit grows light and 
sanguine with its lightening load, and, feeling 
immortality at hand, deems it but a new term 
of mortal life ; a disease in which death and life 
are so strangely blended, that death takes the 
glow and hue of life, and life the gaunt and 
grisly form of death ; a disease which medicine 
never cured, wealth never warded off, or poverty 
could boast exemption from ; which sometimes 
moves in giant strides, and sometimes at a tardy, 
sluggish pace, but, slow or quick, is ever sure 
and certain. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 49. 

CONSCIENCE-Mr. PecksniflTs bank. 

'* For myself, my conscience is my bank. I 
have a trifle invested there, a mere trifle, Mr. 
Jonas ; but I prize it as a store of value, I assure 
you." 

The good man's enemies would have divided 
upon this question into two parties. One would 
have asserted without scruple that if Mr. Peck- 
sniffs conscience were his bank, and he kept a 
running account there, he must have overdrawn 
it beyond all mortal means of computation. 
The other would have contended that it was a 
mere fictitious form ; a perfectly blank book ; 
or one in which entries were only made with a 
peculiar kind of invisible ink to become legible 
at some indefinite time ; and that he never 
troubled it at all. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 20. 

CONSCIENCE-A troubled. 

He stirred the fire, and sat down on one side 
of it. It struck eleven, and he made believe to 
compose himself patiently. But gradually he 
took the fidgets in one leg, and then in the other 
leg, and then in one arm, and then in the 
other arm, and then in his chin, and then in his 
back, and then in his forehead, and then in his 
hair, and then in his nose ; and then he stretched 
himself recumbent on two chairs, and groaned ; 
and then he started up. 

" Invisible insects of diabolical activity swarm 
in this place. I am tickled and twitched all over. 
Mentally, I have now committed a burglary 
under the meanest circumstances, and the myr- 
midons of justice are at my heels." 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /, Chap. 13. 

CONSCIENCE— A convenient garment. 

In the majority of cases, conscience is an 
elastic and very flexible article, which will bear 
a deal of stretching, and adapt itself to a great 
variety of circumstances. Some people, by pru- 
dent management, and leaving it off piece by 
piece, like a flannel waistcoat in warm weather, 
even contrive, in time, to dispense with it alto- 
gether ; but there be others who can assume the 
garment and throw it off at pleasure ; and this, 
being the greatest and most convenient improve- 
ment, is the one most in vogue. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 6. 

CONTENTMENT-The vision of Gabriel 
Grub. 

He saw that men who worked hard, and 
earned their scanty bread with lives of labor, 
were cheerful and happy ; and that to the most 



ignorant, the sweet face of nature was a never- 
failing source of cheerfulness and joy. He saw 
those who had been delicately nurtured and 
tenderly brought up, cheerful under privations, 
and superior to suffering, that would have crushed 
many of a rougher grain, because they bore 
within their own bosoms the materials of hap- 
piness, contentment, and peace. He saw that 
women, the tenderest and most fragile of all 
God's creatures, were the oftenest superior to 
sorrow, adversity, and distress ; and he saw that 
it was because they bore, in their own hearts, an 
inexhaustible well-spring of affection and de- 
votion. Above all, he saw that men like him- 
self, who snarled at the mirth and cheerfulness 
of others, were the foulest weeds on the fair 
surface of the earth ; and, setting all the good 
of the world against the evil, he came to the 
conclusion that it was a very decent and res- 
pectable sort of world after all. 

Gabriel Grub, in Pickwick, Chap. 29. 

CONTENTMENT. 

" Ha ! " said Brass, " no matter. If there's 
little business to-day, there'll be more to-mor- 
row. A contented spirit, Mr. Richard, is the 
sweetness of existence." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56. 

CONTENT-The tranquiUity of. 

Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in 
their entranced and happy ears ! Blessed Sun- 
day peace and quiet, harmonizing with the calm- 
ness in their souls, and making holy air around 
them ! Blessed twilight stealing on, and shad- 
ing her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls 
asleep, like a hushed child, upon the bosom she 
has clung to ! — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 51. 



Complacent and affable as man could be, Mr. 
Carker picked his way along the streets and 
hummed a soft tune as he went. He seemed to 
purr, he was so glad. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 22. 

CONTENT— The g-enerosity of. 

Mr. Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full 
at this moment, however, that he felt he could 
afford a drop or two of its contents, even to 
sprinkle on the dust in the by-path of his little 
daughter. — Doi7ibey (Sr' Son. 

CONTRASTS-In life. 

In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all 
gone with the rest, I venture to breathe to the 
quiet bricks and stones my confidential wonder- 
ment why a ticket-porter, who never does any 
work with his hands, is bound to wear a white 
apron ; and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary, 
who never does any work with his hands either, 
is equally bound to wear a black one. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 21. 

CONTRITION— Of Mr. Toots. 

" If I could by any means wash out the remem- 
brance of that day at Brighton, when I con- 
ducted myself — much more like a Parricide than 
a person of independent property," said Mr. 
Toots, with severe self-accusation, " I should 
sink into the silent tomb with a gleam of joy." 
Dombey <Sr* Son, Chap. 50. 

CONVICT— His early experiences. 

" Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a- 



CONVENTIONAL PHRASES 



118 



COTJGH 



going fur to tell you my life, like a song, or a 
story-book. But to give it you short and handy, 
I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. 
In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in 
jail and out of jail. There, you've got it. 
That's my life pretty much, down to such times 
as I got shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend. 

" I've been done everything to, pretty well — 
except hanged. I've been locked up, as much 
as a silver tea-kettle. I've been carted here 
and carted there, and put out of this town, and 
put out of that town, and stuck in the stocks, 
and whipped and worried and drove, I've no 
more notion where I was born than you have — 
if so much. I first become aware of myself, 
down in Essex, a-thieving turnips for my liv- 
ing. Summun had run away from me — a man 
— a tinker — and he'd took the fire with him, 
and left me wery cold. 

" I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chris- 
en'd Abel. How did I know it ? Much as I 
know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be 
chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought 
it was all lies together, only as the birds' names 
come out true, I supposed mine did. 

" So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul 
that see young Abel Magwitch, with as little 
on him as in him, but wot caught fright at him, 
and either drove him off, or took him up. I 
was took up, took up, took up, to that extent 
that I reg'larly grow'd up took up. 

" This is the way it was, that when I was a 
ragged little creetur, as much to be pitied as 
ever I see (not that I looked in the glass, for 
there warn't many insides of furnished houses 
known to me), I got the name of being har- 
dened. ' This is a terrible hardened one,' they 
says to prison wisitors, picking out me. ' May 
be said to live in jails, this boy.' Then they 
looked at me, and I looked at them, and they 
measured my head, some on 'em — they had 
better a-measured my stomach — and others on 
'em giv me tracts what I couldn't read, and 
made me speeches what 1 couldn't understand. 
They always went on agen me about the Devil. 
But what the devil was I to do ? I must put 
something into my stomach, mustn't I ? — IIow- 
somever, I'm a-getting low, and I know what's 
due. Dear boy and Pip's comrade, don't you 
be afeered of me being low. 

" Tramping, begging, thieving, working some- 
times when I could — though that warn't as of- 
ten as you may think, till you put the question 
whether you would ha' been over ready to give 
me work yourselves — a bit of a poacher, a bit 
of a laborer, a bit of a wagoner, a bit of a hay- 
maker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things 
that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be 
a man. A deserting soldier in a Traveller's 
Rest, what lay hid up to the chin under a lot 
of taturs, learned me to read ; and a travelling 
Giant what signed his name at a penny a time 
learned me to write. I warn't locked up as of- 
ten now as formerly, but I wore out my good 
share of key-metal still." 

Great Expectations^ Chap. 42. 

CONVENTIONAIi PHRASES. 

Conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks, 
easily let off, and liable to take a great variety 
of shapes and colors not at all suggested by 
their original form. 

David Copperjidd, Chap. 41. 



COOEINCh— The melodious scxmds of. 

Mrs. Wilfer then solemnly divested herself 
of her handkerchief and gloves, as a prelimi- 
nary sacrifice to preparing the frying-pan, and 
R. W. himself went out to purchase the viand. 
He soon returned, bearing the same in a fresh 
cabbage-leaf, where it coyly embraced a rasher 
of ham. Melodious sounds were not long in 
rising from the frying-pan on the fire, or in 
seeming, as the firelight danced in the mellow 
halls of a couple of full bottles on the table, to 
play appropriate dance-music. 

Our Mutual Friend^ Book /., Chap. 4. 

COOKINa. 

The slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked 
loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and 
peeled. — Christmas Stories. 

CORPORATIONS, PUBLIC-BOARDS, &c. 

— Boythom's opinion of. 

"As to Corporations, Parishes, Vestry-Boards, 
and similar gatherings of jolter-headed clods, 
who assemble to exchange such speeches that, 
by Heaven ! they ought to be worked in quick- 
silver mines for the short remainder of tneir 
miserable existence, if it were only to prevent 
their detestable English from contaminating a 
language spoken in the presence of the sun — as 
to those fellows, who meanly take advantage 
of the ardor of gentlemen in the pursuit of 
knowledge, to recompense the inestimable ser- 
vices of the best years of their lives, their long 
study, and their expensive education, with pit- 
tances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I 
would have the necks of every one of them 
wrung, and their skulls arranged in Surgeon's 
Hall for the contemplation of the whole profes- 
sion — in order that its younger members might 
understand from actual measurement, in early 
life, how thick skulls may become ! " 

He wound up his vehement declaration by 
looking round upon us with a most agreeable 
smile, and suddenly thundering, Ha, ha, ha ! 
over and over again, until anybody else might 
have been expected to be quite subdued by the 
exertion. — Bleak House, Chap. 13. 

CORNS— Treading- on people's. 

He was an antipathetical being, with a pecu- 
liar power and gift of treading on everybody's 
tenderest place. They talk in America of a 
man's " Platform." I should describe the Plat- 
form of the Long-lost as a Platform composed 
of other people's corns, on which he had 
stumped his way, with all his might and main, 
to his present position. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 19. 

COUGH— A choking". 

The company were seized with unspeakable 
consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, 
turning round several times in an appalling 
spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and rushing 
out at the door ; he then became visible through 
the window, violently plunging and expectora- 
ting, making the most hideous faces, and ap- 
parently out of his mind. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

COUGH— An expressive. 

"Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas, 
and coughs behind his hand, modestly antici- 



OOTTGH 



119 



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pating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is 
accustomed to cough with a variety of expres- 
sion, and so to save words. 

Bleak House^ Chap, lO. 

COUGH— The monosylla'bio. 

Mrs. Chick was laboring under a peculiar lit- 
tle monosyllabic cough ; a sort of primer, or 
easy introduction to the art of coughing. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 29. 

COUNTRY-The. 

Mr. Carker cantered behind the carriage, at 
th« distance of a hundred yards or so, and 
watched it, during all the ride, as if he were 
a cat, indeed, and its four occupants, mice. 
Whether he looked to one side of the road or 
to the other — over distant landscape, with its 
smooth undulations, wind-mills, corn, grass, bean- 
fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards, hayricks, and the 
spire among the wood — or upward in the sunny 
air, where butterflies were sporting round his 
head, and birds were pouring out their songs — 
or downward, where the shadows of the branches 
interlaced, and made a trembling carpet on the 
road — or onward, where the overhanging trees 
formed aisles and arches, dim with the softened 
light that steeped through leaves — one corner 
of his eye was ever on the formal head of Mr. 
Dombey. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 27. 

COUNTRY— Mrs. Skewton's Arcadia. 

" But seclusion and contemplation are my 
what's-his-name — " 

" If you mean Paradise, Mamma, you had 
better say so, to render yourself intelligible," 
said the younger lady. 

*' My dearest Edith," returned Mrs. Skewton, 
" you know that I am wholly dependent upon 
you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr. 
Dombey, Nature intended me for an Arcadian. 
I am thrown away in society. Cows are my 
passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been 
to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely sur- 
rounded by cows — and china." 

This curious association of objects, suggest- 
ing a remembrance of the celebrated bull who 
got by mistake into a crockery shop, was re- 
ceived with perfect gravity by Mr. Dombey, who 
intimated his opinion that Nature was, no doubt, 
a very respectable institution. 

Dombey (Sr> Son, Chap. 21. 

COUNTRY SCENERY-Journey of Uttle 
NeU. 

They were now in the open country ; the 
houses were very few and scattered at long in- 
tervals, often miles apart. Occasionally they 
came upon a cluster of poor cottages, some with 
a chair or low board put across the open door, 
to keep the scrambling children from the road, 
others shut up close, while all the family were 
working in the fields. These were often the 
commencement of a little village : and after an 
interval came a wheelwright's shed or perhaps 
a blacksmith's forge ; then a thriving farm, with 
sleepy cows lying about the yard, and horses 
peering over the low wall and scampering away 
when harnessed horses passed upon the road, as 
though in triumph at their freedom. There 
were dull pigs too, turning up the ground in 
search of dainty food, and grunting their mo- 
notonous grumblings as they prowled about, or 



crossed each other in their quest ; plump pigeons 
skimming round the roof or strutting on the 
eaves : and ducks and geese, far more graceful 
in their own conceit, waddling awkwardly about 
the edges of the pond or sailing glibly on its 
surface. The farm-yard passed, then came the 
little inn, the humbler beer-shop, and the vil- 
lage tradesman's ; then the lawyer's and the 
parson's, at whose dread names the beer-shop 
trembled ; the church then peeped out modestly 
from a clump of trees ; then there were a few 
more cottages ; then the cage, and pound, and 
not unfrequently, on a bank by the way-side, a 
deep, old, dusty well. Then came the trim-hedged 
fields on either hand, and the open road again. 
Old Cufiosity Shop, Chap. 15. 

COUNTRY— Scenery. 

The rich, sweet smell of the hayricks rose to 
his chamber window ; the hundred perfumes of 
the little flower-garden beneath scented the air 
around ; the deep-green meadows shone in the 
morning dew that glistened on every leaf as it 
trembled in the gentle air ; and the birds sang 
as if every sparkling drop were a fountain of 
inspiration to them. — Pickwick, Chap. 7. 

COUNTRY EXCURSIONS - Of Bamaby 
Rudge. 

Their pleasures on these excursions were sim 
pie enough. A crust of bread and scrap of meat, 
with water from the brook or spring, sufiiced foi 
their repast. Barnaby's enjoyments were, to 
walk, and run, and leap, till he was tired ; then 
to lie down on the long grass, or by the growing 
corn, or in the shade of some tall tree, looking 
upward at the light clouds as they floated over 
the blue surface of the sky, and listening to the 
lark as she poured out her brilliant song. There 
were wild-flowers to pluck — the bright-red pop- 
py, the gentle harebell, the cowslip, and the 
rose. There were birds to watch ; fish ; ants ; 
worms ; hares or rabbits, as they darted across 
the distant pathway in the wood and so were 
gone ; millions of living things to have an in- 
terest in, and lie in wait for, and clap hands and 
shout in memory of, when they had disappeared. 
In default of these, or when they wearied, there 
was the merry sunlight to hunt out, as it crept 
in aslant through leaves and boughs of trees, 
and hid far down — deep, deep, in hollow places 
— like a silver pool, where nodding branches 
seemed to bathe and sport ; sweet scents of sum- 
mer air breathing over fields of beans or clover ; 
the perfume of wet leaves or moss ; the life of 
waving trees, and shadows always changing. 
When these or any of them tired, or in excess 
of pleasing tempted him to shut his eyes, there 
was slumber in the midst of all these soft de- 
lights, with the gentle wind murmuring like 
music in his ears, and everything around melt- 
ing into one delicious dream. 

Bamaby J\udge, Chap. 45. 

COUNTRY GENTLEMAN- An Engrlish. 

Now this gentleman had various endearing 
appellations among his intimate friends. By 
some he was called " a country gentleman of the 
true school," by some *' a fine old country gen- 
tleman," by some " a sporting gentleman," by 
some " a thorough-bred Englishman," by some 
"a genuine John Bull ;" but they all agreed in 
one respect, and that was, that it was a pity 



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there were not more like him, and that because 
there were not, the country was going to rack 
and ruin every day. He was in the commission 
of the peace, and could write his name almost 
legibly ; but his greatest qualifications were, 
that he was more severe with poachers, was a 
better shot, a harder rider, had better horses, 
kept better dogs, could eat more solid food, 
drink more strong wine, go to bed every night 
more drunk and get up every morning more 
sober, than any man in the county. In know- 
ledge of horse-flesh he was almost equal to a 
farrier, in stable-learning he surpassed his own 
head groom, and in gluttony not a pig on his 
estate was a match for him. He had no seat 
in Parliament himself, but he was extremely 
patriotic, and usually drove his voters up to the 
poll with his own hands. He was warmly at- 
tached to church and state, and never appointed 
to the living in his gift any but a three-bottle 
man and a first-rate fox-hunter. He mistrusted 
the honesty of all poor people who could read 
and write, and had a secret jealousy of his own 
wife (a young lady whom he had married for 
what his friends called " the good old English 
reason," that her father's property adjoined his 
own) for possessing those accomplishments in a 
greater degree than himself. 

Barnaby jRudge, Chap. 47. 

COURT-Trial in (Old BaUey). 

Curiosity has occasionally led us into both 
Courts at the Old Bailey. Nothing is so likely 
to strike the person who enters them for the first 
time, as the calm indifference with which the 
proceedings are conducted ; every trial seems a 
mere matter of business. There is a great deal 
of form, but no compassion ; considerable in- 
terest, but no sympathy. Take the Old Court, 
for example. There sit the Judges, with whose 
great dignity everybody is acquainted, and of 
whom, therefore, we need say no more. Then, 
there is the Lord Mayor in the centre, looking 
as cool as a Lord Mayor can look, with an im- 
mense bouquet before him, and habited in all 
the splendor of his office. Then, there are the 
Sheriffs, who are almost as dignified as the Lord 
Mayor himself; and the Barristers, who are 
quite dignified enough in their own opinion ; 
and the spectators, who, having paid for their 
admission, look upon the whole scene as if it 
were got up especially for their amusement. 
Look upon the whole group in the body of the 
Court — some wholly engrossed in the morning 
papers, others carelessly conversing in low whis- 
pers, and others, again, quielly dozing away an 
hour — and you can scarcely believe that the re- 
sult of the trial is a matter of life or death to 
one wretched being present. But turn your 
eyes to the dock ; watch the prisoner attentively 
for a few moments ; and the fact is before you, 
in all its painful reality, Mark how restlessly 
he has been engaged for the last ten minutes, 
in forming all sorts of fantastic figures with 
the herbs which are strewed upon the ledge be- 
fore him ; observe the ashy paleness of his face 
when a particular witness appears, and how he 
changes his position and wipes his clammy 
forehead and feverish hands when the case for 
the prosecution is closed, as if it were a relief 
to him to feel that the jury knew the worst. 

The defense is concluded ; the judge pro- 
ceeds to sum up the evidence ; and the prison- 



er watches the countenances of the jury, as a 
dying man, clinging to life to the very last, 
vainly looks in the face of his physician for a 
slight ray of hope. They turn round to consult ; 
you can almost hear the man's heart beat, as he 
bites the stalk of rosemary with a desperate effort 
to appear composed. They resume their places 
— a dead silence prevails as the foreman deliv- 
ers in the verdict — " Guilty ! " A shriek bursts 
from a female in the gallery ; the prisoner casts 
one look at the quarter from whence the noise 
proceeded ; and is immediately hurried from 
the dock by the gaoler. The clerk directs one 
of the officers of the court to " take the woman 
out," and fresh business is proceeded with, as 
if nothing had occurred. — Scenes, Chap. 24. 

COURT— Description of a Doctor of Civil 
Law. 

The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell 
spectacles had got all the talk to himself just 
then, and very well he was doing it, too, only 
he spoke veiy fast, but that was habit ; and 
rather thick, but that was good living. So we 
had plenty of time to look about us. There 
was one individual who amused us mightily. 
This was one of the bewigged gentlemen in the 
red robes, who was straddling before the fire 
in the centre of the Court, in the attitude of the 
brazen Colossus, to the complete exclusion of 
everybody else. He had gathered up his robe 
behind, in much the same manner as a slovenly 
woman would her petticoats on a very dirty 
day, in order that he might feel the full warmth 
of the fire. His wig was put on all awry, with 
the tail straggling about his neck, his scanty 
gray trousers and short black gaiters, made in 
the worst possible style, imparted an additional 
inelegant appearance to his uncouth person ; 
and his limp, badly-starched shirt-collar almost 
obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to 
claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, 
after a careful scrutiny of this gentleman's coun- 
tenance, we had come to the conclusion that it 
bespoke nothing but conceit and silliness, when 
our friend with the silver staff whispered in our 
ear that he was no other than a doctor of civil 
law, and heaven knows what besides. So of 
course we were mistaken, and he must be a 
very talented man. He conceals it so well 
though — perhaps with the merciful view of not 
astonishing ordinary people too much — that 
you would suppose him to be one of the stupid- 
est dogs alive, — Scenes, Chap. 8. 

COURT— Description of Doctors' Commons. 

Now, Doctors' Commons being familiar by 
name to everybody, as the place where they grant 
marriage-licenses to love-sick couples, and di- 
vorces to unfaithful ones ; register the wills 
of people who have any property to leave, and 
punish hasty gentlemen who call ladies by un- 
pleasant names, we no sooner discovered that 
we were really within its precincts, than we felt 
a laudable desire to become better acquainted 
therewith. 

***** 

At a more elevated desk in the centre sat a 
very fat and red-faced gentleman, in tortoise- 
shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance an- 
nounced the judge ; and round a long green 
baized table below, something like a billiard-table 
without the cushions and pockets, were a num- 



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ber of very self-important looking personages, 
in stiff neckcloths, and black gowns with white 
fur collars, whom we at once set down as proc- 
tors. At the lower end of the billiard-table was 
an individual in an arm-chair, and a wig, whom 
we afterwards discovered to be the registrar ; 
and seated behind a little desk, near the door, 
were a respectable looking man in black, of 
about twenty stone weight or thereabouts, and 
a fat-faced, smirking, civil-looking body, in a 
black gown, black kid gloves, knee shorts, and 
silks, with a shirt-frill in his bosom, curls on 
his head, and a silver staff in his hand, whom 
we had no difficulty in recognizing as the officer 
of the Court. — Scenes, Chap. 8. 

COURT— Doctors' Commons. 

Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved 
courtyard formed of grave brick houses, which I 
inferred, from the Doctors' names upon the 
doors, to be the official abiding-places of the 
learned advocates of whom Steerforth had told 
me ; and into a large, dull room, not unlike a 
chapel to my thinking, on the left hand. The 
upper part of this room was fenced off from the 
rest ; and there, on the two sides of a raised 
platform of the horse-shoe form, sitting on easy 
old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry 
gentlemen in red gowns and gray wigs, whom I 
found to be the Doctors aforesaid. Blinking 
over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in the curve 
of the horseshoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if 
I had seen him in an aviary, I should certainly 
have taken for an owl, but who, I learned, was 
the presiding judge. In the space within the 
horse-shoe, lower than these, that is to say on 
about the level of the floor, were sundry other 
gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow's rank, and dressed 
like him in black gowns with white fur upon 
them, sitting at a long green table. Their cra- 
vats were in general stiff, I thought, and their 
looks haughty ; but in this last respect, I pres- 
ently conceived I had done them an injustice, for 
when two or three of them had to rise and answer 
a question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw 
anything more sheepish. The public — repre- 
sented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby- 
genteel man secretly eating crumbs out of his 
coat pockets, was warming itself at a stove in 
the centre of the Court. The languid stillness 
of the place was only broken by the chirping of 
this fire and by the voice of one of the Doctors, 
who was wandering slowly through a perfect 
library of evidence, and stopping to put up, 
from time to time, at little road-side inns of ar- 
gument on the journey. Altogether, I have 
never, on any occasion, made one at such 
a cozy, dozy, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, 
sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life : 
and I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate 
to belong to it in any character — except perhaps 
as a suitor. — David Copperjield, Chap. 23. 

COURTS— And lawyers. 

" What is a proctor, Steerforth ? " said I. 

*' Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney," re- 
plied Steerforth. " He is, to some faded courts 
held in Doctors' Commons — a lazy old nook 
near St. Paul's Churchyard — what solicitors aie 
to the courts of law and equity. He is a func- 
tionary whose existence, in the natural course 
of things, would have terminated about two 
hundred years ago. I can tell you best what 



he is, by telling you what Doctors' Commons is. 
It's a little out-of-the-way place, where they ad- 
minister what is called ecclesiastical law, and 
play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old mon- 
sters of Acts of Parliament, which three-fourths 
of the world know nothing about, and the other 
fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil 
state, in the days of the Edwards. It's a place 
that has an ancient monopoly in suits about 
people's wills and people's marriages, and dis- 
putes among ships and boats." 

" Nonsense, Steerforth ! " I exclaimed. '' You 
don't mean to say that there is any affinity be- 
tween nautical matters and ecclesiastical mat- 
ters ? " 

" I don't, indeed, my dear boy," he returned ; 
" but I mean to say that they are managed and 
decided by the same set of people, down in that 
same Doctors' Commons. You shall go there 
one day, and find them blundering through 
half the nautical terms in Young's Dictionary, 
apropos of the ' Nancy ' having run down the 
'Sarah Jane,' or Mr. Peggotty and the Yar- 
mouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind 
with an anchor and cable to the ' Nelson ' India- 
man in distress ; and you shall go there another 
day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro 
and con, respecting a clergyman who has mis- 
behaved himself; and you shall find the judge 
in the nautical case the advocate in the clergy- 
man's case, or contrariwise. They are like ac- 
tors ; now a man's a judge, and now he's not a 
judge ; now he's one thing, now he's another ; 
now he's something else, change and change 
about ; but it's always a very pleasant, pro- 
fitable little affair of private theatricals, pre- 
sented to an uncommonly select audience." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 23. 

COURT— The Insolvent. 

In a lofty room, ill lighted and worse venti- 
lated, situated in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn 
Fields, there sit nearly the whole year round, 
one, two, three, or four gentlemen in wigs, as 
the case may be, with little writing-desks before 
them, constructed after the fashion of those used 
by the judges of the land, barring the French 
polish. There is a box of barristers on their 
right hand ; there is an inclosure of insolvent 
debtors on their left ; and there is an inclined 
plane of most especially dirty faces in their front. 
These gentlemen are the Commissioners of the 
Insolvent Court, and the place in which they 
sit is the Insolvent Court itself. 

It is, and has been, time out of mind, the re- 
markable fate of this Court to be, somehow or 
other, held and understood, by the general con- 
sent of all the destitute shabby-genteel people in 
London, as their common resort, and place of 
daily refuge. It is always full. The steams of 
beer and spirits perpetually ascend to the ceiling, 
and, being condensed by the heat, roll down the 
walls like rain ; there are more old suits of 
clothes in it at one time than will be offered for 
sale in all Houndsditch in a twelvemonth ; more 
unwashed skins and grizzly beards than all the 
pumps and shaving-shops between Tyburn and 
Whitechapel could render decent between sun- 
rise and sunset. 

It must not be supposed that any of these 
people have the least shadow of business in, or 
the remotest connection with, the place they so 
indefatigably attend. If they had, it would be 



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no matter of surprise, and the singularity of the 
thing would cease. Some of them sleep during 
the greater part of the sitting ; others carry 
small portable dinners wrapped in pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs or sticking out of their worn-out pock- 
ets, and munch and listen with equal relish ; 
but no one among them was ever known to have 
the slightest personal interest in any case that 
was ever brought forward. Whatever they do, 
there they sit from the first moment to the last. 
When it is heavy, rainy weather, they all come 
in wet through ; and at such times the vapors 
of the Court are like those of a fungus-pit. 

A casual visitor might suppose this place to 
be a Temple dedicated to the Genius of Seedi- 
ness. There is not a messenger or process- 
server attached to it who wears a coat that was 
made for him ; not a tolerably fresh, or whole- 
some-looking man in the whole establishment, 
except a little white-headed, apple-faced tipstaff, 
and even he, like an ill-conditioned cherry pre- 
served in brandy, seems to have artificially dried 
and withered up into a state of preservation to 
which he can lay no natural claim. The very 
barristers' wigs are ill-powdered, and their curls 
lack crispness. 

But the attorneys, who sit at a large bare table 
below the Commissioners, are, after all, the 
greatest curiosities. The professional establish- 
ment of the more opulent of these gentlemen, 
consists of a blue bag and a boy — generally a 
youth of the Jewish persuasion. They have no 
fixed offices, their legal business being transacted 
in the parlors of public-houses, or the yards of 
prisons — whither they repair in crowds, and 
canvass for customers after the manner of omni- 
bus cads. They are of a greasy and mildewed 
appearance ; and if they can be said to have any 
vices at all, perhaps drinking and cheating are 
the most conspicuous among them. Their resi- 
dences are usually on the outskirts of " the 
Rules," chiefly lying within a circle of one mile 
from the obelisk in St. George's Fields. Their 
looks are not prepossessing, and their manners 
are peculiar. 

Mr. Solomon Pell, one of this learned body, 
was a fat, flabby, pale man, in a surtout which 
looked green one minute and brown the next, 
with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. 
His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head 
large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, 
indignant with the propensities she observed in 
him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak 
which it had never recovered. Being short- 
necked and asthmatic, however, he respired prin- 
cipally through this feature ; so, perhaps, what 
it wanted in ornament, it made up in usefulness. 
Pickwick, Chap. 43. 

COTJIIT— Examination of Sam Weller. 

Serjeant Buzfuz now rose with more impor- 
tance than he had yet exhibited, if that were 
possible, and vociferated : " Call Samuel Weller." 

It was quite unnecessary to call Samuel Wel- 
ler ; for Samuel Weller stepped briskly into the 
box the instant his name was pronounced ; and 
placing his hat on the floor, and his arms on the 
rail, took a bird's-eye view of the bar, and a 
comprehensive survey of the bench, with a re- 
markably cheerful and lively aspect. 

" What's your name, sir ? " inquired the judge. 

" Sam Weller, my lord," replied the gentle- 



" Do you spell it with a ' V ' or a ' W ? ' " in 
quired the judge. 

" That depends upon the taste and fancy of 
the speller, my lord," replied Sam. " I never had 
occasion to spell it more than once or twice in 
my life, but I spells it with a ' V.' " 

Here a voice in the gallery exclaimed aloud, 
" Quite right too, Samivel, quite right. Put it 
down a we, my lord, put it down a we." 

" Who is that, who dares to address the 
court?" said the little judge, looking up. 
" Usher." 

" Yes, my lord." 

" Bring that person here instantly." 

" Yes, my lord." 

But as the usher didn't find the person, he 
didn't bring him ; and, after a great commotion, 
all the people who had got up to look for the 
culprit, sat down again. The little judge turned 
to the witness as soon as his indignation would 
allow him to speak, and said, 

" Do you know who that was, sir ? " 

*' I rayther suspect it was my father, my lord," 
replied Sam. 

" Do you see him here now ? " said the judge. 

" No, I don't, my lord," replied Sam, staring 
right up into the lantern in the roof of the 
court. 

" If you could have pointed him out, I would 
have committed him instantly," said the judge. 

Sam bowed his acknowledgments, and turned 
with unimpaired cheerfulness of countenance 
towards Serjeant Buzfuz. 

" Now, ^Ir. Weller," said Serjeant Buzfuz. 

" Now, sir," replied Sam. 

" I believe you are in the service of Mr. Pick- 
wick, the defendant in this case. Speak up, if 
you please, Mr. Weller." 

" I mean to speak up, sir," replied Sam ; " I 
am in the service o' that 'ere gen'l'man, and a 
wery good service it is." 

" Little to do, and plenty to get, I suppose," 
said Serjeant Buzfuz, with jocularity. 

" Oh, quite enough to get, sir, as the soldier 
said ven they ordered him liiree hundred and 
fifty lashes," replied Sam. 

" You must not tell us what the soldier, or 
any other man, said, sir," interposed the judge ; 
" it's not evidence." 

" Wery good, my lord," replied Sam. 

" Do you recollect anything particular hap- 
pening on the morning when you were first 
engaged by the defendant ; eh, Mr. Weller ? " 
said Serjeant Buzfuz. 

" Yes, I do, sir," replied Sam. 

" Have the goodness to tell the jury what it 
was." 

" I had a reg'lar new fit out o' clothes that 
momin', gen'l'men of the jur)%" said Sam, " and 
that was a wery partickler and uncommon cir- 
cumstance vith me in those days." 

Hereupon there was a general laugh ; and the 
little judge, looking with an angry countenance 
over his desk, said, " You had better be careful, 
sir." 

" So Mr. Pickwick said at the time, my lord," 
replied Sam ; " and I was wery careful o' that 
'ere suit o' clothes ; wery careful indeed, my 
lord." 

The judge looked sternly at Sam for full two 
minutes, but Sam's features were so perfectly 
calm and serene that the judge said nothing, and 
motioned Serjeant Buzfuz to proceed. 



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" Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller," said 
Serjeant Buzfuz, folding his arms emphatically, 
and turning half round to the jury, as if in 
mute assurance that he would bother the witness 
yet ; " Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Weller, 
that you saw nothing of this fainting on the 
part of the plaintiff in the arms of the defend- 
ant, which you have heard described by the 
witnesses ? " 

" Certainly not," replied Sam, '* I was in the 
passage till they called me up, and then the old 
lady was not there." 

" Now, attend, Mr. Weller," said Serjeant 
Buzfuz, dipping a large pen into the inkstand 
before him, for the purpose of frightening Sam 
with a show of taking down his answer. " You 
were in the passage, and yet saw nothing of 
what was going forward. Have you a pair of 
eyes, Mr. Weller?" 

" Yes, I have a pair of eyes," replied Sam, 
" and that's just it. If they wos a pair o' patent 
double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of 
hextra power, p'raps I might be able to see 
through a flight o' stairs and a deal door ; but 
bein' only eyes, you see, my wision's limited." 

At this answer, which was delivered without 
the slightest appearance of irritation, and with 
the most complete simplicity and equanimity of 
manner, the spectators tittered, the little judge 
smiled, and Serjeant Buzfuz looked particularly 
foolish. After a short consultation with Dod- 
son and Fogg, the learned Serjeant again turned 
towards Sam, and said, with a painful effort 
to conceal his vexation, " Now, Mr. Weller, I'll 
ask you a question on another point, if you 
please." 

*' If you please, sir," rejoined Sam, with the 
utmost good-humor. 

" Do you remember going up to Mrs. Bardell's 
house, one night in November last ? " 

" Oh yes, wery well." 

" Oh, you do remember that, Mr. Weller," 
said Serjeant Buzfuz, recovering his spirits ; " I 
thought we should get at something at last." 

" I rayther thought that, too, sir," replied 
Sam, and at this the spectators tittered again. 

" Well ; I suppose you went up to have a 
little talk about this trial— eh, Mr. Weller ? " 
said Serjeant Buzfuz, looking knowingly at the 
jury. 

" I went up to pay the rent ; but we did get a 
talkin' about the trial," replied Sam. 

" Oh, you did get a talking about the trial," 
said Serjeant Buzfuz, brightening up with the 
anticipation of some important discovery. 
" Now what passed about the trial ; will you 
have the goodness to tell us, Mr. Weller?" 

"Vith all the pleasure in life, sir," replied 
Sam. "Arter a few unimportant obserwations 
from the two wirtuous females as has been ex- 
amined here to-day, the ladies gets into a very 
great state o' admiration at the honorable con- 
duct of Mr. Dodson and Fogg — them two 
gent'l'men as is settin' near you now." This, 
of course, drew general attention to Dodson 
and Fogg, who looked as virtuous as possible. 

" The attorneys for the plaintiff," said Mr. 
Serjeant Buzfuz. " Well ! They spoke in high 
praise of the honorable conduct of Messrs. Dod- 
son and Fogg, the attorneys for the plaintiff, 
did they ? " 

" Yes," said Sam, " they said what a wery 
gen'rous thing it was o* them to have taken up 



the case on spec, and to charge nothing at all 
for costs, unless they got 'em out of Mr. Pick- 
wick." 

At this very unexpected reply, the spectators 
tittered again, and Dodson and Fogg, turning 
very red, leant over to Serjeant Buzfuz, and 
in a hurried manner whispered something in 
his ear. 

" You are quite right," said Serjeant Buzfuz 
aloud, with affected composure. " It's perfectly 
useless, my lord, attempting to get at any evi- 
dence through the impenetrable stupidity of 
this witness. I will not trouble the court by 
asking him any more questions. Stand down, 
sir." / 

" Would any other gen'l'man like to ask me 
anythin' ? " inquired Sam, taking up his hat, 
and looking round most deliberately. 

" Not I, Mr. Weller, thank you," said Serjeant 
Snubbin, laughing. 

" You may go down, sir," said Serjeant Buz- 
fuz, waving his hand impatiently. 

Pickwick, Chap. 34. 

COURT— Trial of the convict. 

The trial was very short and very clear. Such 
things as could be said for him, were said — how 
he had taken to industrious habits, and had 
thriven lawfully and reputably. But nothing 
could unsay the fact that he had returned, and 
was there in the presence of the Judge and Jury. 
It was impossible to try him for that, and do 
otherwise than find him Guilty. 

At that time it was the custom (as I learned 
from my terrible experience of that Sessions) to 
devote a concluding day to the passing of Sen- 
tences, and to make a finishing effect with the 
Sentence of Death. But for the indelible pic- 
ture that my remembrance now holds before me. 
I could scarcely believe, even as I write these 
words, that I saw two-and-thirty men and wo- 
men put before the Judge to receive that sentence 
together. Foremost among the two-and-thirty, 
was he ; seated, that he might get breath enough 
to keep life in him. 

The whole scene starts out again in the vivid 
colors of the moment, down to the drops of 
April rain on the windows of the court, glitter- 
ing in the rays of April sun. Penned in the 
dock, as I again stood outside it at the corner, 
with his hand in mine, were the two-and-thirty 
men and women ; some defiant, some stricken 
with terror, some sobbing and weeping, some 
covering their faces, some staring gloomily 
about. There had been shrieks from among 
the women convicts, but they had been stilled, 
and a hush had succeeded. The sheriffs, with 
their great chains and nosegays, other civic gew- 
gaws and monsters, criers, ushers, a great gal- 
lery full of people — a large theatrical audience — 
looked on, as the two-and-thirty and the Judge 
were solemnly confronted. Then, the Judge 
addressed them. Among the wretched creatures 
before him whom he must single out for special 
address, was one who almost from his infancy 
had been an offender against the laws ; who, 
after repeated imprisonments and punishments, 
had been at length sentenced to exile for a term 
of years ; and who, under circumstances of great 
violence and daring, had made his escape and 
been re-sentenced to exile for life. That miser- 
able man would seem for a time to have be- 
come convinced of his errors, when far removed 



COXTBT 



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COTTBT 



from the scenes of his old offences, and to have 
lived a peaceable and honest life. But in a fatal 
moment, yielding to those propensities and pas- 
sions, the indulgence of which had so long ren- 
dered him a scourge to society, he had quitted 
his haven of rest and repentance, and had come 
back to the country where he was proscribed. 
Being here presently denounced, he had for a 
time succeeded in evading the officers of Jus- 
tice, but being at length seized while in the act 
of flight, he had resisted them, and had — he best 
knew whether by express design, or in the blind- 
ness of his hardihood — caused the death of his 
denouncer, to whom his whole career was 
known. The appointed punishment for his 
return to the land that had cast him out, being 
Death, and his case being this aggravated case, 
he must prepare himself to Die. 

The sun was striking in at the great windows 
of the court, through the glittering drops of rain 
upon the glass, and it made a brx)ad shaft of 
light between the two and-thirty and the Judge, 
linking both together, and perhaps reminding 
some among the audience, how both were pass- 
ing on, with absolute equality, to the greater 
Judgment that knoweth all things and cannot 
err. Rising for a moment, a distinct speck of 
face in this way of light, the prisoner said, " My 
Lord, I have received my sentence of Death 
from the Almighty, but I bow to yours," and sat 
down again. There was some hushing, and the 
Judge went on with what he had to say to the 
rest. Then, they were all formally doomed, and 
some of them were supported out, and some of 
them sauntered out with a haggard look of bra- 
ver>', and a few nodded to the gallery, and two 
or three shook hands, and others went out chew- 
ing the fragments of herb they had taken from 
the sweet herbs lying about. He went last of 
all, because of having to be helped from his 
chair and to go very slowly ; and he held my 
hand while all the others were removed, and 
while the audience got up (putting their dresses 
right, as they might at church or elsewhere), 
and pointed down at this criminal or at that, 
and most of all at him and me. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 56. 

COTJBT— Pickwick in. 

Mr. Pickwick stood up in a state of great agi- 
tation, and took a glance at the court. There 
were already a pretty large sprinkling of specta- 
tors in the gallery, and a numerous muster of 
gentlemen in wigs, in the barristers' seats : who 
presented, as a body, all that pleasing and ex- 
tensive variety of nose and whisker for which 
the bar of England is so justly celebrated. Such 
of the gentlemen as had a brief to carry, carried 
it in as conspicuous a manner as possible, and 
occasionally scratched their noses therewith, to 
impress the fact more strongly on the observa- 
tion of the spectators. Other gentlemen who 
had no briefs to show, carried under their arms 
goodly octavos, with a red label behind, and 
that underdone-pie-crust-colored cover which is 
technically known as " law calf." Others, who 
had neither briefs nor books, thrust their hands 
into their pockets, and looked as wise as they 
conveniently could ; others, again, moved here 
and there with great restlessness and earnest- 
ness of manner, content to awaken thereby the 
admiration and astonishment of the uninitiated 
strangers. — Pickivick, Chap. 34. 



COTJRT— The Jndg-e and witness. 

" Now, sir," said Mr. Skimpin, " have the 
goodness to let his Lordship and the jury know 
what your name is, will you?" and Mr. Skimpin 
inclined his head on one side to listen with great 
sharpness to the answer, and glanced at the jury 
meanwhile, as if to imply that he rather expected 
Mr. Winkle's natural taste for perjury would 
induce him to give some name which did not 
belong to him. 

" \Vinkle," replied the witness. 

"What's your Christian name, sir?" angiily 
inquired the little judge. 

" Nathaniel, sir." 

" Daniel — any other name ?" 

" Nathaniel, sir — my Lord, I mean." 

"Nathaniel Daniel, or Daniel Nathaniel?" 

" No, my Lord, only Nathaniel ; not Daniel 
at all." 

*' What did you tell me it was Daniel for, then, 
sir?" inquired the judge. 

" I didn't, my Lord," replied Mr. Winkle. 

" You did, sir," replied the judge, with a se- 
vere frown. " How could I have got Daniel on 
my notes, unless you told me so, sir?" 

This argument, was, of course, unanswerable. 
Pickwick, Chap. 34. 

COURT— The jur3niian. 

" Here," said the green-grocer. 

'• Thomas Groffin. " 

** Here," said the chemist. 

" Take the book, gentlemen. You shall well 
and truly try — " 

" I beg this court's pardon," said the chem- 
ist, who was a tall, thin, yellow-visaged man, 
" but I hope this court will excuse my attend- 
ance." 

•'On what grounds, sir?" said Mr. Justice 
Stareleigh. 

" I have no assistant, my Lord," said the 
chemist. 

" Swear the gentleman," said the judge, per- 
emptorily. 

The officer had got no further than the " You 
shall well and truly try," when he was again in- 
terrupted by the chemist. 

" I am to be sworn, my Lord, am I ? " said 
the chemist. 

" Certainly, sir," replied the testy little judge. 

" Very well, my Lord," replied the chemist, 
in a resigned manner. " Then there'll be mur- 
der before this trial's over ; that's all. Swear 
me if you please, sir ; " and sworn the chemist 
was, before the judge could find words to utter. 

" I merely wanted to observe, my Lord," 
said the chemist, taking his seat with great de- 
liberation, " that I've left nobody but an errand- 
boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my 
Lord, but he is not acquainted with drugs ; and 
I know that the prevailing impression on his 
mind is, that Epsom salts means oxalic acid ; 
and syrup of senna, laudanum. That's all, my 
Lord." With this, the tall chemist composed 
himself into a comfortable attitude, and, assum- 
ing a pleasant expression of countenance, ap- 
peared to have prepared himself for the worst. 
Pickwick, Chap. 34. 

COURT— The Jud^e. 

Serjeant Buzfuz, wH'^ had proceeded with 
such volubility that h'.s face was perfectly crim- 
son, here paused for breath. The silence 



I 

\ 



COURT 



125 



00T7BT 



awoke Mr. Justice Stareleigh, who immediately 
wrote down something with a pen without any 
ink in it and looked unusually profound, to im- 
press the jury with the belief that he always 
thought most deeply with his eyes shut. 

Pickwick, Chap. 34. 

COURT— Serjeant Buzfuz's appeal for dam- 
agres. 

'* And now, gentlemen, but one word more. 
Two IcLters have j^assuJ beiween these panies, 
letters which are admitted to be in the hand- 
writing of the defendant, and which speak vol- 
umes indeed. These letters, too, bespeak the 
character of the man. They are not open, fer- 
vent, eloquent epistles, breathing nothing but 
the language of affectionate attachment. They 
are covert, sly, underhanded communications, 
but, fortunately, far more conclusive than if 
couched in the most glowing language and the 
most poetic imagery — letters that must be 
viewed with a cautious and suspicious eye — 
letters that were evidently intended at the 
time, by Pickwick, to mislead and delude any 
third parties into whose hands they might fall. 
Let me read the first : — * Garraway's, twelve 
o'clock. Dear Mrs. B. — Chops and Tomata 
sauce. Yours, Pickwick.' Gentlemen, what 
does this mean? Chops and Tomata sauce. 
Yours, Pickwick ! Chops ! Gracious heavens ! 
and Tomata sauce ! Gentlemen, is the happi- 
ness of a sensitive and confiding female to be 
trifled away by such shallow artifices as these ? 
The next has no date whatever, which is in it- 
self suspicious. ' Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be 
at home till to-morrow. Slow coach.' And 
then follows this very remarkable expression, 
' Don't trouble yourself about the warming- 
pan.' The warming-pan 1 Why, gentlemen, 
who does trouble himself about a warming-pan ! 
When was the peace of mind of man or woman 
broken or disturbed by a warming-pan, which 
is in itself a harmless, a useful, and I will add, 
gentlemen, a comforting article of domestic 
furniture? Why is Mrs. Bardell so earnestly 
entreated not to agitate herself about this 
warming-pan, unless (as is no doubt the case) it 
is a mere cover for hidden fire — a mere substi- 
tute for some endearing word or promise, agree- 
ably to a preconcerted system of correspond- 
ence, artfully contrived by Pickwick with a 
view to his contemplated desertion, and which 
I am not in a condition to explain? And 
what does this allusion to the slow coach mean? 
For aught I know, it may be a reference to 
Pickwick himself, who has most unquestionably 
been a criminally slow coach during the whole 
of this transaction, but whose speed will now 
be very unexpectedly accelerated, and whose 
wheels, gentlemen, as he will find to his cost, 
will very soon be greased by you ! " 

" But enough of this, gentlemen," said Mr. 
Serjeant Buzfuz, " it is difficult to smile with 
an aching heart ; it is ill jesting when our deep- 
est sympathies are awakened. My client's 
hopes and prospects are ruined, and it is no fig- 
ure of speech to say that her occupation is gone 
, indeed. The bill is down — but there is no ten- 
ant. Eligible single gentlemen pass and re- 
pass — but there is no invitation for them to in- 
quire within or without. All is gloom and 
silence in the house ; even the voice of the 



child is hushed ; his infant sports are disre- 
garded when his mother weeps ; his ' alley tors ' 
and his ' commoneys ' are alike neglected ; he 
forgets the long familiar cry of ' knuckle down,' 
and at tip-cheese, or odd and even, his hand is 
out. But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, the 
ruthless destroyer of this domestic oasis in the 
desert of Goswell street — Pickwick, who has 
choked up the well, and thrown ashes on the 
sward — Pickwick, who comes before you to-day 
with his heartless Tomata sauce and warming- 
pans — Pickwick still rears his head with un- 
blushing effrontery, and gazes without a sigh 
on the ruin he has made. Damages, gentlemen 
— heavy damages — is the only punishment with 
which you can visit him ; the only recompense 
you can award to my client. And for those 
damages she now appeals to an enlightened, a 
high-minded, a right-feeling, a conscientious, a 
dispassionate, a sympathizing, a contemplative 
jury of her civilized countrymen," With this 
beautiful peroration, Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz sat 
down, and Mr. Justice Stareleigh woke up. 
, Pickwick, Chap. 34. 

COURT-A trial in. 

Everybody present, except the one wigged 
gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at 
him. All the human breath in ihe place rolled 
at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager 
faces strained round pillars and corners, to get 
a sight of him ; spectators in back rows stood 
up, not to miss a hair of him ; people on the 
floor of the court laid their hands on the 
shoulders of the people before them, to help 
themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him — 
stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next 
to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous 
among these latter, like an animated bit of the 
spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood ; aiming at 
the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had 
taken as he came along, and discharging it to 
mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, 
and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at 
him, and already broke upon the great windows 
behind him in an impure mist and rain. 

The object of all this staring and blaring was 
a young man of about five-and-tvventy, well- 
grown, and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek 
and a dark eye. His condition was that of a 
young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in 
black, or very dark gray, and his hair, which was 
long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the 
back of his neck : more to be out of his way than 
for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will 
express itself through any covering of the body, 
so the paleness which his situation engendered 
came through the brown upon his cheek, show- 
ing the soul to be stronger than the sun. He 
was otherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the 
Judge, and stood quiet. 

The sort of interest with which this man was 
stared and breathed at, was not a sort that ele- 
vated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a 
less horrible sentence — had there been a chance 
of any one of its savage details being spared-- 
by just so much would he have lost in his fasci- 
nativm. The form that was ti> be doomtvl to Lc 
so shamefully mangled, was the sight ; the im- 
mortal creature that was to be so butchered and 
torn asundar, yielded the sensation. Whatever 
gloss the various spectators put upon the in- 
terest, according to their several arts and powers 



COTTRT 



126 



COTTRT OP CHANCERY 



of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it, 
Ogreish. — Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 2. 

COTJIIT— The liord Chancellor in. 

When we came to the court, there was the 
Lord Chancellor — the same whom I had seen in 
his private room in Lincoln's Inn — sitting in 
great state and gravity, on the bench ; with the 
mace and seals on a red table below him, and 
an immense flat nosegay, like a little garden, 
which scented the whole court. Below the 
table, again, was a long row of solicitors, with 
bundles of papers on the matting at their feet ; 
and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in 
wigs and gowns — some awake and some asleep, 
and one talking, and nobody paying much at- 
tention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor 
leaned back in his very easy chair, with his 
elbow on the cushioned arm, and his forehead 
resting on his hand : some of those who were 
present, dozed : some read the newspapers ; 
some walked about, or whispered in groups ; all 
seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in 
a hurry, very unconcerned, and extremely com- 
fortable. 

To see everything going on so smoothly, and 
to think of the roughness of the suitors' lives 
and deaths ; to see all that full dress and cere- 
mony, and to think of the waste, and want, and 
beggared misery it represented ; to consider that 
while the sickness of hope deferred was raging 
in so many hearts, this polite show went calmly 
on from day to day, and year to year, in such 
good order and composure ; to behold the Lord 
Chancellor, and the whole array of practitioners 
under him, looking at one another and at the 
spectators, as if nobody had ever heard that all 
over England the name in which they were as- 
sembled was a bitter jest ; was held in universal 
horror, contempt, and indignation ; was known 
for something so flagrant and bad, that little 
short of a miracle could bring any good out of 
it to any one. 

***** 

When we had been there half an hour or so, 
the case in progress — if I may use a phrase so 
ridiculous in such a connection — seemed to die 
out of its own vapidity, without coming, or being 
by anybody expected to come, to any result. The 
Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of 
papers from his desk to the gentlemen below 
him, and somebody said, " Jarndyce and 
Jarndyce." Upon this there was a buzz, and 
a laugh, and a general withdrawal of the by- 
standers, and a biinging in of great heaps, and 
piles, and bags and bagsfull of papers. 

Bleak House, Chap. 24. 

COURT OF CHANCERY- Jarndyce v. Jarn- 
dyce. 

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This 
scarecrow of a suit has in course of time become 
so complicated, that no man alive knows what 
it means. The parties to it understand it least ; 
but it has been observed that no two Chancery 
lawyers can talk about it for five minutes with- 
out coming to a total disagreement as to all the 
premises. Innumerable children have been 
born into the cause ; innumerable young people 
have married into it ; innumerable old people 
have died out of it. Scores of persons have 
deliriously found themselves made parties in 
Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how 



or why ; whole families have inherited legend- 
ary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff 
or defendant, who was promised a new rocking- 
horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be 
settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a 
real horse, and trotted away into the other world. 
Fair wards of court have faded into mothers 
and grandmothers ; a long procession of Chan- 
cellors has come in and gone out ; the legion of 
bills in the suit have been transformed into mere 
bills of mortality ; there are not three Jarndyces 
left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarn- 
dyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee- 
house in Chancery Lane ; but Jarndyce and 
Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the 
court, perennially hopeless. 

Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. 
That is the only good that has ever come of it. 
It has been death to many, but it is a joke in 
the profession. Every master in Chancery has 
had a reference out of it. Every Chancellor 
was "in it," for somebody or other, when he was 
counsel at the bar. Good things have been said 
about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old bench- 
ers, in select port-wine committee after din- 
ner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the 
habit of flashing their legal wit upon it. The 
last Lord Chancellor handled it neatly, when, 
correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown 
who said that such a thing might happen when 
the sky rained potatoes, he observed, *' or when, 
we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr. 
Blowers ; " — a pleasantry that particularly tickled 
the maces, bags, and purses. 

How many people out of the suit Jarndyce 
and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwhole- 
some hand to spoil and corrupt, would be a very 
wide question. From the master, upon whose 
impaling files reams of dusty wanants in Jarn- 
dyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into 
many shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the 
Six Clerks' Office, who has copied his tens of 
thousands of Chancery-folio-pages under that 
eternal heading; no man's nature has been 
made better by it. In trickery, evasion, pro- 
crastination, spoliation, botheration, under false 
pretences of all sorts, there are influences that 
can never come to good. The very solicitors* 
boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay, 
by protesting time out of mind that Mr, Chizzle, 
Mizzle, or otherwise, was particularly engaged, 
and had appointments until dinner, may have 
got an extra moral twist and shuffle into them- 
selves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The re- 
ceiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum 
of money by it, but has acquired too a distrust 
for his own mother, and a contempt for his own 
kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise, have 
lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising them- 
selves that they will look into that outstanding 
little matter, and see what can be done for Driz- 
zle — who was not well used — when Jarndyce 
and Jarndyce shall be got out o^ the office. 
Shirking and sharking, in all their many varieties, 
have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause ; 
and even those who have contemplated its his- 
tory from the outermost circle of such evil, have 
been insensibly tempted into a loose way of let- 
ting bad things alone to take their own bad 
course, and a loose belief that if the world go 
wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never 
meant to go right. 

Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart 



I 



COURT OP CHANCERY 



127 



COURT OF CHANCERY 



of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his 
High Court of Chancery. 

Bleak House y Chap. i. 

COURT OF CHANCERY — Jamdyce v. 
Jarndyce. 

" Mlud," says Mr. Tangle. Mr. Tangle knows 
more of Jarndyce and Jarndyce than anybody. 
He is famous for it — supposed never to have 
read anything else since he left school. 

" Have you nearly concluded your argu- 
ment ? " 

" Mlud, no — variety of points — feel it my duty 
tsubmit — ludship," is the reply that slides out of 
Mr. Tangle. 

" Several members of the bar are still to be 
heard, I believe ? " says the Chancellor, with a 
slight smile. 

Eighteen of Mr. Tangle's learned friends, each 
armed with a little summary of eighteen hun- 
dred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a 
piano-forte, make eighteen bows, and drop into 
their eighteen places of obscurity. 

*' We will proceed with the hearing on Wednes- 
day fortnight," says the Chancellor. For, the 
question at issue is only a question of costs, a 
mere bud on the forest-tree of the parent suit, 
and really will come to a settlement one of these 
days. 

The Chancellor has dexterously vanished. 
Everybody else quickly vanishes too. A bat- 
tery of blue bags is loaded with heavy charges 
of papers, and carried off by clerks ; the little 
mad old woman marches off with her docu- 
ments ; the empty court is locked up. If all 
the injustice it has committed, and all the misery 
it has caused, could only be locked up with it, 
and the whole burnt away in a great funeral 
pyre — why, so much the better for other parties 
than the parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce ! 
Bleak House ^ Chap. I, 

COURT OF CHANCERY-The. 

Never can there come fog too thick, never 
can there come mud and mire too deep, to as- 
sort with the groping and floundering condition 
which this High Court of Chancery, most pesti- 
lent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the 
sight of heaven and earth. 

On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High 
Chancellor ougfet to be sitting here — as here he 
is — with a foggy glory round his head, softly 
fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, ad- 
dressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, 
a little voice, and an interminable brief, and 
outwardly directing his contemplation to the 
lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing 
but fog. On such an afternoon, some score of 
members of the High Court of Chancery bar 
ought to be — as here they are — mistily engaged 
in one of the ten thous^and stages of an endless 
cause, tripping one another up on slippery pre- 
cedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, 
running their goat-hair and horse-hair warded 
heads against walls of words, and making a pre- 
tence of equity with serious faces, as players 
might. On such an afternoon, the various soli- 
citors of the cause, some two or three of whom 
have inherited it from their fathers, who made a 
fortune by it, ought to be — as are they not ? — 
ranged in a line, in a long matted well (but you 
•night look in vain for Truth at the bottom of 



it), between the register's red table and the silk 
gowns, with bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, 
injunctions, affidavits, issues, references to mas- 
ters, masters' reports, mountains of costly non- 
sense, piled before them. Well may the court 
be dim, with wasting candles here and there ; 
well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it would 
never get out ; well may the stained glass win- 
dows lose their color, and admit no light of day 
into the place ; well may the uninitiated from 
the streets, M'ho peep in through the glass panes 
in the door, be deterred from entrance by its 
owlish aspect, and by the drawl languidly echo- 
ing to the roof from the padded dais where the 
Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern 
that has no light in it, and where the attendant 
wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank ! This is the 
Court of Chancery ; which has its decaying 
houses and its blighted lands in every shire ; 
which has its worn-out lunatic in every mad- 
house, and its dead in every churchyard ; which 
has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels 
and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging 
through the round of every man's acquaintance ^ 
which gives to moneyed might the means, abund- 
antly, of wearying out the right ; which so ex- 
hausts finances, patience, courage, hope ; so 
overthrows the brain and breaks the heart ; that 
there is not an honorable man among its prac- 
titioners who would not give — who does not 
often give — the warning, " Suffer any wrong 
that can be done you, rather than come here !" 
Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's 
court this murky afternoon besides the Lord 
Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three 
counsel who are never in any cause, and the 
well of solicitors before mentioned? There is 
the registrar, below the judge in wig and gown ; 
and there are two or three maces, or petty bags, 
or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in 
legal court suits. These are all yawning ; for 
no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarn- 
dyce AND Jarndyce (the cause in hand), which 
was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The 
short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, 
and the reporters of the newspapers, invariably 
decamp with the rest of the regulars when Jarn- 
dyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are 
a blank. Standing on a seat at the side of the 
hall, the better to peer into the curtained sanc- 
tuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed 
bonnet, who is always in court, from its sitting 
to its rising, and always expecting some incom- 
prehensible judgment to be given in her favor. 
Some say she really is, or was, a party to a suit ; 
but no one knows for certain, because no one 
cares. She carries some small litter in a reticule, 
which she calls her documents ; principally con- 
sisting of paper matches and dry lavender. 

Bleak House, Chap, i. 

COURT OF CHANCERY -Its bedevU- 
xnents. 

'• Of course, Esther," he said, " you don't un- 
derstand this Chancery business?" 

And of course I shook my head. 

•' I don't know who does," he returned. 
" The lawyers have twisted it into such a state 
of bedevilment that the original meriis of the 
case have long disapp«M.red from the face of the 
earth. It's about a Will, and the trusts under 
a Will — or it was, once. It's about nothing but 
Costs, now. We are always appearing, and dis* 



COTJRT OF CHANCERY 



128 



COTJRT OP CHANCERS 



appearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and 
filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, 
and motioning, and referring, and reporting, 
and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and 
all his satellites, and equitably waltzing our- 
selves off to dusty death, about Costs. That's 
the great question. All the rest, by some ex- 
traordinaiy means, has melted away." 

" But it was, sir." said I, to bring him back, 
for he began to rub his head, "about a Will?" 

" Why, yes, it was about a Will when it was 
about anything," he returned, " A certain Jarn- 
dyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune, and 
made a great Will. In the question how the 
trusts under that Will are to be administered, 
the fortune left by the Will is squandered away ; 
the legatees under the Will are reduced to such 
a miserable condition that they would be suf- 
ficiently punished, if they had committed an 
enormous crime in having money left them ; 
and the Will itself is made a dead letter. All 
through the deplorable cause, everything that 
everybody in it, except one man, knows already, 
is referred to that only one man who don't 
know it, to find out — all through the deplora- 
ble cause, everybody must have copies, over and 
over again, of everything that has accumulated 
about it in the way of cart-loads of papers (or 
must pay for them without having them, which 
is the usual course, for nobody wants them) ; 
and must go down the middle and up again, 
through such an infernal country-dance of costs 
and fees and nonsense and corruption, as was 
never dreamed of in the wildest visions of a 
Witch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to 
Law, Law sends questions back to Equity ; 
Law finds it can't do this, Equity finds it can't 
do that ; neither can so much as say it can't do 
anything, without this solicitor instructing and 
this counsel appearing for A, and that solicitor 
instructing and that counsel appearing for B ; 
and so on through the whole alphabet, like the 
history of the Apple Pie. And thus, through 
years and years, and lives and lives, everything 
goes on, constantly beginning over and over 
again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get 
out of the suit on any terms, for we are made 
parties to it, and must be parties to it, whether 
we like it or not. But it won't do to think of 
it ! When my great-uncle, poor Tom Jarn- 
dyce, began to think of it, it was the beginning 
of the end ! " — Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

COURT OF CHANCERY— Its Wigrlomera- 
tion. 

" However," said Mr. Jamdyce, " to return to 
OTir gossip. Here's Rick, a fine young fellow full 
of promise, W^hat's to be done with him ? " 

O my goodness, the idea of asking my advice 
on such a point ! 

" Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jamdyce, 
comfortably putting his hands into his pockets 
and stretching out his legs. " He must have a 
piofession ; he must make some choice for him- 
self. There will be a world more Wiglomera- 
tion about it, I suppose, but it must be done." 

" More what, Guardian !" said I. 

"More Wiglomt-iation," said he. "It's the 
only name I know for the thing. He is a ward 
in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will 
have something to say about it ; Master Some- 
body — a sort of ridiculous Sexton, digging graves 
for the merits of causes in a back room at the 



end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane— will 
have something to say about it ; Counsel will 
have something to say about it ; the Chancellor 
will have, something to say about it ; the Satel- 
lites will have something to say about it ; they 
will all have to be handsomely fee'd, all round, 
about it ; the whole thing will be vastly cere- 
monious, wordy, unsatisfactory, and expensive, 
and I call it in general Wiglomeration. How 
mankind ever came to be afflicted with Wiglom- 
eration, or for whose sins these young people 
ever fell into a pit of it, I don't know ; so it is.* 
He began to rub his head again, and to hint 
he felt the wind. But it was a delightful in- 
stance of his kindness towards me, that whether 
he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did 
both, his face was sure to recover its benignant 
expression as it looked at mine ; and he was 
sure to turn comfortable again, and put his 
hands in his pockets and stretch out his legs. 
Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

COTJRT— The end of Jamdyce vs. Jamdyce. 

" Is this Will considered a genuine docu- 
ment, sir ? " said Allan ; *' will you tell us that ? " 

" Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge ; 
" but we have not gone into that, M^e have not 
gone into that." 

" We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. 
Vholes, as if his low inward voice were an echo. 

"You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," ob- 
served Mr. Kenge, using his silver trowel, per- 
suasively and smoothingly, " that this has been 
a great cause, that this has been a protracted 
cause, that this has been a complex cause. 
Jamdyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not 
inaptly, a Monument of Chancery practice." 

" And Patience has sat upon it a long time," 
said Allan. 

" Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge, 
with a certain condescending laugh he had. 
"Very well! You are further to reflect, Mr. 
Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to se- 
verity, " that on the numerous difficulties, con- 
tingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of pro- 
cedure in this great cause, there has been ex- 
pended study, ability, eloquence, knowledge, in- 
tellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high intellect. For 
many years, the — a — I would say the flower of 
the Bar, and the — a — I would presume to add, 
the matured autumnal fruits of the Woolsack 
— have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarn- 
dyce. If the public have the benefit, and if 
the country have the adornment, of this great 
Grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's 
worth, sir." 

" Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlight- 
.ened all in a moment. "Excuse me, our time 
presses. Do I understand that the whole es- 
tate is found to have been absorbed in costs ? " 

" Hem ! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. 
" Mr. Vholes, what do you say ? " 

" I believe so," said Mr. Vholes. 

"And that thus the suit lapses and melts 
away ? " 

" Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. " Mr. 
Vholes ? " 

" Probably," said Mr. Vlioles. 

Bleak House, Chap. 65. 

COURT OF CHANCERY - Boythom's 
opinion of the. 
" There never was such an infernal caldron 



I 



COURTS 



129 



CTLTULK 



as that Chancery, on the face of the earth ! " 
said Mr. Boythorn. " Nothing but a mine be- 
low it on a busy day in term time, with all its 
records, rules, and precedents collected in it, 
and every functionary belonging to it also, high 
and low, upward and downward, from its son 
the Accountant-General to its father the Devil, 
and the whole blown to atoms with ten thou- 
sand hundred-weight of gunpowder, would re- 
form it in the least ! " 

It was impossible not to laugh at the ener- 
getic gravity with which he recommended this 
stronpf measure of reform. When we laughed, 
he threw up his head, and shook his broad 
chest, and again the whole country seemed to 
echo to his Ha, ha, ha, ha ! It had not the 
least effect in disturbing the bird, whose sense 
of security was complete ; and who hopped 
about the table with its quick head now on this 
side and now on that, turning its bright sud- 
den eye on its master, as if he were no more 
than another bird. — B/eak House, Chap. 9. 

COTJRTS— Like powder-mills (Betsey Trot- 
wood.) 

My aunt regarded all Courts of Law as a sort 
of powder-mills that might blow up at any time. 
David Copperfield, Chap. 23. 

CRIME AND FILTH— In London. 

Wheresoever Mr. Rogers turns the flaming 
eye, there is a spectral figure rising, unshrouded, 
from a grave of rags. Who is the landlord 
here? — I am, Mr. Field ! says a bundle of ribs 
and parchment against the wall, scratching itself. 
— Will you spend this money fairly, in the morn- 
ing, to buy coffee for 'em all ? — Yes Sir, I will ! 
— O he'll do it, Sir, he'll do it fair. He's honest ! 
cry the spectres. And with thanks and Good 
Night sink into their graves again. 

Thus, we make our New Oxford Streets, and 
our other new streets, never heeding, never ask- 
ing, where the wretches whom we clear out, 
crowd. With such scenes at our doors, with all 
the plagues of Egypt tied up with bits of cob- 
web in kennels so near our homes, we timo- 
rously make our Nuisance Bills and Boards of 
Health nonentities, and think to keep away the 
Wolves of Crime and Filth by our electioneer- 
ing ducking to little vestrymen and our gentle- 
manly handling of Red Tape ! 

He « * * « 

Wherever the turning lane of light becomes 
stationary for a moment, some sleeper appears 
at the end of it, submits himself to be scru- 
tinized, and fades away into the darkness. 

There should be strange dreams here, Deputy. 
They sleep sound enough, says Deputy, taking 
the candle out of the blacking bottle, snuffing 
it with his fingers, throwing the snuff into the 
bottle, and corking it up with the candle, that's 
all / know. What is the inscription, Deputy, 
on all the discolored sheets? A precaution 
against loss of linen. Deputy turns down the 
rug of an unoccupied bed and discloses it. 
Stop Thief ! 

To lie at night, wrapped in the legend of my 
slmking life ; lo take the cry that pursues me, 
waking, to my breast in sleep ; to have it star- 
ing at me, and clamoring for me, as soon as con- 
sciousness returns ; to have it for my first-foot 
on New Year's day, my Valentine, my Birthday 



salute, my Christmas greeting, my parting with 
the old year. Stop Thief ! 

And to know that I must be stopped, come 
what will. To know that I am no match for this 
individual energyand keenness, or this organized 
and steady system ! Come across the street, 
here, and, entering by a little shop, and yard, 
examine these intricate passages and doors, con- 
trived for escape, flapping and counter-flapping, 
like the lids of the conjuror's boxes. But what 
avail they ? Who gets in by a nod, and shows 
their secret working to us ? Inspector Field. — On 
Duty with Inspector Field. Reprinted Pieces. 

CRIME— A kind of disorder. 

The man was not unnaturally cruel or hard- 
hearted. He had come to look upon felony as 
a kind of disorder, like the scarlet fever or ery- 
sipelas ; some people had it — some hadn't — 
just as it might be. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 61. 

CRIMINALS— Their strug-gles with, crime. 

If great criminals told the truth — which, be- 
ing great criminals, they do not — they would 
very rarely tell of their struggles against the 
crime. Their struggles are towards it. They 
buffet with opposing waves, to gain the bloody 
shore, not to recede from it. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 1 1. 

CRIME— The fascination of. 

" You have a strong fancy," said the blind 
man, with a smile. 

" Strengthen yours with blood, and see what 
it will come to." 

He groaned, and rocked himself, and look- 
ing up for the first time, said, in a low, hollow 
voice : 

" Eight-and-twenty years ! Eight-and-twenty 
years ! He has never changed in all that time, 
never grown older, nor altered in the least de- 
gree. He has been before me in the dark night, 
and the broad sunny day ; in the twilight, the 
moonlight, the sunlight, the light of fire, and 
lamp, and candle, and in the deepest gloom. 
Always the same ! In company, in solitude, on 
land, on shipboard ; sometimes leaving me alone 
for months, and sometimes always with me. I 
have seen him at sea, come gliding in the dead 
of night along the bright reflection of the moon 
in the calm water ; and I have seen him, on 
quays and market-places, with his hand uplifted, 
towering, the centre of a busy crowd, uncon- 
scious of the terrible form that had its 
silent stand among them. Fancy ! Are you 
real ? Am I ? Are these iron fetters, riveted 
on me by the smith's hammer, or are they 
fancies I can shatter at a blow ? " 

***** 

" Why did you return ? " said the blind man. 

" Why is blood red ? I could no more help 
it than I could live without breath. I struggled 
against the impulse, but I was drawn back, 
through every difficult and adverse circumstance, 
as by a mighty engine. Nothing could stop me. 
The clay and hour were none of my choice. 
Sleeping and waking, I had been among the 
old haunts for years— had visited my own grave. 
Why did I come back? Because this jail was 
gaping for me, and he stood beckoning at the 
door," 

" You were not known ? " said the blind man. 



CROWD 



130 



CTTPBOARD 



" I was a man who had been twenty- two years 
dead. No. I was not known." 

" You should have kept your secret better." 

''My secret? Mine? It was a secret any 
breath of air could whisper at its will. The 
stars had it in their twinkling, the water in its 
flowing, the leaves in their rustling, the seasons 
in their return. It lurked in strangers' faces, 
and their voices. Everything had lips on which 
it always trembled — My secret." 

" It was revealed by you own act, at any rate," 
said the blind man. 

" The act was not mine. I did it, but it was 
not mine. I was forced at times to wander 
round, and round, and round that spot. If you 
had chained me up when the fit was on me, I 
should have broken away, and gone there. As 
truly as the loadstone draws iron towards it, so 
he, lying at the bottom of his grave, could draw 
me near him when he would. Was that fancy? 
Did I like to go there, or did I strive and wres- 
tle with the power that forced me ? " 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 62. 

CROWD-A. 

From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, 
the last sediment of the human stew that had 
been boiling there all day, was straining off. 
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4. 

CROWD— Passing:. 

Who could sit upon anything in Fleet Street 
during the busy hours of the day, and not be 
dazed and deafened by two immense proces- 
sions, one ever tending westward with the sun, 
the other ever tending eastward from the sun, 
both ever tending to the plains beyond the range 
of red and purple where the sun goes down ! 

With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher 
sat watching the two streams, like the heathen 
rustic who has for several centuries been on 
duty watching one stream — saving that Jerry 
had no expectation of their ever running dry. 
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 14. 

CRTJPP— Mrs.— Her '* spazzxims." 

At about this time, too, I made three dis- 
coveries : first, that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to 
a curious disorder called " the spazzums," which 
was generally accompanied with inflammation 
of the nose, and required to be constantly treated 
with peppermint ; secondly, that something pe- 
culiar in the temperature of my pantry, made 
the brandy-bottles burst ; thirdly, that I was 
alone in the world, and much given to record 
that circumstance in fragments of English versi- 
fication. — David Copperfield, Chap. 26. 

CRUPP— Mrs.— Her advice on love. 

She came up to me one evening, when I was 
very low, to ask (she being then afflicted with 
the disorder I have mentioned) if I could olSlige 
her with a little tincture of cardamom^ mixed 
with rhubarb, and flavored with seven drops of 
the essence of cloves, which was the best remedy 
for her complaint ; — or, if I had not such a thing 
by me, with a little brandy, which was the next 
best. It was not, she remarked, as palatable to 
her, but it was the next best. As I had never 
even heard of the first remedy, and always had 
the second in the closet, I gave Mrs. Crupp a 
glass of the second, which (that I might have 



no suspicion of its being devoted to any impro- 
per use) she began to take in my presence. 

" Cheer up, sir," said Mrs. Crupp. " I can't 
abear to see you so, sir : I'm a mother myself." 

I did not quite perceive the application of 
this fact to my%€\{, but I smiled on Mrs. Crupp 
as benignly as was in my power. 

" Come, sir," said Mrs. Crupp. " Excuse me, 
I know what it is, sir. There's a lady in the 
case." 

"Mrs. Crupp !" I returned, reddening. 

*' Oh, bless you ! Keep a good heart, sir ! " 
said Mrs. Crupp, nodding encouragement. 
" Never say die, sir ! If she don't smile upon 
you, there's a many as will. You are a young 
gentleman to be smiled on, Mr. Copperfull, and 
you must learn your walue, sir." 

Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull j 
firstly, no doubt, because it was not my name ; 
and secondly, I am inclined to think in some 
indistinct association with a washing-day. 

" What makes you suppose there is any young 
lady in the case, Mrs. Crupp ? " said I. 

" Mr. Copperfull," said Mrs. Crupp, with a 
great deal of feeling, " I'm a mother myself." 

For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her 
hand upon her nankeen bosom, and fortify her- 
self against returning pain with sips of her 
medicine. At length she spoke again. 

" When the present set were took for you by 
your dear aunt, Mr. Copperfull," said Mrs. Crupp, 
" my remark were, I had now found summun I 
could care for. ' Thank Ev'in ! ' were the expres- 
sion, ' I have now found summun I can care 
for ! ' — You don't eat enough, sir, nor yet drink." 

" Is that what you found your supposition on, 
Mrs. Crupp? " said I. 

" Sir," said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching 
to severity, " I've laundressed other young 
gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentleman 
may be over-careful of himself, or he may be 
under-careful of himself. He may brush his 
hair too regular, or too unregular. He may 
wear his boots much too large for him, or much 
too small. That is according as the young gen- 
tleman has his original character formed. But 
let him go to which extreme he may, sir, there's 
a young lady in both of 'em." 

***** 

" It was but the gentleman which died here 
before yourself," said Mrs. Crupp, " that fell in 
love — with a barmaid — and had his waistcoats 
took in directly, though much swelled by drink- 
ing." 

" Mrs. Crupp," said I, " I must beg you not 
to connect the young lady in my case with a 
barmaid, or anything of that sort, if you please." 

" Mr. Copperfull," returned Mrs. Crupp, " I'm 
a mother myself, and not likely. I ask your 
pardon, sir, if I intrude. I should never wish 
to intrude where I were not welcome. But you 
are a young gentleman, Mr. Copperfull, and my 
advice to you is, to cheer up, sir, to keep a good 
heart, and to know your own walue. If you 
was to take to something, sir," said Mrs. Crupp, 
" if you was to take to skittles, now, which is 
healthy, you might find it divert your mind, and 
do you good." — David Coppcrfield, Chap. 26. 

CUPBOARD— Mrs. Crisparkle's. 

As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell 
a-musing, his good mother took it to be an in- 
fallible sign that he " wanted support," the 



CTTPBOARD 



131 



DANCE 



blooming old lady made all haste to the dining- 
room closet, to produce from it the support em- 
bodied in a glass of Constantia and a home- 
made biscuit. It was a most wonderful closet, 
worthy of Cloisterham and of Minon Canon Cor- 
ner. Above it, a portrait of Handel, in a flow- 
ing wig, beamed down at the spectator, with a 
knowing air of being up to the contents of the 
closet, and a musical air of intending to com- 
bine all its harmonies in one delicious fugue. 
No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges, 
openable all at once, and leaving nothing to be 
disclosed by degrees, this rare closet had a lock 
in mid-air, where two perpendicular slides met ; 
the one falling down, and the other pushing up. 
The upper slide, oh being pulled down (leaving 
the lower a double mystery), revealed deep 
shelves of pickle-jars, jam-pots, tin-canisters, 
spice-boxes, and agreeably outlandish vessels 
of blue and white, the luscious lodgings of pre- 
served tamarinds and ginger. Every benevo- 
lent inhabitant of this retreat had his name in- 
scribed upon his stomach. The pickles, in a 
uniform of rich brown double-breasted but- 
toned coat, and yellow or sombre drab continua- 
tions, announced their portly forms, in printed 
capitals, as Walnut, Gherkin, Onion, Cabbage, 
Cauliflower, Mixed, and other members of that 
noble family. The jams, as being of a less 
masculine temperament, and as wearing curl- 
papers, announced themselves in feminine calig- 
raphy, like a soft whisper, to be Raspberry, 
Gooseberry, Apricot, Plum, Damson, Apple, 
and Peach. The scene closing on these charm- 
ers, and the lower slide ascending, oranges 
were revealed, attended by a mighty japanned 
sugar-box, to temper their acerbity if unripe. 
Home-made biscuits waited at the Court of 
these Powers, accompanied by a goodly frag- 
ment of plum-cake, and various slender ladies' 
fingers, to be dipped into sweet wine and kissed. 
Lowest of all, a compact leaden vault enshrined 
the sweet wine and a stock of cordials : whence 
issued whispers of Seville, Orange, Lemon, Al- 
mond, and Caraway-seed. There was a crown- 
ing air upon this closet of closets, of having 
been for ages hummed through by the Cathe- 
dral bell and organ, until those venerable bees 
had made sublimated honey of everything in 
store ; and it was always observed that every 
dipper among the shelves (deep, as has been 
noticed, and swallowing up head, shoulders, 
and elbows) came forth again mellow-faced, 
and seeming to have undergone a saccharine 
transfiguration. 

The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up 
quite as willing a victim to a nauseous medici- 
nal herb-closet, also presided over by the china 
shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To 
what amazing infusions of gentian, peppermint, 
gilliflower, sage, parsley, thyme, rue, rosemary, 
and dandelion, did his courageous stomach 
submit itself ! In what wonderful wrappers, en- 
closing layers of dried leaves, would he swathe 
his rosy and contented face, if his mother sus- 
pected him of a toothache ! What botanical 
blotches would he cheerfully stick upon his 
cheek, or forehead, if the dear old lady con- 
victed him of an imperceptible pimple there ! 
Into this herbaceous penitentiary, situated on 
an upper staircase-landing, — a low and narrow 
whitewashed cell, where bunches of dried leaves 
hung from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were 



spread out upon shelves, in company with por- 
tentous bottles, — would the Reverend Septimus 
submissively be led, like the highly popular 
lamb who has so long and unresistingly been 
led to the slaughter, and there would he, unlike 
that lamb, bore nobody but himself. Not even 
doing that much, so that the old lady were busy 
and pleased, he would quietly swallow what 
was given him, merely taking a corrective dip 
of hands and face into the great bowl of dried 
rose-leaves and into the other great bowl of 
dried lavender, and then would go out, as con- 
fident in the sweetening powers of Cloisterham 
Weir and a wholesome mind, as Lady Macbeth 
was hopeless of those of all the seas that roll. 
Edwin Droodf Chap. lO. 

CURSES. 

" The curse may pass your lips," said Ed- 
ward, " but it will be but empty breath. I do 
not believe that any man on earth has greater 
power to call one down upon his fellow — least 
of all, upon his own child — than he has to make 
one drop of rain or flake of snow fall from the 
clouds above us at his impious bidding." 

Barnaby Rudge^ Chap. yi. 

CYNICS. 

He knew himself well, and choosing to ima- 
gine that all mankind were cast in the same 
mould, hated them ; for, though no man hate" 
himself — the coldest among us having too much 
self-love for that — yet most men unconsciously 
judge the world from themselves, and it will be 
very generally found that those who sneer habit- 
ually at human nature, and affect to despise it, 
are among its worst and least pleasant samples. 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 44. 



D. 

DANCE— A negro. 

The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend 
who plays the tambourine, stamp upon the board- 
ing of the small raised orchestra in which they 
sit, and play a lively measure. Five or six 
couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a 
lively young negro, who is the wit of the as- 
sembly, and the greatest dancer known. He 
never leaves off" making queer faces, and is the 
delight of all the rest, Avho grin from ear to ear 
incessantly. Among the dancers are two young 
mulatto girls, with large, black, drooping eyes, 
and head-gear after the fashion of the hostess, 
who are as shy, or feign to be, as though they 
never danced before, and so look down before 
the visitors, that their partners can see nothing 
but the long, fringed lashes. 

But the dance commences. Every gentleman 
sets as long as he likes to the opposite lady, and 
the opposite lady to him, and all are so long 
about it that the sport begins to languish, when 
suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the res- 
cue. Instantly the fiddler grins, and goes at it 
tooth and nail ; there is new energy in the tam- 
bourine ; new laughter in the dancers ; new smiles 
in the landlady ; new confidence in the hndlord ; 



DANCE 



132 



DANDYISM 



new biightness in the very candles. Single 
shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut ; snap- 
ping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his 
knees, presenting the backs of his legs in front, 
spinning about on his toes and heels like noth- 
ing but the man's fingers on the tambourine ; 
dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two 
wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs, — 
all sorts of legs and no legs, — what is this to 
him ? And in what walk of life, or dance of 
life, does man ever get such stimulating applause 
as thunders about him, when, having danced his 
partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes 
by leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and 
calling for something to drink, with the chuckle 
of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows in one 
inimitable sound ! — American Notes, Chap. 6. 

DANCE— A cotmtry. 

Not like opera-dancers. Not at all. And 
not like Madame Anybody's finished pupils. 
Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor 
minuet dancing, nor even country-dance danc- 
ing. It was neither in the old style, nor the 
new style, nor the French style, nor the English 
style ; though it may have been, by accident, a 
trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and 
joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air 
of off-hand inspiration from the chirping little 
castanets. As they danced among the orchard 
trees, and down the groves of stems and back 
again, and twirled each other lightly round and 
round, the influence of their airy motion seemed 
to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, 
like an expanding circle in the water. Their 
streaming hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic 
grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled 
in the morning air, the flashing leaves, the 
speckled shadows on the soft green ground, the 
balmy wind that swept along the landscape, 
glad to turn the distant windmill cheerily — 
everything between the two girls and the man 
and team at plough upon the ridge of land, 
where they showed against the sky as if they 
were the last things in the world — seemed-danc- 
ing too. — Battle of Life, Chap. i. 

DANCE— A Christmas. 

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and 
went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra 
of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In 
came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. 
In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and 
loveable. In came the six young followers whose 
hearts they broke. In came all the young men 
and women employed in the business. In came 
the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In 
came the cook, with her brother's particular 
friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over 
the way, who was suspected of not having board 
enough from his master ; trying to hide himself 
behind the girl from next door but one, who 
was proved to have had her ears pulled by her 
mistress. In they all came, one after another ; 
some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some 
awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling ; in they 
all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all 
went, twenty couple at once ; hands hal/ round 
and back again the other way ; down the mid- 
dle and up again ; round and round in various 
stages of affectionate grouping ; old top couple 
always turning up in the wrong place ; new top 
couple starting off again, as soon as they got 



there ; all top couples at last, and not a bottom 
one to help them ! When this result was 
brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands 
to stop the dance, cried out, " Well done ! " and 
the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of 
porter, especially provided for that purpose. 
But scorning rest upon his reappearance, he in- 
stantly began again, though there were no dan- 
cers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried 
home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a 
bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, 
or perish. — Christmas Carol, Stave 2. 

DANCE— A solemn. 

We danced for an hour with great gravity ; 
the melancholy child doing wonders with his 
lower extremities, in which there appeared to 
be some sense of enjoyment, though it never 
rose above his waist. — Bleak House, Chap. 38. 

DANCINGK-A trial to the feelings. 

Could he believe his eyes ! Mrs. Budger was 
dancing with Mr. Tracy Tupman, there was no 
mistaking the fact. There was the widow be- 
fore him, bouncing bodily here and there, with 
unwonted vigor ; and Mr. Tracy Tupman hop- 
ping about, with a face expressive of the most 
intense solemnity, dancing (as a good many peo- 
ple do) as if a quadrille were not a thing to be 
laughed at, but a severe trial to the feelings, 
M'hich it requires inflexible resolution to en- 
counter. — Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

DANDYISM— In religion and politics. 

On Sunday, the chill little church is almost 
warmed by so much gallant company, and the 
general flavor of the Dedlock dust is quenched 
in delicate perfumes. 

The brilliant and distinguished circle compre- 
hends within it no contracted amount of educa- 
tion, sense, courage, honor, beauty, and virtue. 
Yet there is something a little wrong about it, 
in despite of its immense advantages. What 
can it be ? 

Dandyism? There is no King George the 
Fourth now (more's the pity !) to set the dandy 
fashion ; there are no clear-starched jack-towel 
neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false 
calves, no stays. There are no caricatures now, 
of effeminate Exquisites so arrayed, swooning 
in opera-boxes with excess of delight, and being 
revived by other dainty creatures, poking long- 
necked scent-bottles at their noses. There is 
no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake 
into his buckskins, or who goes to see all the 
executions, or who is troubled with the self- 
reproach of having once consumed a pea. But 
is there Dandyism in the brilliant and distin- 
guished circle notwithstanding. Dandyism of a 
more mischievous sort, that has got below the 
surface, and is doing less harailess things than 
jack-towelling itself and stopping its own di- 
gestion, to which no rational person need par- 
ticularly object ? 

Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There 
are, at Chesney Wold this Januaiy week, some 
ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who 
have set up a Dandyism — in religion,for instance. 
Who, in mere lackadaisical want of an emotion, 
have agreed upon a little dandy talk about the 
Vulgar wanting faith in things in general ; 
meaning, in the things that have been tried and 
found wanting, as though a low fellow should 



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unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling, after 
finding it out ! Who would make the Vulgar 
very picturesque and faithful, by putting back 
the hands upon the Clock of Time, and cancel- 
ling a few hundred years of history. 

There are also ladies and gentlemen of an- 
other fashion, not so new, but very elegant, who 
have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world, 
and to keep down all its realities. For whom 
everything must be languid and pretty. Who 
have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who 
are to rejoice at nothing, and be sorry for 
nothing. Who are not to be disturbed by ideas. 
On whom even the Fine Arts, attending in pow- 
der, and walking backward like the Lord 
Chamberlain, must array themselves in the mil- 
liners' and tailors' patterns of past generations, 
and be particularly careful not to be in earnest, 
or to receive any impress from the moving age. 

Then there is my Lord Boodle, of consider- 
able reputation with his party, who has known 
what office is, and who tells Sir Leicester Ded- 
lock with much gravity, after dinner, that he 
really does not see to what the present age is 
tending. A debate is not what a debate used to 
be ; the House is not what the House used to 
be ; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was. 
He perceives with astonishment, that, supposing 
the present Government to be overthrown, the 
limited choice of the Crown, in the formation 
of a new Ministry, would lie between Lord 
Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle — supposing it 
to be impossible for the Duke of Foodie to act 
with Goodie, which may be assumed to be the 
case in consequence of the breach arising out of 
that affair with Hoodie. Then, giving the 
Home Department and the Leadership of the 
House of Commons to Joodle, the Exche- 
quer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the 
Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do 
with Noodle ? You can't offer him the Presi- 
dency of the Council ; that is reserved for 
Poodle. You can't put him in the Woods and 
Forests ; that is hardly good'^enough for Quoodle. 
What follows ? That the country is shipwrecked, 
lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to 
the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock), because 
you can't provide for Noodle ! 

***** 

In this, too, there is perhaps more Dandyism 
at Chesney Wold than the brilliant and distin- 
guished circle will find good for itself in the 
long run. For it is, even with the stillest and 
politest circles, as with the circle the necroman- 
cer draws around him — very strange appearances 
may be seen in active motion outside. With 
this difference ; that, being realities and not 
phantoms, there is the greater danger of their 
breaking in. — Bleak House, Chap. I2. 

DANTE— Mr. Sparkler's idea of. 

Miss Fanny showed to great advantage on a 
sofa, completing Mr. Sparkler's conquest with 
some remarks upon Dante — known to that gentle- 
man as an eccentric man in the nature of an 
Old File, who used to put leaves round his head, 
and sit upon a stool for some unaccountable 
purpose, outside the cathedral at Florence. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6. 

DAHINGK-Death. 

" As to what I dare, I'm a old bird now, as has 
dared all manner of traps since first he was 



fledged, and I'm not afeerd to perch upon a 
scarecrow. If there's Death hid inside of it, 
there is, and let him come out, and I'll face him, 
and then I'll believe in him and not afore." 
Great Expectations, Chap. 40. 

DAVID COPPERPIELD— Dickens' love of. 

Of all my books, I like this the best. It will 
be easily believed that I am a fond parent to 
every child of my fancy, and that no one can 
ever love that family as dearly as I love them. 
But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart 
of hearts a favorite child. And his name is 
David Copperfield. — Preface, 

DAWN— Description of. 

Dawn, with its passionless blank face, steals 
shivering to the church beneath which lies the 
dust of little Paul and his mother, and looks in 
at the windows. It is cold and dark. Night 
crouches yet upon the pavement, and broods, 
sombre and heavy, in nooks and corners of the 
building. The steeple-clock, perched up above 
the houses, emerging from beneath another of 
the countless ripples in the tide of time that re- 
gularly roll and break on the eternal shore, is 
grayly visible — like a stone beacon, recording 
how the sea flows on ; but within doors, dawn, 
at first, can only peep at night, and see that it is 
there. 

Hovering feebly round the church, and look- 
ing in, dawn moans and weeps for its short reign, 
and its tears trickle on the window-glass, and 
the trees against the church-wall bow their 
heads, and wring their many hands in sympathy. 
Night, growing pale before it, gradually fades 
out of the church, but lingers in the vaults be- 
low, and sits upon the coffins. And now comes 
bright day, burnishing the steeple-clock, and 
reddening the spire, and drying up the tears of 
dawn, and stifling its complaining ; and the 
scared dawn, following the night, and chasing 
it from its last refuge, shrinks into the vaults 
itself and hides, with a frightened face, among 
the dead; until night returns, refreshed, to drive 
it out. — Dombey &" Son. 

DEAF AND DUMB— Their responsibility. 

" Here, woman," he said, " here's your deaf 
and dumb son. You may thank me for restor- 
ing him to you. He was brought before me, 
this morning, charged with theft ; and with any 
other boy it would have gone hard, I assure you. 
But, as I had compassion on his infirmities, and 
thought he might have learnt no better, I have 
managed to bring him back to you. Take more 
care of him for the future." 

" And won't you give me back my son ? " said 
the other woman, hastily rising and confronting 
him. " Won't you give me back my son. sir, 
who was transported for the same offence ? " 

" Was he deaf and dumb, woman ? " asked the 
gentleman, sternly. 

" Was he not, sir ? " 

" You know he was not." 

" He was," cried the woman. " He was deaf, 
dumb, and blind, to all that was good and right, 
from his cradle. Her boy may have learnt no 
better ! where did mine learn better ? where 
could he ? who was there to teach him better, 
or where was it to be learnt ? " 

'* Peace, woman," said the gentleman, " your 
boy was in possession of all his senses." 



DEAD 



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DEAD-HOXTSE 



" He was," cried the mother ; " and he was 
the more easy to be led astray because he had 
them. If you save this boy because he may not 
know right from wrong, why did you not save 
mine who was never taught the difference ? You 
gentlemen have as good a right to punish her 
boy, that God has kept in ignorance of sound 
and speech, as you have to punish mine, that 
you kept in ignorance yourselves. How many 
of the girls and boys — ah, men and women too 
— that are brought before you and you don't 
pity, are deaf and dumb in their minds, and go 
wrong in that state, and are punished in that 
state, body and soul, while you gentlemen are 
quarrelling among yourselves whether they ought 
to learn this or that ! — Be a just man, sir, and 
give me back my son." 

Old Cufiosity Shop, Chap. 45. 

DEAD— The memory of. 

It is an exquisite and beautiful thing in our 
nature, that when the heart is touched and soft- 
ened by some tranquil happiness or affectionate 
feeling, the memory of the dead comes over it 
most powerfully and irresistibly. It would al- 
most seem as though our better thoughts and 
sympathies were charms, in virtue of which the 
soul is enabled to hold some vague and mysteri- 
ous intercourse with the spirits of those whom 
we dearly loved in life. Alas ! how often and 
how long may those patient angels hover above 
us, watching for the spell which is so seldom 
uttered, and so soon forgotten. 

Ale kolas Nickleby, Chap. 43. 

DEAD— The influence of the. 

" And do you think," said the schoolmaster, 
marking the glance she had thrown around, 
"that an unvisited grave, a withered tree, a 
faded flower or two, are tokens of forgetfulness 
or cold neglect ? Do you think there are no 
deeds, far away from here, in which these dead 
may be best remembered? Nell, Nell, there 
may be people busy in the world at this instant, 
in whose good actions and good thoughts these 
very graves — neglected as they look to us — are 
the chief instruments." 

" Tell me no more," said the child quickly. 
"Tell me no more. I feel, I know it. How 
could / be unmindful of it, when I thought of 
you ? " 

" There is nothing," cried her friend, " no, 
nothing innocent or good, that dies, and is for- 
gotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An 
infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will 
live again in the better thoughts of those who 
loved it, and will play its part, through them, in 
the redeeming actions of the world, though its 
body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the 
deepest sea. There is not an angel added to 
the Host of Heaven but does its blessed work 
on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten ! 
oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could 
be traced to their source, how beautiful would 
even death appear ; for how much charity, 
mercy, and purified affection, would be seen to 
have their growth in dusty graves ! " 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54. 

DEAD— Memory of the. 

Passion seemed not only to do wrong and 
violence to the memory of the dead, but to be 
infected by death, and to droop and decline be- 



side it. All the living knaves and liars in the 
world were nothing to the honesty and truth of 
one dead friend. — Dombey dr' San, Chap. 33. 

" Wal'r, my dear lad," said the Captain, " fare- 
well ! Warr, my child, my boy, and man, I 
loved you ! He wam't my flesh and blood," 
said the Captain, looking at the fire — " I an't 
got none — but something of what a father feels 
when he loses a son, I feel in losing Wal'r. For 
why ? " said the Captain, " because it an't one 
loss, but a round dozen. Where's that there 
young schoolboy with the rosy face and curly 
hair, that used to be as merry in this here parlor, 
come round every week, as a piece of music ? 
Gone down with Wal'r. Where's that there 
fresh lad, that nothing couldn't tire nor put out, 
and that sparkled up and blushed so, when we 
joked him about Heart's Delight, that he was 
beautiful to look at ? Gone down with Wal'r. 
Where's that there man's spirit, all afire, that 
wouldn't see the old man hove down for a min- 
ute, and cared nothing for itself? Gone down 
with Wal'r. It an't one Wal'r. There was a 
dozen Wal'rs that I know'd and loved, all hold- 
ing round his neck when he went down, and 
they're a-holding round mine now ! " 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 15. 

DEAD— The memory of Lady Dedlock. 

It is known for certain that the handsome 
Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the park, 
where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the 
owl is heard at night making the woods ring ; 
but whence she was brought home, to be laid 
among the echoes of that solitar}' place, or how 
she died, is all mystery. Some of her old 
friends, principally to be found among tb** 
peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton 
throats, did once occasionally say, as they toyed 
in a ghastly manner with large fans — like charm- 
ers reduced to flirting with grim Death, after 
losing all their other beaux — did once occasion- 
ally say, when the World assembled together 
that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks, 
entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against 
the profanation of her company. But the dead- 
and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly, and have 
never been known to object. 

Bleak House^ Chap. 66. 

DEAD-HOUSE— In Paris. 

Those who have never seen the Morgue may 
see it perfectly by presenting to themselves an in- 
differently paved coach-house, accessible from 
the street by a pair of folding-gates ; on the left 
of the coach-house, occupying its width, any 
large London tailor's or linen-draper's plate-glass 
window, reaching to the ground ; within the win- 
dow, on two rows of inclined planes, what the 
coach-house has to show ; hanging above, like 
irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave, a 
quantity of clothes — the clothes of the dead and 
buried shows of the coach-house. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 18. 

DEAD-HOTJSE— The ghosts of the Morgne 
Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by in- 
visible force into the Morgue. I never want tc 
go there, but am always pulled there. One 
Christmas day, when I would rather have been 
anywhere else, I was attracted in to see an old 
gray man lying all alone on his cold bed, with 




Charles Dickkns i,kavin(i thk Morgue. 134 



DEATH 



135 



DEAD 



a tap of water turned on over his gray hair, and 
running, drip, drip, drip, down his wretched face 
until it got to the corner of his mouth, where it 
took a turn, and made him look sly. One New 
Year's morning (by the same token, the sun was 
shining outside, and there was a mountebank, 
balancing a feather on his nose, within a yard 
of the gate), I was pulled in again to look at a 
flaxen-haired boy of eighteen with a heart hang- 
ing on his breast, — " From his mother," was en- 
graven on it, — who had come into the net across 
the river, with a bullet-wound in his fair fore- 
head, and his hands cut with a knife, but whence 
or how was a blank mystery. This time I was 
forced into the same dread place to see a large, 
dark man, whose disfigurement by water was in 
a frightful manner comic, and whose expression 
was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his 
eyelids under a heavy blow, but was going im- 
mediately to open them, shake his head, and 
" come up smiling." Oh, what this large dark 
man cost me in that bright city ! 

***** 

Of course I knew perfectly well that the large 
dark creature was stone dead, and that I should 
no more come upon him out of the place where 
I had seen him dead than I should come upon 
the Cathedral of Notre Dame in an entirely new 
situation. What troubled me was the picture 
of the creature ; and that had so curiously and 
strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I 
could not get rid of it until it was worn out. 

I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, 
while it was a real discomfort to me. That very 
day, at dinner, some morsel on my plate looked 
like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up 
and go out. 

***** 

There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an 
unusual fragrance in Paris) in the little ante- 
room of my apartment at the hotel. The large 
dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct 
experience associated with my sense of smell, 
because, when I came to the knowledge of him, 
he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass, as good 
as a wall of steel or marble, for that matter. 
Yet the whiff of the room never failed to repro- 
duce him. What was more curious was the 
capriciousness with which his portrait seemed to 
light itself up in my mind elsewhere. I might 
be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying 
the shop windows, and might be regaling myself 
with one of the ready-made clothes shops that 
are set out there. My eyes, wandering over im- 
possible-waisted dressing-gowns, and luminous 
waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the 
shopman, or even the very dummy at the door, 
and would suggest to me, " something like 
him ! " — and instantly I was sickened again. 

This would happen at the theatre in the same 
manner. Often it would happen in the street, 
when I certainly was not looking for the like- 
ness, and when probably there was no likeness 
there. It was not because the creature was dead 
that I was so haunted, because I know that I 
might have been (and I know it because I have 
been) equally attended by the image of a living 
aversion. This lasted about a week. The pic- 
ture did not fade by degrees, in the sense that 
it became a whit less forcible and distinct, but 
in the sense that it obtruded itself less and 
less frequently. The experience may be 
worth considering by some who have the care of 



children. It would be difficult to overstate the 
intensity and accuracy of an intelligent child's 
observation. At that impressible time of life, 
it must sometimes produce a fixed impression. 
If the fixed impression be of an object terrible 
to the child, it will be (for want of reasoning 
upon) inseparable from great fear. Force the 
child at such a time, be Spartan with it, send it 
into the dark against its will, leave it in a lonely 
bedroom against its will, and you had better 
murder it. — UncoiJimercial Traveller, Chap. 7. 

DEAD— Flowers atoove the (Little Nell). 

*' You were telling me," she said, " about 
your gardening. Do you ever plant things 
here ? " 

"In the churchyard?" returned the sexton. 
" Not I." 

" I have seen some flowers and little shrubs 
about," the child rejoined; "there are some 
over there, you see. I thought they were of 
your rearing, though indeed they grow but 
poorly." 

" They grow as Heaven wills," said the old 
man ; " and it kindly ordains that they shall 
never flourish here." 

" I do not understand you." 

" Why, this it is," said the sexton. " They 
mark the graves of those who had very tender, 
loving friends." 

" I was sure they did ! " the child exclaimed. 
*' I am very glad to know they do ! " 

"Aye," returned the old man, "but stay. 
Look at them. See how they hang their heads, 
and droop, and wither. Do you guess the rea- 
son ? " 

" No," the child replied. 

" Because the memory of those who lie be- 
low passes away so soon. At first they tend 
them, morning, noon, and night ; they soon be- 
gin to come less frequently ; from once a day, 
to once a week ; from once a week, to once a 
month ; then, at long and uncertain intervals ; 
then, not at all. Such tokens seldom flourish 
long. I have known the briefest summer flow- 
ers outlive them." 

" I grieve to hear it," said the child. 

" Ah ! so say the gentlefolks who come down 
here to look about them," returned the old 
man, shaking his head, " but I say otherwise. 
' It's a pretty custom you have in this part of 
the country,' they say to me sometimes, 'to 
plant the graves, but it's melancholy to see 
these things all withering or dead.' I crave 
their pardon and tell them that, as I take it, 
'tis a good sign for the happiness of the living. 
And so it is. It's nature." 

" Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the 
blue sky by day, and to the stars by night, and 
to think that the dead are there, and not in 
graves," said the child in an earnest voice. 

" Perhaps so," replied the old man doubt- 
fully. " It may be." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54. 

DEAD-Of a city. 

Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society 
for another quarter of an hour ; suggesting a 
wonderful procession of its dead among the 
dark arches and })illars, each century more 
amazed by the century following it than by all 
the centuries going before. And indeed it was 
a solemn considcratioi; what enormous hosts of 



DEATH 



136 



DEATH 



dead belong to one old great city, and how, if 
they were raised while the living slept, there 
would not be the space of a pin's point in all the 
streets and ways for the living to come out into. 
Not only that, but the vast armies of dead 
would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the 
city, and would stretch away all round it, God 
knows how far. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13. 

DEATH— Thougrhts of. 

The golden water she remembered on the 
wall, appeared to Florence only as a current 
flowing on to rest, and to a region where the 
dear ones, gone before, were waiting, hand in 
hand ; and often, when she looked upon the 
darker river rippling at her feet, she thought 
with awful wonder, but not terror, of that river 
which her brother had so often said was bear- 
ing him away. — Dombey 6^ Son. 

DEATH— Scenes before the funeral. 

There is a hush through Mr. Dombey's house. 
Servants gliding up and down-stairs rustle but 
make no sound of footsteps. They talk togeth- 
er constantly, and sit long at meals, making 
much of their meat and drink, and enjoying 
themselves after a grim, unholy fashion. Mrs. 
Wickam, with her eyes suffused with tears, re- 
lates melancholy anecdotes ; and tells them 
how she always said at Mrs. Pipchin's that it 
would be so ; and takes more table-ale than 
usual ; and is very sorry but sociable. Cook's 
state of mind is similar. She promises a little 
fry for supper, and struggles about equally 
against her feelings and the onions. Towlin- 
son begins to think there's a fate in it, and 
wants to know if anybody can tell him of any 
good that ever came of living in a corner house. 
It seems to all of them as having happened a 
long time ago ; though yet the child lies, calm 
and beautiful, upon his litt^^e bed. 

After dark there come some visitors — noise- 
less visitors, with shoes of felt — who have been 
there before ; and with them comes that bed of 
rest which is so strange a one for infant sleep- 
erso All this time, the bereaved father has not 
been seen even by his attendant ; for he sits in 
an inner corner of his own dark room when 
any one is there, and never seems to move at 
other times, except to pace it to and fro. But 
in the morning it is whispered among the house- 
hold that he was heard to go up stairs in the 
dead night, and that he stayed there — in the 
room — until the sun was shining. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 18. 

DEATH— Scenes after fimeral. 

The funeral of the deceased lady having 
been " performed " to the entire satisfaction of 
the undertaker, as well as of the neighborhood 
at large, which is generally disposed to be cap- 
tious on such a point, and is prone to take of- 
fence at any omissions or shortcomings in the 
ceremonies, the various members of Mr. Dom- 
bey's household subsided into their several 
places in the domestic system. That small 
world, like the great one out of doors, had the 
capacity of easily forgetting its dead ; and 
when the cook had said she was a quiet-tem- 
pered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was 
the common lot, and the butler had said who'd 
have thought it, and the housemaid had said 



she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman 
had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they 
had quite worn the subject out, and began to 
think their mourning was wearing rusty too. 
Dombey df Son, Chap. 3. 

DEATH— A levelling- upstart. 

The Honorable Mrs. Skewton, like many 
genteel persons who have existed at various 
times, set her face against death altogether, 
and objected to the mention of any such low 
and levelling upstart. — Dombey ^ Son, Ch. 30. 

DEATH— Of a remorseful woman. 

Night after night, the light burns in the win- 
dow, and the figure lies upon the bed, and 
Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are 
calling to them both the whole night long. 
Night after night, the waves are hoarse with 
repetition of their mystery ; the dust lies piled 
upon the shore ; the sea-birds soar and hover ; 
the winds and clouds are on their trackless 
flight ; the white arms beckon, in the moon- 
light, to the invisible country far away. 

And still the sick old woman looks into the 
corner, where the stone arm — part of a figure 
of some tomb, she says — is raised to strike her. 
At last it falls ; and then a dumb old woman 
lies upon the bed, and she is crooked and 
shrunk up, and half of her is dead. 

Such is the figure, painted and patched for 
the sun to mock, that is drawn slowly through 
the crowd from day to day ; looking, as it goes, 
for the good old creature who was such a mother, 
and making mouths as it peers among the crowd 
in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeled 
down to the margin of the sea, and stationed 
there : but on which no wind can blow fresh- 
ness, and for which the murmur of the ocean 
has no soothing word. She lies and listens to 
it by the hour ; but its speech is dark and 
gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and 
when her eyes wander over the expanse, they 
see but a broad stretch of desolation between 
earth and heaven. 

A shadow even on that shadowed face, a 
sharpening even of the sharpened features, 
and a thickening of the veil before the eyes 
into a pall that shuts out the dim world, is 
come. Her wandering hands upon the cover- 
let join feebly palm to palm, and move towards 
her daughter ; and a voice not like hers — not 
like any voice that speaks our mortal language 
— says, " For I nursed you ! " 

***** 

Edith touches the white lips, and for a mo- 
ment all is still. A moment afterwards, her 
mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton 
of the Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed. 

Draw the rose-colored curtains. There is 
something else upon its flight besides the wind 
and clouds. Draw the rose-colored curtains 
close ! — Dombey cSr* Son, Chap. 41. 

DEATH— And stamina. 

" Damme, Sir, she never wrapped up enough. 
If a man don't wrap up," said the Major, taking 
in another button of his buff waistcoat, " he 
has nothing to fall back upon. But some peo- 
ple will die. They will do it. Damme, they 
will. They're obstinate. I tell you what, 
Dombey, it may not be ornamental ; it may not 



DEATH 



137 



DEATH 



be refined ; it may be rough and tough ; but a 
little of the genuine old English Bagstock sta- 
mina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to 
the human breed." 

After imparting this precious piece of in- 
formation, the Major, who was certainly true- 
blue, whatever other endowments he may have 
possessed or wanted, coming within "genuine 
old English " classification, which has never 
been exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes 
and his apoplexy to the club, and choked there 
all day. — Dombey ^ Son^ Chap. 40. 

DEATH-Of the grood. 

Oh ! cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up 
thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors 
as thou hast at thy command ; for this is thy 
dominion ! But of the loved, revered, and hon- 
ored head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy 
dread purposes, or make one feature odious. 
It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall 
down when released ; it is not that the heart 
and pulse are still ; but that the hand was open, 
generous, and true ; the heart, brave, warm, 
and tender ; and the pulse a man's. Strike, 
Shadow strike ! And see his good deeds 
springing from the wound, to sow the world 
with life immortal ! — Christmas Carols Stave 4. 

DEATH— The approach of. 

It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for 
the approach of death ; to know that hope is 
gone, and recovery impossible ; and to sit and 
count the dreary hours through long, long 
nights — such nights as only watchers by the 
bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to 
hear the dearest secrets of the heart — the pent- 
up, hidden secrets of many years — poured forth 
by the unconscious, helpless being before you ; 
and to think how little the reserve and cunning 
V of a whole life will avail, when fever and deli- 
rium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales 
have been told in the wanderings of dying 
men ; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those 
who stood by the sick person's couch have fled 
in horror and affright, lest they should be scared 
to madness by what they heard and saw ; and 
many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds, 
the very name of which has driven the boldest 
man away. — Tales, Chap. 12. 

DEATH— Thougrhts on the approach of. 

There were many things he had neglected. 
Little matters while he was at home and sur- 
rounded by them, but things of mighty moment 
when he was at an immeasurable distance. 
There were many, many blessings that he had 
inadequately felt, there were many trivial inju- 
ries that he had not forgiven, there was love 
that he had but poorly returned, there was 
friendship that he had too lightly prized ; there 
were a million kind words that he might have 
spoken, a million kind looks that he might 
have given, uncountable slight easy deeds in 
which he might have been most truly great and 
good. O for a day (he would exclaim), for but 
one day to make amends ! But the sun never 
shone upon that happy day, and out of his re- 
mote captivity he never came. 

Why does this traveller's fate obscure, on 
New Year's Eve, the other histories of travel- 
lers with which my mind was filled but now, 
and cast a solemn shadow over me I Must I 



one day make his journey? Even so. Who 
shall say, that I may not then be tortured by 
such late regrets : that I may not then look 
from my exile on my empty place and undone 
work? I stand upon a seashore, where the 
waves are years. They break and fall, and I 
may little heed them : but, with every wave the 
sea is rising, and I know that it will float me 
on this traveller's voyage at last. 

The Long Voyage — Reprinted Pieces. 

DEATH— The discovery of its approach. 

When I took her up, and felt that she was 

lighter in my arms, a dead, blank feeling came 

upon me, as if I were approaching to some 

frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. 

David Copper field. Chap. 48. 

DEATH— The inequality of. 

Stephen added to his other thoughts the 
stern reflection, that of all the casualties of 
this existence upon earth, not one was dealt 
out with so unequal a hand as Death. The in- 
equality of Birth was nothing to it. For, say 
that the child of a King and the child of a 
Weaver were born to-night in the same moment, 
what was that disparity to the death of any hu- 
man creature who was serviceable to, or beloved 
by, another, while this abandoned woman lived 
on ! — Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 13. 

DEATH— Not to be frigrhtened by. 

" The sun sets every day, and people die every 
minute, and we mustn't be scared by the com- 
mon lot. If we failed to hold our own, because 
that equal foot at all men's doors was heard 
knocking somewhere, every object in this world 
would slip from us. No ! Ride on ! Rough- 
shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, 
but ride on ! Ride on over all obstacles, and 
win the race ! " — David Copperfield, Chap. 28. 

DEATH— Its expressions. 

It was no unfit messenger of death that had 
disturbed the quiet of the matron's room. Her 
body was bent by age ; her limbs trembled 
with palsy ; and her face, distorted into a 
mumbling leer, resembled more the grotesque 
shaping of some wild pencil, than the work of 
Nature's hand. 

Alas ! how few of Nature's faces are left to 
gladden us with their beauty ! The cares, and 
sorrows, and hungerings, of the world change 
them as they change hearts ; and it is only 
when those passions sleep, and have lost their 
hold forever, that the troubled clouds pass off, 
and leave Heaven's surface clear. It is a com- 
mon thing for the countenances of the dead, 
even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside 
into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping 
infancy, and settle into the very look of early 
life ; so calm, so peaceful do they grow again, 
that those who knew them in their happy child- 
hood kneel by the cofiin's side in awe, and see 
the Angel even upon earth. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 24. 

DEATH-Of Stephen Blackpool. 

" Rachael, my dear." 

She took his hand. He smiled again and 
said, " Don't let 't go." 

"Thou'rt in great pain, my own dear Ste- 
phen?" 



DEATH 



138 



DEATH 



" I ha' been, but not now. I ha' been — 
dreadful, and dree, and long, my dear — but 'tis 
ewer now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle ! Fro' 
first to last, a muddle ! " 

The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as 
he said the word. 

" I ha' fell into th' pit, my dear, as have cost 
wi'in the knowledge o' old folk now livin', hun- 
dreds and hundreds o' men's lives — fathers, 
sons, brothers, dear to thousands an' thousands, 
an* keeping 'em fro' want and hunger. I ha' 
fell into a pit that ha' been wi' th' Fire-damp 
crueller than battle. I ha' read on't in the 
public petition, as onny one may read, fro' the 
men that works in pits, in which they ha' 
pray'n an' pray'n the law-makers for Christ's 
sake not to let their work be murder to 'em, 
but to spare 'em for th' wives and children that 
they loves as well as gentlefolk loves theirs. 
When it were in work, it killed wi'out need ; 
when 'tis let alone, it kills wi'out need. See 
how we die an' no need, one way an' another — 
in a muddle— every day ! " 

He faintly said it, without any anger against 
any one. Merely as the truth. 

" Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not for- 
got her. Thou'rt not like to forget her now, 
and me so nigh her. Thou know'st — poor, 
patient, sufFrin' dear — how thou didst work for 
her, seet'n all day long in her little chair at thy 
winder, and how she died, young and misshap- 
en, awlung o' sickly air as had'n no need to be, 
an awlung o' working people's miserable homes. 
A muddle ! Aw a muddle ! " 

Louisa approached him ; but he could not 
see her, lying with his face turned up to the 
night sky. 

"If aw th' things that tooches us, my dear, 
was not so muddled, I should'n ha' had'n need 
to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle 
among ourseln, I should'n ha' been by my own 
fellow-weavers and workin' brothers, so mis- 
took. If Mr. Bounderby had ever know'd me 
right — if he'd ever know'd me at aw — he would'n 
ha' took'n offence wi' me. He would'n ha' sus- 
pect'n me. But look up yonder, Rachael ! Look 
aboove ! " 

Following his eyes, she saw that he was gaz- 
ing at a star. 

" It ha' shined upon me," he said reverently, 
" in my pain and trouble down below. It ha' 
shined into my mind. I ha' look'n at't an' 
thowt o' thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my 
mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope." 

* 4: « « * * 

The bearers being now ready to carry him 
away, and the surgeon being anxious for his re- 
moval, those who had torches or lanterns, pre- 
pared to go in front of the litter. Before it was 
raised, and while they were arranging how to 
go, he said to Rachael, looking upward at the 
star: 

"Often as I coom to myseln, and found it 
shinin on me down there in my trouble, I thowt 
it were the star as guided to Our Saviour's home. 
I awmust think it be the very star ! " 

They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to 
find that they were about to take him in the 
direction whither the star seemed to him to 
lead. 

" Rachael, beloved lass ! Don't let go my 
hand. We may walk toogether t'night, my 
dear!" 



" I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, 
Stephen, all the way." 

" Bless thee ! Will soombody be pleased to 
coover my face ! " 

They carried him very gently along the fields, 
and down the lanes, and over the wide land- 
scape ; Rachael always holding the hand in hers. 
Very few whispers broke the mournful silence. 
It was soon a funeral procession. The star had 
shown him where to find the God of the poor , 
and through humility, and sorrow^, and forgive- 
ness, he had gone to his Redeemer's rest. 

Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 6. 

DEATH— In the street. 

As the load was put down in the street, Riah 
drew the head of the party aside, and whispered 
that he thought the man was dying. " No, surely 
not ? " returned the other. But he became less 
confident, on looking, and directed the bearers 
to "bring him to the nearest doctor's shop." 

Thither he was brought ; the window becom- 
ing from within a wall of faces, deformed into 
all kinds of shapes through the agency of glo- 
bular red bottles, green bottles, blue bottles 
and other colored bottles. A ghastly hght 
shining upon him that he did'nt need, the beast 
so furious but a few minutes gone, was quiet 
enough now, with a strange mysterious writing 
on his face, reflected from one of the great bot- 
tles, as if Death had marked him : " Mine." 

The medical testimony was more precise and 
more to the purpose than it sometimes is in a 
Court of Justice. " You had better send for 
something to cover it. All's over." 

Our Muttial Friend, Book IV., Chap. g. 

DEATH-Of auilp. 

" If I could find a wall or fence," said the 
dwarf, stretching out his arms, and walkiT?g 
slowly on, " I should know which way to turn. 
A good, black, devil's night this, to have my 
dear friend here ! If I had but that wish, it 
might, for anything I cared, never be day again." 

As the word passed his lips, he staggered and 
fell — and next moment was fighting with the 
cold, dark water ! 

For all its bubbling up and rushing in his 
ears, he could hear the knocking at the gate 
again — could hear a shout that followed it — 
could recognize the voice. For all his strug- 
gling and plashing, he could understand that 
they had lost their way, and had wandered back 
to the point from which they started ; that they 
were all but looking on, while he was drowned ; 
that they were close at hand, but could not make 
an effort to save him ; that he himself had shut 
and barred them out. He answered the shout 
— with a yell, which seemed to make the hun- 
dred fires that danced before his eyes tremble 
and flicker, as if a gust of wind had stirred them. 
It was of no avail. The strong tide filled his 
throat, and bore him on upon its rapid current. 

Another mortal struggle, and he was up again, 
beating the water with his hands, and looking 
out with wild and glaring eyes, that showed him 
some black object he was drifting close upon. 
The hull of a ship ! He could touch its smooth 
and slippery surface with his hand. One loud 
cry now — but the resistless water bore him down 
before he could give it utterance, and, driving 
him under it, carried away a corpse. 

It toyed and sported with its ghastly freight 



DEATH 



139 



DEATH 



now bruising it against the slimy piles, now hid- 
ing it in mud or long rank grass, now dragging 
it heavily over rough stones and gravel, now 
feigning to yield it to its own element, and in. 
the same action luring it away, until, tired of the 
ugly plaything, it flung it on a swamp — a dis- 
mal place, where pirates had swung in chains, 
through many a wintry night — and left it there 
to bleach. 

And there it lay, alone. The sky was red 
with flame, and the water that bore it there had 
been tinged with the sullen light as it flowed 
along. The place the deserted carcass had left 
so recently, a living man, was now a blazing 
ruin. There was something of the glare upon 
its face. The hair, stirred by the damp breeze, 
played in a kind of mockery of death — such a 
mockery as the dead man himself would have 
delighted in when alive — about its head, and its 
dress fluttered idly in the night wind. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 67. 

DEATH— Of Mrs. WeUer. (Mr. Weller's let- 
ter.) 

" Never mind my eyes ; you had much better 
read your letter," said the pretty housemaid ; and 
as she said so, she made the eyes twinkle with 
such slyness and beauty that they were perfectly 
irresistible. 

Sam refreshed himself with a kiss, and read 
as follows : 

" Markis Gran 

By darken 
" My dear Sammle. Wen^^^' 

" I am wery sorry to have the plessure of bein 
a Bear of ill news your Mother in law cort cold 
consekens of imprudently settin too long on the 
damp grass in the rain a hearin of a shepherd 
who warnt able to leave off" till late at night 
owen to his havin vound his-self up with brandy 
and vater and not being able to stop his-self till 
he got a little sober which took a many hours to 
do the doctor says that if she'd svallo'd varm 
brandy and vater artervards insted of afore she 
mightn't have been no vus her veels wos im- 
medetly greased and everythink done to set her 
agoin as could be inwented your farther had 
hopes as she vould have vorked round as usual 
but just as she wos a turnen the corner my boy 
she took the wrong road and vent down hill vith 
a welocity you never see and notvithstandin that 
the drag wos put on drectly by the medikel man 
it wornt of no use at all for she paid the last 
pike at twenty minutes afore six o'clock yester- 
day evenin havin done the journey wery much 
under the reglar time vich praps was partly owen 
to her havin taken in wery little luggage by the 
vay your father says that if you vill come and 
see me Sammy he vill take it as a wery great 
favor for I am wery lonely Samivel n b he vill 
have it spelt that vay vich I say ant right and 
as there is sich a many things to settle he is 
sure your guvner wont object of course he vill 
not Sammy for I knows him better so he sends 
his dooty in which I join and am Samivel in- 
fernally yours 

" Tony Veller." 

" Wot a incomprehensible letter," said Sam ; 
''who's to know wot it means, vith all this be- 
ing and I-ing ! It ain't my father's writin', 'cept 
this here signater in print letters ; that's his." 
Pickwick, Chap. 52. 



DEATH OF THE BICH MAN— Its cause, 
*' Pressiire." 

The report that the great man was dead, got 
about with astonishing rapidity. At first, he was 
dead of all the diseases that ever were known, 
and of several bran-new maladies invented with 
the speed of Light to meet the demand of the oc- 
casion. He had concealed a dropsy from in- 
fancy, he had inherited a large estate of water 
on the chest from his grandfather, he had had 
an operation performed upon him every morning 
of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject 
to the explosion of important veins in his body 
after the manner of fireworks, he had had some- 
thing the matter with his lungs, he had had 
something the matter with his heart, he had had 
something the matter with his brain. Five hun- 
dred people who sat down to breakfast entirely 
uninformed on the whole subject, believed 
before they had done breakfast, that they private- 
ly and personally knew Physician to have said 
to Mr. Merdle, "You must expect to go out, 
some day, like the snuff of a candle," and that 
they knew Mr. Merdle to have said to Physician, 
" A man can die but once." By about eleven 
o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter 
with the brain, became the favorite theory 
against the field ; and by twelve the something 
had been distinctly ascertained to be " Pressure." 

Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the 
public mind, and seemed to make everybody so 
comfortable, that it might have lasted all day 
but for Bar's having taken the real state of the 
case into Court at half-past nine. This led to 
its beginning to be currently whispered all over 
London by about one, that Mr. Merdle had kill- 
ed himself. Pressure, however, so far from be- 
ing overthrown by the discovery, became a 
greater favorite than ever. There was a general 
moralizing upon Pressure, in every street. All 
the people who had tried to make money and 
had not been able to do it, said, There you were ! 
You no sooner began to devote yourself to the 
pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure. The 
idle people improved the occasion in a similar 
manner. See, said they, what you brought your- 
self to by work, work, work ! You persisted in 
working, you overdid it. Pressure came on, and 
you were done for ! This consideration was 
very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more 
so than among the young clerks and partners 
who had never been in the slightest danger of 
overdoing it. These one and all declared, quite 
piously, that they hoped they would never forget 
the warning as long as they lived, and that their 
conduct might be so regulated as to keep off 
Pressure, and preserve them, a comfort to their 
friends, for many years. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 25. 

DEATH— Of the prisoner. 

It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a 
number of stump bedsteads made of iron : on 
one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man ; 
wan, pale, and ghastly. His breathing was hard 
and thick, and he moaned painfully as it came 
and went. At the bedside sat a short old man 
in a cobbler's apron, who, by the aid of a pair 
of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible 
aloud. It was the fortunate legatee. 

The sick man laid his hand upon his attend- 
ant's arm, and motioned him to slop. He closed 
the book, and laid it on the bed. 



DEATH 



140 



DEATH 



" Open the window," said the sick man. 

He did so. The noise of carriages and carts, 
the rattle of wheels, the cries of men and boys, 
all the busy sounds of a mighty multitude in- 
stinct with life and occupation, blended into one 
deep murmur, floated into the room. Above the 
hoarse loud hum, arose, from time to time, a 
boisterous laugh ; or a scrap of some jingling 
song, shouted forth by one of the giddy crowd, 
would strike upon the ear, for an instant, and 
then be lost amidst the roar of voices and the 
tramp of footsteps ; the breaking of the billows 
of the restless sea of life, that rolled heavily on, 
without. Melancholy sounds to a quiet listener 
at any time ; how melancholy to the watcher by 
the bed of death ! 

" There is no air here," said the sick man, 
faintly. " The place pollutes it. It was fresh 
round about, when I walked there, years ago ; 
but it grows hot and heavy in passing these walls. 
I cannot breathe it." 

" We have breathed it together for a long 
time," said the old man. " Come, come." 

There was a short silence, during which the 
two spectators approached the bed. The sick 
man drew a hand of his old fellow-prisoner to- 
wards him, and pressing it affectionately between 
both his own, retained it in his grasp. 

" I hope," he gasped after a while : so faintly 
that they bent their ears close over the bed to 
catch the half-formed sounds his pale lips gave 
vent to : "I hope my merciful Judge will bear 
in mind my heavy punishment on earth. Twenty 
years, my friend, twenty years in this hideous 
grave ! My heart broke when my child died, 
and I could not even kiss him in his little coffin. 
My loneliness since then, in all this noise and 
riot, has been very dreadful. May God forgive 
me ! He has seen my solitary, lingering death." 

He folded his hands, and murmuring some- 
thing more they could not hear, fell into a sleep 
— only a sleep at first, for they saw him smile. 

They whispered together for a little time, and 
the turnkey, stooping over the pillow, drew has- 
tily back. " He has got his discharge, by G — ! " 
said the man. 

He had. But he had grown so like death in 
life, that they knew not when he died. 

Pickwick^ Chap. 44. 

DEATH-Of Little NeU. 

She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and 
calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look 
upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the 
hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life ; 
not one who had lived and suffered death. 

Her couch was dressed with here and there 
some winter berries and green leaves gathered 
in a spot she had been used to favor. " When 
I die, put near me something that has loved the 
light, and had the sky above it always." Those 
were her words. 

She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble 
Nell was dead. Her little bird — a poor slight 
thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed 
— was stirring nimbly in its cage ; and the strong 
heart of its child mistress was mute and motion- 
less for ever. 

Where were the traces of her early cares, her 
sufferings, and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow 
was dead indeed in her, but peace and perfect 
happiness were born ; imaged in her tranquil 
beauty and profound repose. 



And still her former self lay there, unaltered 
in this change. Yes. The old fireside had 
smiled upon that same sweet face ; it had passed, 
like a dream, through haunts of misery and 
care ; at the door of the poor schoolmaster on 
the summer evening, before the furnace fire upon 
the cold, wet night, at the still bed-side of the 
dying boy, there had been the same mild, lovely 
look. So shall we know the angels in their 
majesty after death. 

The old man held one languid arm in his, and 
had the small hand tight folded to his breast, 
for warmth. It was the hand she had stretched 
out to him with her last smile — the hand that 
led him on, through all their wanderings. 
Ever and anon he pressed it to his lips ; then 
hugged it to his breast again, murmuring that it 
was warmer now ; and, as he said it, he looked, 
in agony, to those" who stood around, as if im- 
ploring them to help her. 

She was dead, and past all help, or need of 
it. The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill 
with life, even while her own was waning fast — 
the garden she had tended — the eyes she had 
gladdened — the noiseless haunts of many a 
thoughtful hour — the paths she had trodden as it 
were but yesterday — could know her never more. 

" It is not," said the schoolmaster, as he bent 
down to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his 
tears free vent, " it is not on earth that Hea- 
ven's justice ends. Think what earth is, com- 
pared with the World to which her young spirit 
has winged its early flight ; and say, if one de- 
liberate wish expressed in solemn terms above 
this bed could call her back to life, which of us 
would utter it ! " 

****** 

" She is sleeping soundly," he said ; " but no 
wonder. Angel hands have strewn the ground 
deep with snow, that the lightest footstep may 
be lighter yet ; and the very birds are dead, 
that they may not wake her. She used to feed 
them,, sir. Though never so cold and hungry, 
the timid things would fly from us. They never 
flew from her ! " 

Again he stopped to listen, and scarcely 
drawing breath, listened for a long, long time. 
That fancy past, he opened an old chest, took 
out some clothes as fondly as if they had been 
living things, and began to smooth and brush 
them with his hand. 

" Why dost thou lie so idle there, dear Nell," 
he murmured, "when there are bright red ber- 
ries out of doors waiting for thee to pluck them ! 
Why dost thou lie so idle there, when thy little 
friends come creeping to the door, crying ' where 
is Nell — sweet Nell?' — and sob, and weep, be- 
cause they do not see thee. She was always 
gentle with children. The wildest would do 
her bidding — she had a tender way with them, 
indeed she had ! " 

Old Curiosity Shop. Chap. 71. 



DEATH— Of the young. 

" Oh ! it is hard to take to heart 
The lesson that such deaths will teach. 
But let no man reject it, 

For it is one that all must learn, 
And is a mighty, universal Truth. 
When Death strikes down the innocent and yoang 
For every fragile form from which he lets 

The partino; spirit free, 

A hundred virtues rise. 
In shapes of mercy, charity, and love. 

To walk the world and bless it. 



DEATH 



141 



DEATH 



Of every tear 
That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves 
Some good is born, some gentler na4;ure comes." 

Old Curiosity Shop. 

DEATH— By starvation. 

The man's face was thin and very pale ; his 
hair and beard were grizzly ; his eyes were 
bloodshot. The old woman's face was wrinkled ; 
her two remaining teeth protruded over her un- 
der lip ; and her eyes were bright and piercing. 
Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the 
man. They seemed so like the rats he had seen 
outside. 

" Nobody shall go near her," said the man, 
starting fiercely up, as the undertaker approached 
the recess. " Keep back ! d — n you, keep back, 
if you've a life to lose ! " 

" Nonsense, my good man," said the under- 
taker, who was pretty well used to misery in all 
its shapes. " Nonsense ! " 

" I tell you," said the man ; clinching his 
hands, and stamping furiously on the floor, — 
" I tell you I won't have her put into the ground. 
She couldn't rest there. The worms would 
worry her — not eat her — she is so worn away." 

The undertaker offered no reply to this rav- 
ing ; but, producing a tape from his pocket, 
knelt down for a moment by the side of the body. 

" Ah ! " said the man, bursting into tears, 
and sinking on his knees at the feet of the dead 
woman; "kneel down, kneel down — kneel 
round her, every one of you, and mark my 
words ! I say she was starved to death. I 
never knew how bad she was, till the fever 
came upon her ; and then her bones were start- 
ing through the skin. There was neither fire 
nor candle ; she died in the dark — in the dark ! 
She couldn't even see her children's faces, 
though we heard her gasping out their names. 
I begged for her in the streets ; and they sent 
me to prison. When I came back, she was 
dying ; and all the blood in my heart has dried 
up, for they starved her to death. I swear it 
before the God that saw it ! They starved her ! " 
He twined his hands in his hair ; and, with a 
loud scream, rolled grovelling upon the floor : 
his eyes fixed, and the foam covering his lips. 

The terrified children cried bitterly ; but the 
old woman, who had hitherto remained as quiet 
as if she had been wholly deaf to all that passed, 
menaced them into silence. Having unloosed 
the cravat of the man, who still remained ex- 
tended on the ground, she tottered toward the 
undertaker. 

" She was my daughter," said the old woman, 
nodding her head in the direction of the corpse, 
and speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly 
than even the presence of death in such a place. 
" Lord, Lord ! Well, it is strange that I, who 
gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should 
be alive and merry now, and she lying there ; so 
cold and stiff! Lofd, Lord ! — to think of it ; — 
it's as good as a play — as good as a play ! " 

Oliver Twisty Chap. 5. 

DEATH— In old age (Anthony Chuzzlewit) . 

He had fallen from his chair in a fit, and lay 
there, battling for each gasp of breath, with 
every shrivelled vein and sinew starting in its 
place, as if it were bent on bearing witness to 
his age, and sternly pleading with Nature against 
his recovery. It was frightful to see how the 
principle of life, shut up within his withered 



frame, fought like a strong devil, mad to be re- 
leased, and rent its ancient prison-house. A 
young man in the fullness of his vigor, struggling 
with so much strength of desperation, would 
have been a dismal sight ; but an old, old, 
shrunken body, endowed with preternatural 
might, and giving the lie in every motion of its 
every limb and joint to its enfeebled aspect, was 
a hideous spectacle indeed. 

***** 

On his livid face, and on his horny hands, 
and in his glassy eyes, and traced by an eternal 
finger in the very drops of sweat upon his brow, 
was one word — Death. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 18. 

DEATH— "Weller's philosophy at his loss. 

" Sammy," said Mr. Weller, " you're vel- 
come." 

" I've been a callin' to you half a dozen 
times," said Sam, hanging his hat on a peg, 
"but you didn't hear me." 

"No, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller, again 
looking thoughtfully at the fire. " I was in a 
referee, Sammy." 

" Wot about ? " inquired Sam, drawing his 
chair up to the fire. 

" In a referee, Sammy," replied the elder Mr. 
Weller, " regarding her, Samivel." Here Mr. 
Weller jerked his head in the direction of Dor- 
king churchyard, in mute explanation that his 
words referred to the late Mrs. Weller. 

" I wos a thinkin', Sammy," said Mr. Weller, 
eyeing his son, with great earnestness, over his 
pipe ; as if to assure him that however extraor- 
dinary and incredible the declaration might ap- 
pear, it was nevertheless calmly and deliberately 
uttered. " I wos a thinkin', Sammy, that upon 
the whole I wos wery sorry she wos gone." 

" Veil, and so you ought to be," replied Sam. 

Mr. Weller nodded his acquiescence in the 
sentiment, and again fastening his eyes on the 
fire, shrouded himself in a cloud, and mused 
deeply. 

"Veil," said Sam, venturing to offer a little 
homely consolation, after the lapse of three or 
four minutes, consumed by the old gentleman in 
slowly shaking his head from side to side, and 
solemnly smoking ; " veil, gov'ner, ve must all 
come to it, one day or another." 

" So we must, Sammy," said Mr. Weller the 
elder. 

" There's a Providence in it all," said Sam. 

"O' course there is," replied his father, with a 
nod of grave approval. " Wot 'ud become of the 
undertakers vithout it, Sammy?" 

Lost in the immense field of conjecture opened 
by this reflection, the elder Mr. Weller laid his 
pipe on the table, and stirred the fire with a 
meditative vision. — Pickwick, Chap. 52. 

DEATH-Of "Jo." 

Jo is veiy glad to see his old friend ; and says, 
when they are left alone, that he takes it uncom- 
mon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so far 
out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr. 
Sangsby, touched by the spectacle before him, 
immediately lays upon the table half-a-crown ; 
that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds. 

" And how do you find yourself, my poor 
lad ? " inquires the stationer, with his cough of 
sympathy. 



DEATH 



142 



DEATH 



" I am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am," returns 
Jo, "and don't want for nothink. I'm more 
cumfbler nor you can't think. Mr. Sangsby I 
I'm wery sorry that I done it, but I didn't go fur 
to do it, sir." 

The stationer softly lays down another half- 
crown, and asks him what it is that he is sorry 
for having done ? 

" Mi". Sangsby," says Jo, " I went and giv a 
illness to the lady as wos and yit as warn't the 
t'other lady, and none of 'em never says no- 
think to me for having done it, on accounts of 
their being ser good and my having been s'un- 
fortnet. The lady come herself and see me 
yesday, and she ses, * Ah Jo ! ' she ses. ' We 
thought we'd lost you, Jo ! ' she ses. And she 
sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don't pass a 
word nor yit a look upon me for having done it, 
she don't, and I turns again the wall, I doos, Mr. 
Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him a-forced 
to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot, 
he come fur to giv me somethink fur to ease me, 
wot he's alius a-doin on day and night, and wen 
h*? come a-bendin over me and a-speakin up so 
bold, I see his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby." 

The softened stationer deposits another half- 
crown on the table. Nothing less than a repe- 
tition of that infallible remedy would relieve his 
feelings. 

" Wot I wos a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby," pro- 
ceeds Jo, " wos, as you wos able to write wery 
large, p'raps ? " 

" Yes, Jo, please God," returns the stationer. 

"Uncommon precious large, p'raps?" says 
Jo, with eagerness. 

" Yes, my poor boy." 

Jo laughs with pleasure. "Wot I wos a- 
thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby, wos, that when 
I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and 
couldn't be moved no furder, whether you might 
be so good p'raps, as to write out, wery large, so 
that any one could see it anywheres, as that I 
wos wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and 
that I never went fur to do it ; and that though 
I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr. 
Woodcot once cried over it and wos alius grieved 
over it, and that I hoped as he'd be able to for- 
give me in his mind. If the writin could be 
made to say it wery large, he might." 

" It shall say it, Jo. Very large." 

Jo laughs again. " Thankee, Mr. Sangsby. 
It's wery kind of you, sir, and it makes me more 
cumfbler nor I wos afore." 

The meek little stationer, with a broken and 
unfinished cough, slips down his fourth half- 
crown — he has never been so close to a case re- 
quiring so many — and is fain to depart. And 
Jo and he, upon this little earth, shall meet no 
more. No more. 

For the cart, so hard to draw, is near its jour- 
ney's end, and drags over stony ground. All 
round the clock it labors up the broken steps, 
shattered and worn. Not many times can the 
sun rise, and behold it still upon its weary road. 

Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, 
at once acts as nurse and works as armorer 
at his little table in a corner ; often looking 
round, and saying, with a nod of his green baize 
cap, and an encouraging elevation of his one eye- 
brow, " Hold up, my boy ! Hold up ! " There, 
too, is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan 
Woodcourt almost always ; both thinking much 
how stran^;ely Fate has entangled this rough out- 



cast in the web of very different lives. There, 
too, the trooper is a frequent visitor, filling the 
doorway with his athletic figure, and, from his 
superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed 
down temporary vigor upon Jo, who never fails 
to speak more robustly in answer to his cheer- 
ful words. 

Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and 
Allan Woodcourt, newly arrived, stands by him, 
looking down upon his wasted form. After a 
while he softly seats himself upon the bedside 
with his face towards him — ^just as he sat in the 
law-writer's room — and touches his chest and 
heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but 
labors on a little more. 

The trooper stands in the doonvay, still and 
silent. Phil has stopped in a low clinking noise, 
with his little hammer in his hand. Mr. Wood- 
court looks round with that grave professional 
interest and attention on his face, and, glancing 
significantly at the trooper, signs to Phil to 
carry his table out. When the little hammer 
is next used, there will be a speck of rust 
upon it. 

" Well, Jo ! What is the matter ? Don't be 
frightened." 

" I thought," says Jo, who has started, and is 
looking round, " I thought I was in Tom-all- 
Alone's agin. Ain't there nobody here but you, 
Mr. Woodcot ? " 

" Nobody." 

" And I ain't took back to Tom-all- Alone's. 
Am I, sir ? " 

" No." Jo closes his eyes, muttering, " I'm 
wery thankful." 

After watching him closely a little while, 
Allan puts his mouth very near his ear, and says 
to him in a low, distinct voice : 

" Jo ! Did you ever know a prayer ? " 

" Never knowd nothink, sir." 

" Not so much as one short prayer? " 

" No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands 
he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr. Sangsby's and I 
heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin' 
to hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but 
/ couldn't make out nothink on it. Different 
times, there wos other genlmen come down 
Tom-All-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly 
sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong, and all 
mostly sounded to be a-talking to theirselves, or 
a passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin 
to us. We never knowd nothink. / never 
knowd what it wos all about." 

It takes him a long time to say this ; and few 
but an experienced and attentive listener could 
hear, or, hearing, understand him. After a short 
relapse Itilo sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sud- 
den, a strong effort to get out of bed. 

" Stay, Jo ! What now ? " 

" It's time for me to go to that there berryin 
ground, sir," he returns, with a wild look. 

" Lie down, and tell me. What burying 
ground, Jo ?" 

" Where they laid him as wos wery good to 
me, wery good to me indeed, he was. It's time 
fur me to go down to that there berryin ground, 
sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants 
to go there and be berried. He used fur to say 
to me, ' I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,' he ses. 
I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him 
now, and have come there to be laid along with 
him." 

" By-and-bye, Jo. By-and-bye." 



DEATH 



143 



DEATH 



" Ah ! P'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos to 
go myself. But will you promise to have me 
took there, sir, and laid along with him ? " 

" I will, indeed." 

" Thank'ee, sir. Thank'ee, sir. They'll have 
to get the key of the gate afore they can take 
me in, for it's alius locked. And there's a step 
there, as I used fur to clean with my broom. — 
It's turned wery dark, sir. Is there any light a- 
comin ? " 

" It is coming fast, Jo." 

Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and 
the rugged road is very near its end. 

"Jo, my poor fellow ! " 
^ " I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a-gropin 
— a-gropin — let me catch hold of your hand." 

" Jo, can you say what I say ? " 

" I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows 
it's good." 

" Our Father." 

" Our Father ! — yes, that's very good, sir." 

"Which art in Heaven." 

"Art in Heaven — is the light a-comin, sir?" 

"It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy 
NAME ! " 

" Hallowed be— thy " 

The light is come upon the dark benighted 
way. Dead ! 

Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and 
gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong 
Reverends of every order. Dead, men and wo- 
men, born with Heavenly compassion in your 
hearts. And dying thus around us every day. 
Bleak House, Chap. 47. 

DEATH— Its oblivion. 

So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her 
dear friends, who are deaf to the waves that are 
hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and 
blind to the dust that is piled upon the shore, 
and to the white arms that are beckoning, in 
the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. 
But all goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin 
of the unknown sea ; and Edith, standing there 
alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed 
cast up at her feet, to strew her path in life 
withal. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap, 41. 

DEATH— Of a mother. 

" Mamma !" said the child. 

The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, 
awakened some show of consciousness, even at 
that ebb. For a moment, the closed eye-lids 
trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the 
faintest shadow of a smile was seen. 

"Mamma!" cried the child, sobbing aloud. 
" Oh dear Mamma ! oh dear Mamma ! " 

The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ring- 
lets of the child aside from the face and mouth 
of the mother. Alas ! how calm they lay there ; 
how little breath there was to stir them ! 

Thus, clinging fast to that slight spar within 
her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark 
and unknown sea that rolls round all the world. 
Dombey &" Son, Chap, i, 

DEATH-Of youth. 

Paul had never risen from his little bed. He 
lay there, listening to the noises in the street, 
quite tranquilly ; not caring much how the time 
went, but watching everything about him with 
observing eyes. 

When the sunbeams struck into his room 



through the rustling blinds, and quivered on the 
opposite wall like golden water, he knew that 
evening was coming on, and that the sky was 
red and beautiful. As the reflection died away, 
and a gloom went creeping up the wall, he 
watched it deepen, deepen, deepen, into night. 
Then he thought how the long streets were 
dotted with lamps, and how the peaceful stars 
were shining overhead. His fancy had a strange 
tendency to wander to the river, which he knew 
was flowing through the great city ; and now he 
thought how black it was, and how deep it 
would look, reflecting the hosts of stars — and 
more than all, how steadily it rolled away to 
meet the sea. 

As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in 
the street became so rare that he could hear 
them coming, count them as they passed, and 
lose them in the hollow distance, he would lie 
and watch the many-colored ring about the can- 
dle, and wait patiently for day. His only trou- 
ble was, the swift and rapid river. He felt 
forced, sometimes, to try to stop it — to stem it 
with his childish hands — or choke its way with 
sand — and when he saw it coming on, resistless, 
he cried out ! But a word from P'lorence, who 
was always at his side, restored him to himself ; 
and leaning his poor head upon her breast, he 
told Floy of his dream, and smiled. 

When day began to dawn again, he watched 
for the sun ; and when its cheerful light began 
to sparkle in the room, he pictured to himself — 
pictured ! he saw the high church towers rising 
up into the morning sky, the town reviving, wak 
ing, starting into life once more, the river glisten- 
ing as it rolled (but rolling fast as ever), and the 
country bright with dew. Familiar sounds and 
cries came by degrees into the street below ; the 
servants in the house were roused and busy ; 
faces looked in at the door, and voices asked 
his attendants softly how he was. Paul always 
answered for himself, " I am better. I am a 
great deal better, thank you. Tell Papa so !" 

By little and little he got tired of the bustle 
of the day, the noise of carriages and carts, and 
people passing and re-passing ; and would fall 
asleep, or be troubled with a restless and uneasy 
sense again — the child could hardly tell whether 
this were in his sleeping or his waking mo- 
ments — of that rushing river. " Why, will it 
never stop, Floy?" he would sometimes ask 
her. " It is bearing me away, I think ! " 

But Floy could always soothe and re-assure 
him ; and it was his daily delight to make her 
lay her head down on his pillow, and take some 
rest. 

))C * ♦ * ft 

" Now lay me down," he said, " and Floy, 
come close to me, and let me see you ! " 

Sister and brother wound their arms around 
each other, and the golden light came streaming 
in, and fell upon them, locked together. 

" How fast the river runs, between its green 
banks and the rushes, Floy ! But it's very near 
the sea. I hear the waves ! They always said 
sol" 

Presently he told her that the motion of the 
boat upon the stream was lulling him to rest. 
How green the banks were now, how bright the 
flowers growing on them, and how tall the 
rushes ! Now the boat was out at sea, but 
gliding smoothly on. And now there was a 
shore before him. Who stood on the bank ! — 



DEATH 



144 



DEPORTMENT 



He put his hands together, as he had been 
osed to do at his prayers. He did not remove 
his arms to do it ; but they saw him fold them 
so, behind her neck. 

"Mamma is like you, Floy. I know her by 
the face ! But tell them that the print upon the 
stairs at school is not divine enough. The light 
about the head is shining on me as I go ! " 

The golden ripple on the wall came back 
again, and nothing else stirred in the room. 
The old, old fashion ! The fashion that came 
in with our first garments, and will last un- 
changed until our race has run its course, and 
the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. 
The old, old fashion— Death ! 

Oh, thank GoD, all who see it, for that older 
fashion yet, of Immortality ! And look upon us, 
angels of young children, with regards not quite 
estranged, when the swift river bears us to the 
ocean I — Donibey ^ Son. 

DEATH-Of Marley. 

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is 
no doubt whatever about that. The register of 
his burial was signed by the clergyman, the 
clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. 
Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was 
good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to 
put his hand to. 

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. 

Mind ! I don't mean to say that I know, of 
my own knowledge, what there is particularly 
dead about a door-nail. I might have been in- 
clined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the 
deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. 
But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the 
simile ; and my unhallowed hands shall not 
disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will 
therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, 
that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. 

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he 
did. How could it be otherwise ? Scrooge and 
he were partners for I don't know how many 
years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole 
administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary 
legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And 
even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by 
the sad event, but that he was an excellent man 
of business on the very day of the funeral, and 
solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. 

Christmas Carol, Stave I. 

DEATH— Of the yoTing-— (Thoughts of little 
Nell). 
But the sad scene she had witnessed was not 
without its lesson of content and gratitude ; of 
content with the lot which left her health and 
freedom ; and gratitude that she was spared to 
the one relative and friend she loved, and to 
live and move in a beautiful world, when so 
many young creatures — as young and full of 
hope as she — were stricken down and gathered 
to their graves. How many of the mounds in 
that old churchyard where she had lately strayed, 
grew green above the graves of children ! And 
though she thought as a child herself, and did not, 
perhaps, sufficiently consider to what a bright and 
happy existence those who die young are borne, 
and how in death they lose the pain of seeing 
others die around them, bearing to the tomb 
some strong affection of their hearts (which 
makes the old die many times in one long life). 
Still she thought wisely enough, to draw a plain 



and easy moral from what she had seen that 
night, and to store it deep in her mind. 

Her dreams were of the little scholar ; not cof- 
fined and covered up, but mingling with angels, 
and smiling happily. The sun, darting his 
cheerful rays into the room, awoke her: and 
now there remained but to take leave of the 
poor schoolmaster and wander forth once more. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 26. 

DEBT— Skimpole's idea of. 

His furniture had been all cleared off, it ap- 
peared, by the person who took possession of it 
on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday; but he 
seemed quite relieved to think that it was gone. 
Chairs and tables, he said, were wearisome ob- 
jects ; they were monotonous ideas, they had no 
variety of expression, they looked you out of 
countenance, and you looked them out of coun- 
tenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to 
no particular chairs and tables, but to sport like 
a butterfly among all the furniture on hire, and 
to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from 
mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to 
that, as the humor took one ! 

" The oddity of the thing is," said Mr. Skim- 
pole, with a quickened sense of the ludicrous, 
" that my chairs and tables were not paid for, 
and yet my landlord walks off with them as 
composedly as possible. Now, that seems 
droll ! There is something grotesque in it. 
The chair and table merchant never engaged 
to pay my landlord my rent. Why should my 
landlord quarrel with him ? If I have a pim- 
ple on my nose which is disagreeable to my 
landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my landlord 
has no business to scratch my chair and table 
merchant's nose, which has no pimple on it 
His reasoning seems defective ! " 

Bleak House, Chap. 17. 

DEBTORS— Paying debts a disease. 

It was evident from the general tone of the 
whole party, that they had come to regard in- 
solvency as the normal state of mankind, and 
the payment of debts as a disease that occa- 
sionally broke out. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 8. 

DEPORTMENT— Turveydrop on. 

" A lady so graceful and accomplished," he 
said, kissing his right glove, and afterwards ex- 
tending it towards the pupils, " will look leni- 
ently on the deficiencies here. We do our best 
to polish — polish — polish ! " 

He sat down beside me ; taking some pains 
to sit on the form, I thought, in imitation of 
the print of his illustrious model on the sofa. 
And really he did look very like it. 

" To polish — polish — polish ! " he repeated, 
taking a pinch of snuff and gently fluttering his 
fingers. " But we are not — if I may say so, to 
one formed to be graceful both by Nature and 
Art ; " with the high-shouldered bow, which it 
seemed impossible for him to make without lift- 
ing up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes — " we 
are not what we used to be in point of Deport- 
ment." 

" Are we not, sir? " said I. 

" We have degenerated," he returned^ shak- 
ing his head, which he could do to a very limi- 
ted extent, in his cravat. " A levelling age is 
not favorable to Deportment. It develops vul- 



DEPORTMENT 



145 



DESTINY 



garity. Perhaps I speak with some little parti- 
ality. It may not be for me to say that I have 
been called, for some years now, Gentleman 
Turveydrop ; or that His Royal Highness the 
Prince Regent did me the honor to inquire, on 
my removing my hat as he drove out of the 
Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ' Who 
is he ? Who the Devil is he ? Why don't I 
know him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand 
a- year ? ' But these are little matters of anec- 
dote — the general property, ma'am — still re- 
peated, occasionally, among the upper classes." 

"Indeed?" said I. 

He replied, with the high -shouldered bow, 
"Where what is left among us of Deportment," 
he added, " still lingers. England — alas, my 
country ! — has degenerated very much, and is 
degenerating every day. She has not many 
gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to 
succeed us but a race of weavers." 

" One might hope that the race of gentlemen 
would be perpetuated here," said I. 

" You are very good," he smiled, with the 
high-shouldered bow again. " You flatter me. 
But, no — no ! I have never been able to imbue 
my poor boy with that part of his art. Heaven 
forbid that I should disparage my dear child, 
but he has — no Deportment." 

" He appears to be an excellent master," I 
observed. 



" He is celebrated, almost everywhere, for his 
Deportment." 

"Does he teach?" asked Ada. 

" No, he don't teach anything in particular," 
replied Caddy. " But his Deportment is beau- 
tiful." — Bleak House, Chap. 14. 



The power of his Deportment was such, that 
they really were as much overcome with thank- 
fulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon 
them for the rest of his life, he were making 
some munificent sacrifice in their favor. 

" For myself, my children," said Mr. Turvey- 
drop, " I am falling into the sear and yellow 
leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the 
last feeble traces of gentlemanly Deportment 
may linger in this weaving and spinning age. 
But, so long, I will do my duty to society, and 
will show myself, as usual, about town." 

Bleak House, Chap. 23. 

DEPORTMENT-" Botany Bay Ease." 

"Good morning, my dear," said the princi- 
pal, addressing the young lady at the bar, with 
Botany Bay ease, and New South Wales gen- 
tility ; " which is Mr. Pickwick's room, my 
dear?" — Pickwick, Chap. 40. 

DEPRAVITY-Natural. 

" Hold there, you and your philanthropy," 
cried the smiling landlady, nodding her head 
more than ever. " Listen then. I am a woman, 
I. I know nothing of philosophical philan- 
thropy. But I know what I have seen, and what 
I have looked in the face, in this world here, 
where I find myself. And I tell you this, my 
friend, that there are people (men and women 
both, unfortunately) who have no good in them 
— none. That there are people whom it is 
necessary to detest without compromise. That 
there are people who must be dealt with as 
enemies of the human race. That there are 



people who have no human heart, and who must 
be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of 
the way. They are but few, I hope ; but I have 
seen (in this world here where I find myself, and 
even at the little Break of Day) that there are 
such people." — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 11. 

DEPRAVITY— Its written lessons. 

I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest 
good may not be drawn from the vilest evil. I 
have always believed this to be a recognized and 
established truth, laid down by the greatest men 
the world has ever seen, constantly acted upon 
by the best and wisest natures, and confirmed 
by the reason and experience of every thinkinj( 
mind. I saw no reason, when I wrote thij 
book, why the dregs of life, so long as thei 
speech did not offend the ear, should not serv - 
the purpose of a moral, at least as well as it 
froth and cream. Nor did I doubt that ther* 
lay festering in Saint Giles's as good material 
toward the truth as any to be found in Sain< 
James's. 

In this spirit, when I wished to show, in little 
Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through 
every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at 
last ; and when I considered among what com- 
panions I could try him best, having regard to 
that kind of men into whose hands he would 
most naturally fall ; I bethought myself of those 
who figure in these volumes. When I came to 
discuss the subject more maturely with myself, 
I saw many strong reasons for pursuing the 
course to which I was inclined. I had read of 
thieves by scores — seductive fellows (amiable for 
the most part), faultless in dress, plump in pock- 
et, choice in horse-flesh, bold in bearing, fortu- 
nate in gallantry, great at a song, a bottle, pack 
of cards or dice-box, and fit companions for the 
bravest. But I had never met (except in Ho- 
garth) with the miserable reality. It appeared 
to me that to draw a knot of such associates in 
crime as really do exist ; to paint them in all 
their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all 
the squalid poverty of their lives ; to show them 
as they really are, forever skulking uneasily 
through the dirtiest paths of life, with the great, 
black, ghastly gallows closing up their prospect, 
turn them where they may ; it appeared to me 
that to do this, would be to attempt a something 
which was greatly needed, and which would be 
a service to society. And therefore I did it as 
I best could. — Oliver Twist. Preface. 

DEPRESSION-Of spirits. 

And Mr. Jaggers made not me alone intensely 
melancholy, because, after he was gone, Herbert 
said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, 
that he thought he must have committed a felony 
and forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected 
and guilty, — Great Expectations, Chap. 36. 

DESTINY. 

" Shaken out of destiny's dice box." 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. Ii. 

DESTINY— The high-roads and by-roads of. 

Strange, if the little sick-room fire were in ef- 
fect a beacon fire, summoning some one, and 
that the most unlikely some one in the world, to 
the spot that must be come to. Strange, if the 
little sick-room light were in effect a watch-light, 
burning in that place every night until an ap- 



DETECTIVE 



146 



DEVOTION 



pointed event should be watched out ! Which 
of the vast multitude of travellers, under the 
sun and the stars, climbing the dusty hills and 
toiling along the weary plains, journeying by 
land and journeying by sea, coming and going 
so strangely, to meet and to act and re-act on 
one another, which of the host may, with no sus- 
picion of the journey's end, be travelling surely 
hither? 

Time shall show us. The post of honor and 
the post of shame, the general's station and the 
drummer's, a peer's statue in Westminster Ab- 
bey and a seaman's hammock in the bosom 
of the deep, the mitre and the workhouse, the 
woolsack and the gallows, the throne and the 
guillotine — the travellers to all are on the high- 
road ; but it has wonderful divergencies, and 
only time shall show us whither each traveller is 
bound. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 15. 

DETECTIVE— Mr. Bucket, the. 

Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much 
in consultation together under existing circum- 
stances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this 
pressing interest under his consideration, the 
fat forefinger seems to rise to the dignity of a 
familiar demon. He puts it to his ears, and it 
whispers information ; he puts it to his lips, and 
it enjoins him to secrecy ; he rubs it over his 
nose, and it sharpens his scent ; he shakes it be- 
fore a guilty man, and it charms him to his des- 
truction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple 
invariably predict, that when Mr. Bucket and 
that finger are in much conference, a terrible 
avenger will be heard of before long. 

Otherwise mildly studious in his observation 
of human nature, on the whole a benignant 
philosopher, not disposed to be severe upon the 
follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast 
number of houses, and strolls about an infinity of 
streets : to outward appearance rather languish- 
ing for want of an object. He is in the 
friendliest condition towards his species, and 
will drink with most of them. He is free with 
his money, affable in his manners, innocent in 
his conversation — but, through the placid stream 
of his life, there glides an under-current of 
fore-finger. 

Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. 
Like man in the abstract, he is here to-day and 
gone to-morrow — but, very unlike man indeed, 
he is here again the next day. This evening he 
will be casually looking into the iron extin- 
guishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock's 
house in town ; and to-morrow morning he will 
be walking on the leads at Chesney Wold, 
where erst the old man walked whose ghost is 
propitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers, 
desks, pockets, all things belonging to him, Mr. 
Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards, he 
and the Roman will be alone together, compar- 
ing forefingers. — Bleak House, Chap. 53. 

DETERMINATION. 

" And again," repeats Mademoiselle, catalep- 
tic with determination. — Bleak House, Chap. 42. 

DEVHx— Wlieii he is dang-erous. 

And yet he had not, even now, any earnest 
wickedness of purpose in him. Publicly and 
privately, it were much better for the age in 
which he lived, that he and the legion of whom 
he was one were designedly bad, than indifferent 



and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs, set- 
ting with any current anywhere, that wreck the 
ships. 

When the Devil goeth about like a roaring 
lion, he goeth about in a shape by which few 
but savages and hunters are attracted. But, 
when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, 
according to the mode ; when he is aweary of 
vice, and aweary of virtue ; used up as to brim- 
stone, and used up as to bliss ; then, whether he 
take to serving out of red tape, or to the kin- 
dling of red fire, he is the very Devil. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 8. 

DEVOTION-Of Little Dorrit. 

At first, such a baby could do little more than 
sit with him, deserting her livelier place by the 
high fender, and quietly watching him. But 
this made her so far necessary to him that he 
became accustomed to her, and began to be 
sensible of missing her when she was not there. 
Through this little gate, she passed out of child- 
hood into the care-laden world. 

What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, 
in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the 
iail ; how much, or how little, of the wretched 
truth it pleased God to make visible to her ; lies 
hidden with many mysteries. It is enough that 
she was inspired to be something which was not 
what the rest were, and to be that something, 
different and laborious, for the sake of the rest. 
Inspired ? Yes. Shall we speak of the inspira- 
tion of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart 
impelled by love and self-devotion to the low- 
liest work in the lowliest way of life ! 

With no earthly friend to help her, or so much 
as to see her, but the one so strangely assorted ; 
with no knowledge even of the common daily 
tone and habits of the common members of the 
free community who are not shut up in prisons ; 
born and bred, in a social condition, false even 
with a reference to the falsest condition outside 
the walls ; drinking from infancy of a well whose 
waters had their own peculiar stain, their own 
unwholesome and unnatural taste ; the Child of 
the Marshalsea began her womanly life. 

No matter through what mistakes and dis- 
couragements, what ridicule (not unkindly 
meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little 
figure, what humble consciousness of her own 
babyhood and want of strength, even in the 
matter of lifting and carrying ; through how 
much weariness and helplessness, and how 
many secret tears, she trudged on, until recog- 
nized as useful, even indispensable. That time 
came. She took the place of eldest of the 
three, in all things but precedence ; was the 
head of the fallen family ; and bore, in her own 
heart, its anxieties and shames. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 7. 

DEVOTION-Of Tom Pinch. 

God's love upon thy patience, Tom ! Who, 
that had beheld thee, for three summer weeks, 
poring through half the deadiong night over the 
jingling anatomy of that inscrutable old harpsi- 
chord in the back parlor, could have missed the 
entrance to thy secret heart : albeit it was dimly 
known to thee ? Who that had seen the glow 
upon thy cheek when, leaning down to listen, 
after hours of labor, for the sound of one incor- 
rigible note, thou foundst that it nad a voice at 
last, and wheezed out a fiat something, distantly 




"Joe Bagstock, Sir.' 



147 



DIAMONDS 



147 



DDTNER 



akin to what it ought to be, would not have 
known that it was destined for no common 
touch, but one that smote, though gently as an 
angel's hand, upon the deepest chord within 
thee ! And if a friendly glance — aye, even 
though it were as guileless as thine own, Dear 
Tom — could but have pierced the twilight of 
that evening, when, in a voice well tempered to 
the time, sad, sweet, and low, yet hopeful, she 
first sang to the altered instrument, and won- 
dered at the change ; and thou, sitting apart at 
the open window, kept a glad silence and a 
swelling heart ; must not that glance have read 
perforce the dawning of a story, Tom, that it 
were well for thee had never been begun ! 

Martin Chuzzleuvit, Chap. 24. 

DIAMONDS. 

The arch of diamonds spanning her dark 

hair, flashed and glittered like a starry bridge. 

There was no warning in them, or they would 

have turned as dull and dim as tarnished honor. 

Dombey (2r» Son, Chap. 47. 

DIGESTION— The process of "winding 
up." 

" The process of digestion, as I have been in- 
formed by anatomical friends, is one of the 
most wonderful works of nature. I do not 
know how it may be with others, but it is a 
great satisfaction to me to know, when regaling 
on my humble fare, that I am putting in motion 
the most beautiful machinery with which we 
have any acquaintance. I really feel at such 
times as if I was doing a public service. When 
I have wound myself up, if I may employ such 
a term," said Mr. Pecksniff, with exquisite ten- 
derness, "and know that I am Going, I feel 
that in the lesson afforded by the works within 
me, I am a Benefactor to my Kind ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewity Chap. 8. 

DIGNITY— An expression of. 

He threw himself on a bench with the air of 
a man who was faint with dignity. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. b. 

DIGNITY— Like an eight-day clock. 

He carried himself like an eight-day clock at 
all times : like one of a race of eight-day clocks 
in gorgeous cases, that never go and never went 
— Ha ha ha ! — but he will have some extra 
stiffness. — Bleak House, Chap. 18. 

DINING-ROOM-A gloomy. 

So thought Mr. Dombey, when he was left 
alone at the dining-table, and mused upon his 
past and future fortunes : finding no uncongeni- 
ality in an air of scant and gloomy state that 
pervaded the room, in color a dark brown, with 
black hatchments of pictures blotching the 
walls, and twenty-four black chairs, with almost 
as many nails in them as so many coffins, wait- 
ing like mutes, upon the threshold of the Tur- 
key carpet ; and two exhausted negroes holding 
up two withered branches of candelabra on the 
sideboard, and a musty smell prevailing, as if 
the ashes of ten thousand dinners were en- 
tombed in the sarcophagus below it. 

♦ iK ♦ )K 4( i|( 

It was so funereal as to want nothing but a 
body in it to be quite complete. 

No bad representation of the body, for the 



nonce, in his unbending form, if not in his atti- 
tude, Mr. Dombey looked down into the cold 
depths of the dead sea of mahogany on which 
the fruit dishes and decanters lay at anchor. 
Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 30. 

DINNER— Bagstock at. 

Between his mental excitement, and the ex- 
ertion of saying all this in wheezy whispers, the 
Major sat gurgling in the throat, and watering 
at the eyes, until dinner was ready. 

The Major, like some other noble animals, 
exhibited himself to great advantage at feeding 
time. 

During the first course or two, the Major was 
usually grave ; for the Native, in obedience to 
general orders, secretly issued, collected every 
sauce and cruet round him, and gave him a 
great deal to do, in taking out the stoppers, and 
mixing up the contents in his plate. Besides 
which, the Native had private zests and flavors 
on a side-table, with which the Major daily 
scorched himself: to say nothing of strange 
machines out of which he spirted unknown 
liquids into the Major's drink. 

Dombey &f Son, Chap. 26. 

DINNER— Bagstock after. 

The Major being by this time in a state of 
repletion, with essence of savory pie oozing out 
at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill 
and kidneys tightening his cravat ; and the 
time moreover approaching for the departure 
of the railway train to Birmingham, by which 
they were to leave town ; the Native got him 
into his great-coat with immense difficulty, and 
buttoned him up until his face looked staring 
and gasping, over the top of that gannent, as 
if he were in a barrel. 

4c :ic He 4e He 4: 

He sat for a long time afterwards, leering 
and choking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles. 
Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 20. 

DINNER— And dinner-time. 

" There's nothing," said Toby, " more regular 
in its coming round than dinner time, and noth- 
ing less regular in its coming round than din- 
ner. That's the great difference between 'em 
It's took me a long time to find it out. I won- 
der whether it would be worth any gentleman's 
while now, to buy that obserwation for the pa- 
pers ; or the Parliament ! " 

Christmas Chimes, 1st quarter. 

DINNER-Toby Veck's. 

" He'd eat his dinner with an appetite, who- 
ever he was, if it smelt like this, ' said Meg, 
cheerfully. " Make haste, for there's a hot po- 
tato besides, and half a pint of fresh-drawn 
beer in a bottle. Where will you dine, father ^ 
On the Post, or on the Steps? Dear, dear, 
how grand we are. Two places to choose 
from ! " 

"The steps to-day, my pet," said Trotty. 
" Steps in dry weather. Post in wet. There's 
a greater conveniency in the steps at all times, 
because of the sitting down ; but they're rheu- 
matic in the damp." 

Christmas Chimes, \st quarter. 

DINNER— An American. 

It was a numerous company, eighteen or 



DINNER 



148 



DINNER 



twenty, perhaps. Of these some five or six 
were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little 
phalanx by themselves. All the knives and 
forks were working away at a rate that was 
quite alarming ; very few words were spoken ; 
and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in 
self-defence, as if a famine were expected to 
set in before breakfast-time to-morrow morn- 
ing, and it had become high time to assert the 
first law of nature. The pouiltry, which may 
perhaps be considered to have lormeJ the sta- 
ple of the entertainment — for there was a tur- 
key at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, 
and two fowls in the middle — disappeared as 
rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its 
wings, and had flown in desperation down a 
human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, 
leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid 
by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The 
sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at 
once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his 
eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted 
away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn 
and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals 
bolted their food in wedges ; feeding, not them- 
selves, but broods of nightmares, who were con- 
tinually standing at livery within them. Spare 
men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out un- 
satisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, 
and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry. 
What Mrs. Pawkins felt each day at dinner- 
time is hidden from all human knowledge. But 
she had one comfort. It was very soon over. 
Martin Chuzzleurit, Chap, i6. 

DINNER— Dick Swiveller's observations 
on. 

*• May the present moment," said Dick, stick- 
ing his fork into a large carbuncular potato, 
" be the worst of our lives ! I like this plan of 
sending 'em with the peel on ; there's a charm 
in drawing a potato from its native element 
(if I may so express it) to which the rich and 
powerful are strangers. Ah ! ' Man wants but 
little here below, nor wants that little long ! ' 
How true that is ! — after dinner." 

" I hope the eating-house keeper' will want 
but little and that he may not want that little 
long," returned his companion ; "but I suspect 
you've no means of paying for this ! " 

" I shall be passing presently, and I'll call," 
said Dick, winking his eye significantly. " The 
waiter's quite helpless. The goods are gone, 
Fred, and there's an end of it." 

In point of fact, it would seem that the wait- 
er felt this wholesome truth, for when he re- 
turned for the empty plates and dishes and was 
informed by Mr. Swiveller with dignified care- 
lessness that he would call and settle when he 
should be passing presently, he displayed some 
perturbation of spirit, and muttered a few re- 
marks about " payment on delivery," and " no 
trust," and other unpleasant subjects, but was 
fain to content himself with inquiring at what 
hour it was likely the gentleman would call, in 
order that, being personally responsible for the 
beef, greens, and sundries, he might take care 
to be in the way at the time. Mr. Swiveller, 
after mentally calculating his engagements to a 
nicety, replied that he should look in at from 
two minutes before six to seven minutes past : 
and the man disappearing with this feeble con- 
solation, Richard Swiveller took a greasy mem- 



orandum-book from his pocket and made an 
entry therein. — Old Cwiosity Shop, Chap. 8. 

DINNER— Mrs. Ba&net's birthday. 

A great annual occasion has come round in 
the establishment of Mr. Joseph Bagnet, other- 
wise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present ' 
bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and 
festival. The celebration of a birthday in the, 
family. ' 

Ii is not Ml. Bagnet's birthday. Mr. Bagnet 
merely distinguishes that epoch in the musical 
instrument business, by kissing the children 
with an extra smack before breakfast, smoking 
an additional pipe after dinner, and wondering 
towards evening what his poor old mother is 
thinking about it — a subject of infinite specu- 
lation, and rendered so by his mother having 
departed this life twenty years. Some men 
rarely revert to their father, but seem, in the 
bank-books of their remembrance, to have trans- 
ferred all the stock of filial affection into their 
mother's name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. 
Perhaps his exalted appreciation of the merits 
of the old girl, causes him usually to make the 
noun-substantive, Goodness, of the feminine 
gender. 

It is not the birthday of one of the three chil- 
dren. Those occasions are kept with some 
marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap 
the bounds of happy returns and a pudding. 

It is the old girl's birthday ; and that is the 
greatest holiday and reddest-letter day in Mr. 
Bagnet's calendar. The auspicious event is al- 
ways commemorated according to certain forms 
settled and prescribed by Mr. Bagnet some years 
since. Mr. Bagnet being deeply convinced that 
to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain 
the highest pitch of imperial luxury, invariably 
goes forth himself very early in the morning of 
this day to buy a pair ; he is, invariably, taken 
in by the vendor, and installed in the possession 
of the oldest inhabitants of any coop in Europe. 
Returning with these triumphs of toughness tied 
up in a clean blue and white cotton handker- 
chief (essential to the arrangements), he in a 
casual manner invites Mrs. Bagnet to declare at 
breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs. 
Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, 
replying Fowls, Mr. Bagnet instantly produces 
his bundle from a place of concealment, amidst 
general amazement and rejoicing. He further 
requires that the old girl shall do nothing all 1 
day long, but sit in her very best gown, and be ^ 
served by himself and the young people. As 
he is not illustrious for his cookery, this may be 
supposed to be a matter of state rather than en- 
joyment on the old girl's part ; but she keeps 
her state with all imaginable cheerfulness. 

Further conversation is prevented, for the 
time, by the necessity under which Mr. Bagnet 
finds himself of directing the whole force of his 
mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered 
by the dry humor of the fowls in not yielding 
any gravy, and also by the made gravy acquiring 
no flavor, and turning out of a flaxen com- 
plexion. With a similar perverseness, the po- 
tatoes crumble off forks in the process of peel- 
ing, upheaving from their centres in every di- 
rection, as if they were subject to earthquakes. 
The legs of the fowls, too, are longer than could 
be desired, and extremely scanty. Overcoming 



DINNEB 



149 



DINNEB 



these disadvantages to the best of his ability, 
Mr. Bagiiet at last dishes, and they sit down at 
table ; Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest's place 
at his right hand. 

It was well for the old girl that she has but 
one birthday in a year, for two such indulgences 
in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of 
finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature 
of poultry to possess, is developed in these 
specimens in the singular form of guitar-strings. 
Their limbs appear to have struck roots into 
their breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike 
roots into the earth. Their legs are so hard, as 
to encourage the idea that they must have de- 
voted the greater part of their long and arduous 
lives to pedestrian exercises, and the walking of 
matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of these 
little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eat- 
ing a most severe quantity of the delicacies before 
her : and as that good old girl would not cause 
him a moment's disappointment on any day, least 
of all on such a day, for any consideration, she 
imperils her digestion fearfully. Ho^ young 
Woolwich cleans the drumsticks without being 
of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a 
loss to understand. 

The old girl has another trial to undergo after 
the conclusion of the repast, in sitting in state 
to see the room cleared, the hearth swept, and 
the dinner-service washed up and polished in 
the back yard. The great delight and energy 
with which the two young ladies apply them- 
selves to these duties, turning up their skirts in 
imitation of their mother, and skating in and 
out on little scaffolds of pattens, inspire the 
highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety 
for the present. The same causes lead to con- 
fusion of tongues, a clattering of crockery, a rat- 
tling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and 
an expenditure of water, all in excess ; while 
the saturation of the young ladies themselves is 
almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs. Bagnet 
to look upon, with the calmness proper to her 
position. At last the various cleansing processes 
are triumphantly completed ; Quebec and Malta 
appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry ; pipes, 
tobacco, and something to drink, are placed 
upon the table ; and the old girl enjoys the first 
peace of mind she ever knows on the day of 
this delightful entertainment. 

Bleak House, Chap. 49. 

DINNEB— A fashionable. Its gniests. 

A series of entertainments in celebration of 
the late nuptials, and in cultivation of society, 
were arranged, chiefly by Mr. Dombey and Mrs. 
Skewton ; and it was settled that the festive 
proceedings should commence by Mrs. Dombey's 
being at home upon a certain evening, and by 
Mr. and Mrs. Dombey's requesting the honor of 
the company of a great many incongruous peo- 
ple to dinner on the same day. 

Accordingly, Mr. Dombey produced a list of 
sundry eastern magnates who were to be bidden 
to this feast on his behalf; to which Mrs. Skew- 
ton, acting for her dearest child, who was 
haughtily careless on the subject, subjoined a 
western list, comprising Cousin Feenix, and a 
variety of moths of various degrees and ages, 
who had, at various times, fluttered round the 
light of her fair daughter or herself, without 
any lasting injury to their wings. 



The proceedings commenced by Mr. Dom- 
bey, in a cravat of extraordinary height and 
stiffness, walking restlessly about the drawing- 
room until the hour appointed for dinner ; 
punctual to which, an East India Director, of 
immense wealth, in a waistcoat apparently con- 
structed in serviceable deal by some plain car- 
penter, but really engendered in the tailor's art, 
and composed of the material called nankeen, 
arrived, and was received by Mr. Dombey alone. 
The next stage of the proceedings was Mr. 
Dombey's sending his compliments to Mrs. 
Dombey, with a correct statement of the time ; 
and the next, the East India Director's falling 
prostrate, in a conversational point of view, and 
as Mr. Dombey was not the man to pick him 
up, staring at the fire until rescue appeared in 
the person of Mrs. Skewton ; whom the director, 
as a pleasant start in life for the evening, 
mistook for Mrs. Dombey, and greeted with 
enthusiasm. 

The next arrival was a Bank Director, reputed 
to be able to buy up anything — human Nature 
generally, if he should take it in his head to in- 
fluence the money market in that direction — but 
who was a wonderfully modest spoken man, al- 
most boastfully so, and mentioned his " little 
place" at Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just 
being barely equal to giving Dombey a bed and 
a chop, if he would come and visit it. Ladies, 
he said, it was not for a man who lived in his 
quiet way to take upon himself to invite — but 
if Mrs. Skewton and her daughter, Mrs. Dom- 
bey, should ever find themselves in that direction, 
and would do him the honor to look at a little 
bit of a shrubbery they would find there, and a 
poor little flower-bed or so, and a humble apo- 
logy for a pinery, and two or three little attempts 
of that sort without any pretension, they would 
distinguish him very much. Carrying out his 
character, this gentleman was very plainly 
dressed, in a wisp of cambric for a neckcloth, 
big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and 
a pair of trousers that were too spare ; and men- 
tion being made of the Opera by Mrs. Skewton, 
he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't 
afford it. It seemed greatly to delight and ex- 
hilarate him to say so : and he beamed on his 
audience afterwards, with his hands in his 
pockets, and excessive satisfaction twinkling in 
his eyes. 

Now Mrs. Dombey appeared, beautiful and 
proud, and as disdainful and defiant of them all 
as if the bridal wreath upon her head had been 
a garland of steel spikes put on to force conces- 
sion from her which she would die sooner than 
yield. 

* » * * * 

The arrivals quickly became numerous. 
More directors, chairmen of public companies, 
elderly ladies carrying burdens on their heads 
for full dress. Cousin Feenix, Major Bagstock, 
friends of Mrs. Skewton, with the same bright 
bloom on their complexion, and very precious 
necklaces on very withered necks. Among 
these, a young lady of sixty-five, remarkably 
ooolly dressed as to her back and shoulders, 
who spoke with an engaging lisp, and whose 
eyelids wouldn't keep up well, without a great 
deal of trouble on her part, and whose manners 
had that indefinable charm which so frequently 
attaches to the giddiness of yo ith. As the 
greater part of Mr. Dombey's list were disposed 



DINNER 



150 



DINNER-PARTY 



to be taciturn, and the greater part of Mrs. 
Dombey's list were disposed to be talkative, 
and there was no sympathy between them, Mrs. 
Dombey's list, by magnetic agreement, entered 
into a bond of union against Mr. Dombey's list, 
who, waidering about the rooms in a desolate 
manner, or seeking refuge in corners, entangled 
themselves with company coming in, and be- 
came barricaded behind sofas, and had doors 
opened smartly from without against their 
heads, and underwent every sort of discomfi- 
ture. 

When dinner was announced, Mr. Dombey 
took down an old lady like a crimson velvet 
pincushion stuffed with bank notes, who might 
have been the identical old lady of Thread- 
needle Street, she was so rich, and looked so 
unaccommodating ; Cousin Feenix took down 
Mrs. Dombey ; Major Bagstock took down 
Mrs. Skewton ; the young thing with the 
shoulders was bestowed, as an extinguisher, 
upon the East India Director ; and the re- 
maining ladies were left on view in the draw- 
ing-room by the remaining gentlemen, until a 
forlorn hope volunteered to conduct them down- 
stairs, and those brave spirits with their cap- 
tives blocked up the dining-room door, shutting 
out seven mild men in the stony-hearted hall. 
"When all the rest were got in and were seated, 
one of these mild men still appeared, in smiling 
confusion, totally destitute and unprovided for, 
and escorted by the butler, made the complete 
circuit of the table twice before his chair could 
be found, which it finally was, on Mrs. Dom- 
bey's left hand ; after which the mild man never 
held up his head again. 

Now, the spacious dining-room, with the 
company seated round the glittering table, busy 
with their glittering spoons, and knives and 
forks, and plates, might have been taken for a 
grown-up exposition of Tom Tiddler's ground, 
where children pick up gold and silver. Mr. 
Dombey, as Tiddler, looked his character to 
admiration ; and the long plateau of precious 
metal frosted, separating him from Mrs. Dom- 
bey, whereon frosted Cupids offered -scentless 
flowers to each of them, was allegorical to see. 

Cousin Feenix was in great force, and looked 
astonishingly young. But he was sometimes 
thoughtless in his good humor — his memory oc- 
casionally wandering like his legs — and on this 
occasion caused the company to shudder. 

Through the various stages of rich meats and 
wines, continual gold and silver, dainties of 
earth, air, fire, and water, heaped-up fruits, and 
that unnecessary article in Mr. Dombey's ban- 
quets — ice — the dinner slowly made its way : 
the later stages being achieved to the sonorous 
music of incessant double knocks, announcing 
the arrival of visitors, whose portion of the feast 
was limited to the smell thereof. When Mrs. 
Dombey rose, it was a sight to see her lord, 
with stiff throat and erect head, hold the door 
open for the withdrawal of the ladies ; and to 
see how she swept past him with his daughter 
on her arm. 

Mr. Dombey was a grave sight, behind the 
decanters, in a state of dignity ; and the East 
India Director was a forlorn sight, near the un- 
occupied end of the table, in a state of solitude ; 
and the Major was a military sight, relating 
stories of the Duke of York to six of the seven 



mild men (the ambitious one was utterly 
quenched) ; and the Bank Director was a lowly 
sight, making a plan of his little attempt at a 
pinery, with dessert-knives, for a group of ad- 
mirers ; and Cousin Feenix was a thoughtful 
sight, as he smoothed his long wristbands, and 
stealthily adjusted his wig. But all these sights 
were of short duration, being speedily broken 
up by coffee, and the desertion of the room. 
Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 36. 

DINNER -After. 

Giddiness prevails below stairs too. The 
very tall young man whose excitement came on 
so soon, appears to have his head glued to the 
table in the pantry, and cannot be detached 
from it. Mr. Towlinson has a singing in his 
ears and a large wheel going round and round 
inside his head. The housemaid wishes it 
wasn't wicked to wish that one was dead. 

There is a general delusion likewise, in these 
lower regions, on the subject of time ; everybody 
conceiving that it ought to be, at the earliest, 
ten o'clock at night, whereas it is not yet three 
in the afternoon. A shadowy idea of wicked- 
ness committed, haunts every individual in the 
party ; and each one secretly thinks the other a 
companion in guilt, whom it would be agreea- 
ble to avoid. Any one reviving the notion of 
the ball, would be scouted as a malignant idiot. 

The hatchments in the dining-room look 
down on crumbs, dirty plates, spillings of wine, 
half thawed ice, stale, discolored heel-taps, scraps 
of lobster, drumsticks of fowls, and pensive jel- 
lies, gradually resolving themselves into a luke- 
warm, gummy soup. — Dojjibey ^ Son. 

DINNER-PARTY-A fashionable. 

The great looking-glass above the sideboard 
reflects the table and the company. Reflects 
the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in 
silver, frosted and also thawed, a camel of all 
work. The Herald's College found out a Cru- 
sading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel 
on his shield (or might have done it if he had 
thought of it), and a caravan of camels take 
charge of the fruits and flowers and candles, and 
kneel down to be loaded with the salt. Re- 
flects Veneering ; forty, wavy-haired, dark, 
tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy 
— a kind of sufficiently well-looking veiled 
prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs. Ve- 
neering ; fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not 
so much light hair as she might have, gorgeous 
in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory, 
conscious that a corner of her husband's veil is 
over herself. Reflects Podsnap ; prosperously 
feeding ; two little light-colored wiry wings, one 
on either side of his else bald head, looking as 
like his hairbrushes as his hair, dissolving view 
of red beads on his forehead, large allov/ance 
of crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects 
Mrs. Podsnap ; fine woman for Professor Owen, 
quantity of bone, neck, and nostrils like a rock- 
ing-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress, in 
which Podsnap has hung golden offerings. Re- 
flects Twemlow ; gray, dry, polite, susceptible 
to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-Europe collar 
and cravat, cheeks drawn in as if he had made 
a great effort to retire into himself some years 
ago, and had got so far and had never got any 
farther. Reflects mature young lady ; raven 
locks, and complexion that lights up well when 



DINNER 



161 



DINNEBS 



well powdered — as it is — carrying on consider- 
bly in the captivation of mature young gentle- 
man, with too much nose in his face, too much 
ginger in his whiskers, too much torso in his 
waistcoat, too much sparkle in his studs, his 
eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Re- 
flects charming old Lady Tippins on Veneer- 
ing's right ; with an immense obtuse drab ob- 
long face, like a face in a table-spoon, and a 
dyed Long Walk up the top of her head, as a 
convenient public approach to the bunch of 
false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs. 
Veneering opposite, who is pleased to be patron- 
ized. Reflects a certain "Mortimer," another 
of Veneering's oldest friends ; who never was 
in the house before, and appears not to want to 
come again ; who sits disconsolate on Mrs. 
Veneering's left, and who was inveigled by 
Lady Tippins (a friend of his boyhood) to come 
to these people's and talk, and who won't talk. 
Reflects Eugene, friend of Mortimer ; buried 
alive in the back of his chair, behind a shoulder 
— with a powder-epaulette on it — of the mature 
young lady, and gloomily resorting to the cham- 
pagne chalice whenever proffered by the Ana- 
lytical Chemist, Lastly, the looking-glass re- 
flects Boots and Brewer, and two other stuff"ed 
Buff'ers interposed between the rest of the com- 
pany and possible accidents. 

The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners 
— or new people wouldn't come — and all goes 
well. Notably, Lady Tippins has made a series 
of experiments on her digestive functions, so 
extremely complicated and daring, that if they 
could be published with their results it might 
benefit the human race. Having taken in pro- 
visions from all parts of the world, this hardy 
old cruiser has last touched at the North Pole, 
when, as the ice-plates are being removed, the 
following words fall from her. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 2. 

DINNER-In state. 

Every young gentleman had a massive silver 
fork, and a napkin ; and all the arrangements 
were stately and handsome. In particular, 
there was a butler in a blue coat and bright 
buttons, who gave quite a winey flavor to the 
table-beer ; he poured it out so superbly. 

Dombey ^ Son^ Chap. 12. 

DINNER— An tmsocial. 

There they found Mr. Pitt turning up his 
nose at a cold collation, set forth in a cold 
pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like 
a dead dinner lying in state than a social re- 
freshment. 

The very linkmen outside got hold of it, and 
compared the party to a funeral out of mourn- 
ing, with none of the company remembered in 
the will. 

There was a toothache in everything. The 
wine was so bitter cold that it forced a little 
scream from Miss Tox, which she had great 
difficulty in turning into a " Hem !" The veal 
had come from such an airy pantry, that the first 
taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead 
to Mr. Chick's extremities. Mr. Dombey alone 
remained unmoved. He might have been hung 
up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a 
frozen gentleman. 



Such temporary indications of a partial thaw 



that had appeared, vanished ; and the frost set 
in again, as cold and hard as ever. Mr. Chick 
was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom 
of the table, but on both occasions it was a 
fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party 
seemed to get colder and colder, and to be 
gradually resolving itself into a congealed and 
solid state, like the collation round which it 
was assembled. — Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 5. 

DINNERS— Description of public. 

All public dinners in London, from the Lord 
Mayor's annual banquet at Guildhall, to the 
Chimney-sweepers' anniversary at White Con- 
duit House ; from the Goldsmiths' to the But- 
chers', from the Sheriffs' to the Licensed Victual- 
lers', are amusing scenes. Of all entertainments 
of this description, however, we think the an- 
nual dinner of some public charity is the most 
amusing. At a Company's dinner, the people 
are nearly all alike — regular old stagers, who 
make it a matter of business, and a thing not 
to be laughed at. At a political dinner, every- 
body is disagreeable, and inclined to speechify 
— much the same thing, by-the-bye — but at a 
charity dinner you see people of all sorts, kinds, 
and descriptions. The wine may not be re- 
markably special, to be sure, and we have heard 
some hard-hearted monsters grumble at the col- 
lection ; but we really think the amusement to 
be derived from the occasion sufficient to coun- 
terbalance even these disadvantages. 

***** 

The first thing that strikes you, on your en- 
trance, is the astonishing importance of the 
committee. You observe a door on the first 
landing, carefully guarded by two waiters, in and 
out of which stout gentlemen with very red faces 
keep running, with a degree of speed highly un- 
becoming the gravity of persons of their years 
and corpulency. You pause, quite alarmed at 
the bustle, and thinking, in your innocence, that 
two or three people must have been carried out 
of the dining-room in fits, at least. You are im- 
mediately undeceived by the waiter — " Upstairs, 
if you please, sir ; this is the committee-room." 
Up-stairs you go, accordingly ; wondering, as 
you mount, what the duties of the committee 
can be, and whether they ever do anything be- 
yond confusing each other, and running over the 
waiters. 

Having deposited your hat and cloak, and re- 
ceived a remarkably small scrap of pasteboard 
in exchange (which, as a matter of course, you 
lose, before you require it again), you enter the 
hall, down which there are three long tables for 
the less distinguished guests, with a cross table 
on a raised platform at the upper end for the re- 
ception of the very particular friends of the in- 
digent orphans. Being fortunate enough to find 
a plate without anybody's card in it, you wisely 
seat yourself at once, and have a little leisure to 
look about you. Waiters, with wine-baskets in 
their hands, are placing decanters of sherry 
down the tables, at very respectable distances ; 
melancholy-looking salt-cellars and decayed 
vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged to 
the parents of the indigent orphans in their 
time, are scattered at distant intervals on the 
cloth ; and the knives and forks look as if they 
had done duty at every public dinner in London 
since the accession of George the First. The 
musicians are scraping and grating and screwing 



DINNERS 



153 



DINNER 



tremendously — playing no notes but notes of 
preparation ; and several gentlemen are gliding 
along the sides of the tables, looking into plate 
after plate with frantic eagerriess, the expression 
of their countenances growing more and more 
dismal as they meet with everbody's card but 
their own. 

You turn round to take a look at the table be- 
hind you, and — not being in the habit of attend- 
ing public dinners — are somewhat struck by the 
appearance of the party on which your eyes 
rest. One of its principal members appears to 
be a little man with a long and rather inflamed 
face, and gray hair brushed bolt upright in front ; 
he wears a wisp of black silk round his neck, 
without any stiffener, as an apology for a necker- 
chief, and is addressed by his companions by the 
familiar appellation of " Fitz," or some such 
monosyllable. Near him is a stout man in a 
white neckerchief and buff waistcoat, with 
shining dark hair, cut very short in front, and a 
great, round, healthy-looking face, on which he 
studiously preserves a half-sentimental simper. 
Next him, again, is a large-headed man, with 
black hair and bushy whiskers ; and opposite 
them are two or three others, one of whom is a 
little, round-faced person, in a dress-stock and 
blue under-waistcoat. There is something pecu- 
liar in their air and manner, though you could 
hardly describe what it is ; you cannot divest 
yourself of the idea that they have come for 
some other purpose than mere eating and drink- 
ing. You have no time to debate the matter, 
however, for the waiters (who have been arrang- 
ed in lines down the room, placing the dishes 
on the table), retire to the lower end ; the dark 
man in the blue coat and bright buttons, who 
has the direction of the music, looks up to the 
gallery, and calls out "band" in a very loud 
voice ; out bursts the orchestra, up rise the visit- 
ors, in march fourteen stewards — each with a 
long wand in his hand, like the evil genius in a 
pantomime — then the chairman, then the titled 
visitors ; they all make their way up the room, 
as fast as they can, bowing, and smiling, and 
smirking, and looking remarkably amiable. The 
applause ceases, grace is said, the clatter of 
plates and dishes begins ; and every one appears 
highly gratified, either with the presence of the 
distinguished visitors, or the commencement of 
the anxiously-expected dinner. 

As to the dinner itself — the mere dinner — it 
goes off much the same everywhere. Tureens 
of soup are emptied with awful rapidity — waiters 
take plates of turbot away, to get lobster-sauce, 
and bring back plates of lobster-sauce without 
turbot ; people who can carve poultry are great 
fools if they own it, and people who can't, have 
no wish to learn. The knives and forks form a 
pleasing accompaniment to Auber's music, and 
Auber's music would form a pleasing accompani- 
ment to the dinner, if you could hear anything 
besides the cymbals. The substantial disappear 
— moulc^.s of jelly vanish like lightning — hearty 
eaters wipe their foreheads, and appear rather 
overcome with their recent exertions — people 
who have looked very cross hitherto, become 
remarkably bland, and ask you to take wine 
in the most friendly manner possible — old 
gentlemen direct your attention to the ladies' 
gallery, and take great pains to impress you with 
the fact that the charity is always peculiarly 
favored in this respect — every one appears dis- 



posed to become talkative — and the hum of con- 
versation is loud and general. 

Scenes, Chap. 19. 

DINNER— With, a philanthropist (Mrs. Jel- 
lyby). 

I was a little curious to know who a mild, bald 
gentleman in spectacles was, who dropped into 
a vacant chair (there was no top or bottom in 
particular) after the fish was taken away, and 
seemed passively to submit himself to Borrio- 
boola-Gha, but not to be actively interested in 
that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he 
might have been a native, but for his complex- 
ion. It was not until we left the table, and he 
remained alone with Richard, that the possi- 
bility of his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my 
head. But he was Mr. Jellyby ; and a loqua- 
cious young man called Mr. Quale, with large 
shining knobs for temples, and his hair all 
brushed to the back of his head, who came in 
the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthro- 
pist, also informed her that he called the matri- 
monial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby with Mr. Jellyby 
the union of mind and matter. 

This young man, besides having a great deal 
to say for himself about Africa, and a project of 
his for teaching the coffee colonists to teach the 
natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an 
export trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby 
out by saying, *' I believe now, Mrs. Jellyby, 
you have received as many as from one hundred 
and fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa 
in a single day, have you not?" or, "If my 
memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you 
once mentioned that you had sent off five thou- 
sand circulars from one post-office at one time?" 
— always repeating Mrs. Jellyby's answer to us 
like an interpreter. During the whole evening 
Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner with his head against 
the wall, as if he were subject to low spirits. It 
seemed that he had several times opened his 
mouth when alone with Richard, after dinner, 
as if he had something on his mind ; but had 
always shut it again, to Richard's extreme con- 
fusion, without saying anything. 

Bleak House, Chap. 4. 

DINNER— Pickwick after wine. 

The wine, which had exerted its somniferous 
influence over Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle, 
had stolen upon the senses of Mr. Pickwick. 
That gentleman had gradually passed through 
the various stages which precede the lethargy 
produced by dinner, and its consequences. He 
had undergone the ordinary transitions from the 
height of conviviality to the depth of misery, 
and from the depth of misery to the height of 
conviviality. Like a gas-lamp in the sti-eet, 
with the wind in the pipe, he had exhibited for 
a moment an unnatural brilliancy ; then sunk 
so low as to be scarcely discernible : after a 
short interval he had burst out again, to en- 
lighten for a moment, then flickered with an 
uncertain, staggering sort of light, and then 
gone out altogether. His head was sunk upon 
his bosom ; and perpetual snoring, with a par- 
tial choke occasionally, were the only audible 
indications of the great man's presence. 

Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

DINNER— Pip's misforttmes at. 

Among this good company I should have felt 



DINNER 



153 



DISAPPEARANCE 



myself, even if I hadn't robbed the pantry, in a 
false position. Not because I was squeezed in 
at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with the 
table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian 
elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed 
to speak (I didn't want to speak), nor because I 
was regaled with the scaly tips of the drum- 
sticks of the fowls, and with those obscure cor- 
ners of pork of which the pig, when living, had 
had the least reason to be vain. No ; I should 
not have minded that, if they would only have 
left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me 
alone. They seemed to think the opportunity 
lost, if they failed to point the conversation at 
me, every now and then, and stick the point 
into me. I might have been an unfortunate 
little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smarting- 
ly touched up by these moral goads. 

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. 
Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declama- 
tion — as it now appears to me, something like 
a religious cross of the ghost in Hamlet with 
Richard III. — and ended with the very proper 
aspiration that we might be truly grateful. 
Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, 
and said, in a low, reproachful voice, " Do you 
hear that ? Be grateful." 

" Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, " be 
grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by 
hand." 

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contem- 
plating me with a mournful presentiment that I 
should come to no good, asked, " Why is it that 
the young are never grateful?" This moral 
mystery seemed too much for the company, 
until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, 
" Naterally wicious." Everybody then mur- 
mured " True ! " and looked at me in a particu- 
larly unpleasant and personal manner. 

Great Expectations , Chap. 4. 

DINNER— A fttshlonable. 

It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though 
he had not had one. The rarest dishes, sump- 
tuously cooked and sumptuously served ; the 
choicest fruits ; the most exquisite wines ; mar- 
vels of workmanship in gold and silver, china 
and glass ; innumerable things delicious to the 
senses of taste, smell, and sight, were insinuated 
into its composition. O, what a wonderful man 
this Merdle, what a great man, what a master 
man, how blessedly and enviably endowed — in 
one word, what a rich man ! 

Little Dorrit, Book IL, Chap. 12. 

DINNER— A restaurant. 

They walked on with him until they came to 
a dirty shop-window in a dirty street, which 
was made almost opaque by the steam of hot 
meats, vegetables, and puddings. But glimpses 
were to be caught of a roast leg of pork, burst- 
ing into tears of sage and onion in a metal reser- 
voir full of gravy, of an unctuous piece of roast 
beef and blisterous Yorkshire pudding bubbling 
hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of 
veal in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspiration, 
with the pace it was going at, of a shallow tank 
of baked potatoes glued together by their own 
richness, of a truss or two of boiled greens, and 
Other substantial delicacies. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 20. 



DISAPPEARANCE— A mysterious (Sam 
Weller's story). 

They had walked some distance ; Mr. Pick- 
wick trotting on before, plunged in profound 
meditation, and Sam following behind, with a 
countenance expressive of the most enviable 
and easy defiance of everything and everybody: 
when the latter, who was always especially 
anxious to impart to his master any exclusive 
information he possessed, quickened his pace 
until he was close at Mr. Pickwick's heels ; and, 
pointing up to a house they were passing, said : 

" Wery nice pork-shop that 'ere, sir." 

" Yes, it seems so," said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Celebrated sassage factory," said Sam. 

"Is it?" said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Is it ! " reiterated Sam with some indigna- 
tion ; " I should rayther think it was. Why, sir, 
bless your innocent eyebrows, that's were the 
mysterious disappearance of a 'spectable trades- 
man took place four year ago." 

"You don't mean to say he was burked, 
Sam ? " said Mr. Pickwick, looking hastily 
round. 

" No, I don't indeed, sir," replied Mr. Weller, 
" I wish I did ; far worse than that. He was the 
master o' that 'ere shop, sir, and the inwenter o* 
the patent never-leavin'-off sassage steam-ingine, 
as ud swaller up a pavin' stone if you put it too 
near, and grind it into sassages as easy as if it 
was a tender young babby. Wery proud o' that 
machine he was, as it was nat'ral he should be, 
and he'd stand down in the celler alookin' at it 
wen it was in full play, till he got quite melan- 
choly with joy. A wery happy man he'd ha' 
been, sir, in the procession o' that 'ere ingine 
and two more lovely hinfants besides, if it 
hadn't been for his wife, who was a most ow- 
dacious wixin. She was always a follerin' him 
about, and dinnin' in his ears, till at last he 
couldn't stand it no longer. 'I'll tell you what 
it is, my dear,' he says one day ; ' if you perse- 
were in this here sort of amusement,' he says, 
' I'm blessed if I don't go away to 'Merriker, 
and that's all about it.' ' You're a idle willin', 
says she, * and I wish the 'Merrikins joy of their 
bargain.' Arter wich she keeps on abusin' of 
him for half an hour, and then runs into the 
little parlor behind the shop, sets to a-screamin', 
says he'll be the death on her, and falls in a fit, 
which lasts for three good hours — one o' them 
fits which is all screamin' and kickin'. Well, 
next mornin', the husband was missin'. He 
hadn't taken nothin' from the till— hadn't even 
put on his great-coat — so it was quite clear he 
warn't gone to 'Merriker. Didn't come back 
next day ; didn't come back next week ; Missis 
had bills printed, sayin' that, if he'd come back, 
he should be forgiven everythin' (which was very 
liberal, seein' that he hadn't done nothin' at all) ; 
the canals was dragged, and for two months 
artervards, wenever a body turned up, it was 
carried, as a reg'lar thing, straight off to the 
sassage shop. Hows'ever, none on 'em an- 
swered ; so Ihey gave out that he'd run away, 
and she kep on the bis'ness. One Saturday 
night, a little thin old genTm'n comes into the 
shop in a great passion and says, 'Are you the 
missis o' this here shop?' *Yes, I am,' says 
she. ' Well, ma'am,' says he, ' then I've just 
looked in to say that me and my family ain't a 
goin' to be choked for nothin' : and more than 
that, ma'am,' he says, ' you'll allow me to ob. 



DISPLAY 



154 



Doa 



serve, that as you don't use the primest parts of 
the meat in the manafacter o' sassages, I think 
you'd find beef come nearly as cheap as buttons.' 
'As buttons, sir!' says she. 'Buttons, ma'am,' 
says the little old gentleman, unfolding a bit of 
paper, and shewin' twenty or thirty halves of 
buttons. ' Nice seasonin' for sassages, is trou- 
sers' buttons, ma'am.' ' They're my husband's 
buttons ! ' says the widder, beginnin' to faint. 
* What ! ' screams the little old gen'l'm'n, turnin' 
wery pale. ' I see it all,' says the widder ; * in 
a fi,t of temporary insanity he rashly converted 
his-self into sassages!' And so he had, sir," 
said Mr. Weller, looking steadily into Mr. Pick- 
wick's horror-stricken countenance, " or else he'd 
been draw'd into the ingine ; but however that 
might ha' been, the little old gen'l'm'n, who had 
been remarkably partial to sassages all his life, 
rushed out o' the shop in a wild state, and was 
never heerd on artervards I " 

Pickwickf Chap. 31. 

DISPLAY- Value of public. 

" Why do you come here to do this ? " said 
the old man, sitting down beside them, and 
looking at the figures with extreme delight. 

" Why, you see," rejoined the little man, 
"we're putting up for to-night at the public- 
house yonder, and it wouldn't do to let them see 
the present company undergoing repair." 

" No ! " cried the old man, making signs to 
Nell to listen, " why not, eh ? why not ? " 

" Because it would destroy all the delusion, 
and take away all the interest, wouldn't it ? " 
replied the little man. "Would you care a 
ha'penny for the Lord Chancellor if you know'd 
him in private and without his wig ? — certainly 
not." — Old Curiosity Shop^ Chap. 16. 

DOCKS-Down by the. 

My road lies through that part of London 
generally known to the initiated as " Down by 
the Docks." Down by the Docks is Home to 
a good many people — to too many, if I may 
judge from the overflow of local population in 
the streets — but my nose insinuates that the 
number to whom it is Sweet Home might be 
easily counted. Down by the Docks is a region 
I would choose as my point of embarkation 
aboard ship if I were an emigrant. It would 
present my intention to me in such a sensible 
light ; it would show me so many things to be 
run away from. 

Down by the Docks they eat the largest oys- 
ters and scatter the roughest oyster-shells known 
to the descendants of St. George and the Dragon. 
Down by the Docks they consume the slimiest 
of shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped 
off the copper bottoms of ships. Down by the 
Docks, the vegetables at green-grocers' doors 
acquire a saline and a scaly look, as if they had 
been crossed with fish and sea-weed. Down by 
the Docks they " board seamen" at the eating- 
houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops, 
the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of 
shops, mentionable and unmentionable, — board 
them, as it were, in the piratical sense, making 
them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. 
Down by the Docks the seamen roam in mid- 
street and midday, their pockets inside out, and 
their heads no better. Down by the Docks, the 
daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove, 
clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses 



streaming in the breeze, bandanna kerchiefs 
floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not 
wanting. Down by the Docks, you may hear 
the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing the Standard 
of England with a hornpipe, any night ; or any 
day may see at the waxwork, for a penny and no 
waiting, him as killed the policeman at Acton, 
and suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you 
may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage pre- 
parations various, if you are not particular 
what they are made of besides seasoning. Down 
by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into 
any gloomy cribs and entries they can hire, and 
hang slops there, — pewter watches, sou'wester 
hats, waterproof overalls, — " firtht rate articleth, 
Thjack." Down by the Docks, such dealers, ex- 
hibiting on a frame a complete nautical suit 
without the refinement of a waxen visage in the 
hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping 
at the yard-arm, with his sea-faring and earth- 
faring troubles over. Down by the Docks the 
placards in the shops apostrophize the customer, 
knowing him familiarly beforehand, as, '* Look 
here. Jack ! " " Here's your sort, my lad ! " 
" Try our sea-going mixed, at two and nine ?" 
"The right kit for the British tar!" "Ship 
ahoy ! " " Splice the main-brace, brother ! " 
" Come, cheer up, my lads. We've the best liquors 
here. And you'll find something new In our won- 
derful Beer ! " Down by the Docks, the pawn- 
broker lends money on Union-Jack pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs, on watches with little ships pitching 
fore and aft on the dial, on telescopes, nautical 
instruments in cases, and such like. Down by 
the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business 
on the wretchedest scale — chiefly on lint and 
plaster for the strapping of wounds — and with 
no bright bottles, and with no little drawers. 
Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker's 
shop will bury you for next to nothing, after the 
Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing 
at all : so you can hardly hope to make a cheaper 
end. Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will 
quarrel with anybody drunk or sober, and every- 
body else will have a hand in it, and on the 
shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool 
of red shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, 
bare tattooed arms, Britannia's daughters, malice, 
mud, maundering, and madness. Down by the 
Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses 
all day long, and shrill above their din, and all 
the din, rises the screeching of innumerable 
parrots brought from foreign parts, who appear 
to be very much astonished by what they find 
on these native shores of ours. Possibly parrots 
don't know, possibly they do, that Down by the 
Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its 
lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flow- 
ers, and the savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells, 
and the grim, blind idols muse in their shady 
groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests 
and chiefs. And possibly the parrots don't 
know, possibly they do, that the noble savage is 
a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and has 
five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent 
rhyme, and no reason, to answer for. 

Unco?nmercial Travelle7% Chap. 20. 

DOGh-His friendship and fidelity. 

But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog 
as one would meet with on a summer's day ; a 
blundering, ill-favored, clumsy, bullet-headed 
dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that 



ill 

m 




Diogenes and Florence. 



^•^4 



DOG 



156 



Doas 



there was an enemy in the neighborhood, whom 
it was meritorious to bark at ; and though he 
was far from good-tempered, and certainly was 
not clever, and had hair all over his eyes, and a 
comic ni,ise, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff 
voice, he was dearer to Florence, in virtue of that 
parting remembrance of him, and that request 
that he might be taken care of, than the most 
valuable and beautiful of his kind. So dear, 
indeed, was this same ugly Diogenes, and so 
welcome to her, that she took the jewelled hand 
of Mr. Toots, and kissed it in her gratitude. 
And when Diogenes, released, came tearing up 
the stairs, and bouncing into the room (such a 
business as there was first, to get him out of the 
cabriolet !) dived under all the furniture, and 
wound a long iron chain, that dangled from his 
neck, round legs of chairs and tables, and 
then tugged at it until his eyes became unnatu- 
rally visible, in consequence of their nearly start- 
ing out of his head ; and when he growled at 
Mr. Toots, who affected familiarity ; and went 
pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that 
he was the enemy whom he had barked at round 
the corner all his life, and had never seen yet, 
Florence was as pleased with him as if he had 
been a miracle of discretion. 



Putting out his tongue, as if he had come 
express to a Dispensary, to be examined for his 
health. — Dombey &= Son, Chap. i8. 

Diogenes would lay his head upon the win- 
dow-ledge, and placidly open and shut his eyes 
upon the street, all through a summer morning ; 
sometimes pricking up his head to look with 
great significance after some noisy dog in a cart, 
who was barking his way along, and sometimes, 
with an exasperated and unaccountable recol- 
lection of his supposed enemy in the neighbor- 
hood, rushing to the door, whence, after a deafen- 
ing disturbance, he would come jogging back 
with a ridiculous complacency that belonged to 
him, and lay his jaw upon the window-ledge 
again, with the air of a dog who had done a 
public service. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 23. 



It was plain that he considered the Captain 
one of the most amiable of men, and a man 
whom it was an honor to a dog to know. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 48. 



He soon appeared to comprehend, that with 
the most amiable intentions he had made one 
of those mistakes which will occasionally arise 
in the best-regulated dogs' minds ; as a friendly 
apology for which he stuck himself up on end 
between the two, in a very hot place in front of 
the fire, and sat panting at it, with his tongue 
out and a most imbecile expression of counte- 
nance, listening to the conversation. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 35. 

DOO— A Christian. 

" He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness- 
box, for fear of committing himself ; no, not if 
you tied him up in one, and left him there with- 
out wittles for a fortnight," said the Dodger. 

*' Not a bit of it," observed Charley. 

" He's a rum dog. Don't he look fierce at 
any strange cove that laughs or sings when 
he's in company ! " pursued the Dodger. " Won't 
he growl at all, when he hears a fiddle playing ! 



And don't he hate other dogs as ain't of ms 
breed ! — Oh, no ! " 

" He's an out-and-out Christian," said Char- 
ley. 

This was merely intended as a tribute to the 
animal's abilities, but it was an appropriate re- 
mark in another sense, if Master Bates had only 
known it ; for there are a great many ladies and 
gentlemen, claiming to be out-and-out Chris- 
tians, between whom, and Mr. Sikes's dog, there 
exist very strong and singular points of resem- 
blance. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 18. 

DOGh-A pug:. 

The mistress of the Establishment holds no 
place in our memory ; but, rampant on one 
eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and 
narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal ani- 
mosity towards us, who triumphs over Time. 
The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiat- 
ing way he had of snapping at our undefended 
legs, the ghastly grinning of his moist black 
muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of 
his crisp tail, curled like a pastoral crook, all live 
and flourish. From an otherwise unaccounta- 
ble association of him with a fiddle, we con- 
clude that he was of French extraction, and his 
name Fidele. He belonged to some female, 
chiefly inhabiting a back-parlor, whose life ap- 
pears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, 
and in wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For 
her, he would sit up and balance cake upon his 
nose, and not eat it until twenty had been 
counted. To the best of our belief we were 
once called in to witness this performance ; 
when, unable, even in his milder moments, to 
endure our presence, he instantly made at us, 
cake and all. — Our School. Reprinted Pieces. 

DOGh— The gambols of Boxer. 

Then, Boxer gave occasion to more good-na- 
tured recognitions of, and by, the Carrier, than 
half a dozen Christians could have done ! Every- 
body knew him, all along the road — especially 
the fowls and pigs, who, when they saw him ap- 
proaching with his body all on one side, and 
his ears pricked up inquisitively, and that nob 
of a tail making the most of itself in the air, 
immediately withdrew into remote back settle- 
ments, without waiting for the honor of a near 
acquaintance. He had business everywhere ; 
going down all the turnings, looking into all 
the wells, bolting in and out of all the cottages, 
dashing into the midst of all the Dame-Schools, 
fluttering all the pigeons, magnifying the tails 
of all the cats, and trotting into the public- 
houses like a regular customer. Wherever he 
went, somebody or other might have been heard 
to cry, " Hallo ! Here's Boxer ! " and out came 
that somebody forthwith, accompanied by at 
least two or three other somebodies, to give 
John Peerybingle and his pretty wife, Good 
Day ! — Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2. 

DOaS— And cats. 

As the dogs of shy neighborhoods usually be- 
tray a slinking consciousness of being in poor 
circumstances — for the most part manifested in 
an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in iheir 

{)lay, and a misgiving that somebody is going to 
larness them to something, to pick up a living, 
— so the cats of shy neigliborhoods exhibit a 
strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not 



DONKEY 



166 



DOOH-KNOCKEKS 



only are they made selfishly ferocious by rumi- 
nating on the surplus population around them, 
and on the densely crowded state of all the 
avenues to cat's meat — not only is there a moral 
and politico-economical haggardness in them, 
traceable to these reflections — but they evince 
a physical deterioration. Their linen is not 
clean, and is wretchedly got up ; their black 
turns rusty, like old mourning ; they wear very 
indifferent fur, and take to the shabbiest cotton 
velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms 
of recognition with several small streets of cats, 
about the Obelisk in Saint George's Fields, and 
also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell Green, and 
also in the back settlements of Drury Lane. In 
appearance they are very like the women among 
whom they live. They seem to turn out of their 
unwholesome beds into the street, without any 
preparation. They leave their young families 
to stagger about the gutters unassisted, while 
they frowzily quarrel and swear and scratch 
and spit, at street corners. In particular, I re- 
mark that when they are about to increase their 
families (an event of frequent recurrence) the 
resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain 
dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and 
general giving up of things. I cannot honestly 
report that I have ever seen a feline matron of 
this class washing her face when in an interesting 
condition. — Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. lo. 

DONKEY— His obstinacy. 

Taking a donkey towards his ordinary place 
of residence is a very different thing, and a feat 
much more easily to be accomplished, than tak- 
ing him from it. It requires a great deal of 
foresight and presence of mind in the one case, 
to anticipate the numerous flights of his discur- 
sive imagination ; whereas, in the other, all you 
have to do is, to hold on, and place a blind con- 
fidence in the animal. — Tales, Chap. 4. 

DONKEYS. 

Donkeys again. I know shy neighborhoods 
where the Donkey goes in at the street-door, and 
appears to live up-stairs, for I have exarnined 
the back yard from over the palings, and have 
been unable to make him out. Gentility, no- 
bility, royalty, would appeal to that donkey in 
vain to do what he does for a costermonger. 
Feed him with oats at the highest price, put an 
infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers 
on his back, adjust his delicate trappings to a 
nicety, take him to the softest slopes at Wind- 
sor, and try what pace you can get out of him. 
Then starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck 
with a flat tray on it, and see him bowl from 
Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears to 
be no particular private understanding between 
birds and donkeys in a state of nature ; but in 
the shy-neighborhood state you shall see them 
always in the same hands, and always develop- 
ing their very best energies for the very worst 
company. I have known a donkey — by sight ; 
we were not on speaking terms — who lived over 
on the Surrey side of London Bridge, among 
the fastnesses of Jacob's Island and Dockhead. 
It was the habit of that animal, when his ser- 
vices were not in immediate requisition, to go 
out alone, idling. I have met him, a mile from 
his place of residence, loitering about the streets ; 
and the expression of his countenance at such 
times was most degraded. He was attached to 



the establishment of an elderly lady who sold 
periwinkles ; and he used to stand on Saturday 
nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside 
a gin-shop, pricking up his ears when a cus- 
tomer came to the cart, and too evidently de- 
riving satisfaction from the knowledge that they 
got bad measure. His mistress was sometimes 
overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever 
saw him (about five years ago) he was in cir- 
cumstances of difficulty, caused by this failing. 
Having been left alone with the cart of peri- 
winkles, and forgotten, he went off idling. He 
prowled among his usual low haunts for some 
time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not 
taking the cart into his calculations, he endeav- 
ored to turn up a narrow alley, and became 
greatly involved. He was taken into custody 
by the police, and, the Green Yard of the dis- 
trict being near at hand, was backed into that 
place of durance. At that crisis I encountered 
him ; the stubborn sense he evinced of being — 
not to compromise the expression — a black- 
guard, I never saw exceeded in the human sub- 
ject. A flaring candle in a paper shade, stuck 
in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his 
ragged harness broken and his cart extensively 
shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his 
hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obdu- 
racy. I have seen boys, being taken to station- 
houses, who were as like him as his own brother. 
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 10. 

DONKEYS-Blooded. 

* * * Three donkeys — which the proprie- 
tor declared on his solemn asseveration to be 
"three parts blood, and the other corn" — were 
engaged in the service. — Tales, Chap. 4. 

DOOR-KNOCKERS— The physiogmomy of. 

We are very fond of speculating, as we walk 
through a street, on the character and pursuits 
of the people who inhabit it ; and nothing so 
materially assists us in these speculations as the 
appearance of the house-doors. The various 
expressions of the human countenance afford a 
beautiful and interesting study ; but there is 
something in the physiognomy of street-door 
knockers, almost as characteristic, and nearly as 
infallible. Whenever we visit a man for the 
first time, we contemplate the features of his 
knocker with the greatest curiosity, for we well 
know, that between the man and his knocker, 
there will inevitably be a greater or less degree 
of resemblance and sympathy. 

For instance, there is one description of 
knocker that used to be common enough, but 
which is fast passing away — a large round one, 
with the jolly face of a convivial lion smiling 
blandly at you, as you twist the sides of your 
hair into a curl, or pull up your shirt-collar while 
you are waiting for the door to be opened — we 
never saw that knocker on the door of a churl- 
ish man — so far as our experience is concerned, 
it invariably bespoke hospitality, and another 
bottle. 

No man ever saw this knocker on the door 
of a small attorney or bill-broker ; they always 
patronise the other lion ; a heavy ferocious- 
looking fellow, with a countenance expressive 
of savage stupidity — a sort of grand master 
among the knockers, and a great favorite with 
the selfish and brutal. 

Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker, 



DRAMA 



167 



DBESS 



with a long, thki face, a pinched-up nose, and a 
very sharp chin ; he is most in vogue with your 
government-office people, in light drabs and 
starched cravats ; little, spare, priggish men, who 
are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions, 
and consider themselves of paramount impor- 
tance. 

We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by 
the innovation of a new kind of knocker, with- 
out any face at all, composed of a wreath, de- 
pending from a hcmd or small truncheon. A 
little trouble and attention, however, enabled 
us to overcome this difficulty, and to reconcile 
the new system to our favorite theory. You will 
invariably find this knocker on the doors of cold 
and formal people, who always ask you why you 
dont come, and never say do. 

Everybody knows the brass knocker is com- 
mon to suburban villas, and extensive boarding- 
schools ; and, having noticed this genus, we have 
recapitulated all the most prominent and strong- 
ly-defined species. 

Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation 
of a man's brain by different passions, produces 
corresponding developments in the form of his 
skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing 
our theory to the length of asserting, that any 
alteration in a man's disposition would produce 
a visible effect on the feature of his knocker. 
Our position merely is, that in such a case, the 
magnetism which must exist between a man and 
his knocker would induce the man to remove, 
and seek some knocker more congenial to his 
altered feelings. If you ever find a man chang- 
ing his habitation without any reasonable pre- 
text, depend upon it, that, although he may not 
be aware of the fact himself, it is because he 
and his knocker are at variance. This is a new 
theory, but we venture to launch it, neverthe- 
less, as being quite as ingenious and infallible 
as many thousands of the learned speculations 
which are daily broached for public good and 
private fortune-making. 

Sketches {Scenes), Chap. 7. 

DRAMA— Mr. Curdle' s opinion of the. 

" As an exquisite embodiment of the poet's 
visions, and a realization of human intellectual- 
ity, gilding with refulgent light our dreamy mo- 
ments, and laying open a new and magfc world 
before the mental eye, the drama is gone, per- 
fectly gone," said Mr. Curdle. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 24. 

DREAMS— Of the sane and insane. 

From the dead wall associated on those 
houseless nights with this too-common story, I 
chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital — 
partly because it lay on my road round to West- 
minster, partly because I had a night fancy in 
my head which could be best pursued within 
sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy 
was this : Are not the sane and the insane 
equal at night as the sane lie a-dreaming? Are 
not all of us outside this hospital, who dream, 
more or less in the condition of those inside it, 
every night of our lives? Are we not nightly 
persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate 
preposterously with kings and queens, emperors 
and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts ? Do 
we not nightly jumble events and personages 
and times and places, as these do daily? Are 
we not sometimes troubled by our own sleep- 



ing inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try 
to account for them or excuse them, just as 
these do sometimes in respect of their waking 
delusions ? Said an afflicted man to me, when 
I was last in an hospital like this, " Sir, I can 
frequently fly." I was half ashamed to reflect 
that so could I — by night. Said a woman to 
me on the same occasion, " Queen Victoria fre- 
quently comes to dine with me ; and her Majes- 
ty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our 
nightgowns, and his Royal Highness the Prince 
Consort does us the honor to make a third, 
on horseback in a Field-Marshal's uniform." 
Could I refrain from reddening with conscious- 
ness when I remembered the amazing royal par- 
ties I myself had given (at night), the unac- 
countable viands I had put on table, and 
my extraordinary manner of conducting myself 
on those distinguished occasions ? I wonder 
that the great master who knew evervthing, 
when he called Sleep the death of each day's 
life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each 
day's sanity. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13. 

DRESS-Individuality of. 

The Captain was one of those timber-looking 
men, suits of oak as well as hearts, whom it is 
almost impossible for the liveliest imagination 
to separate from any part of their dress, how- 
ever insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter 
knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly 
poked his head out of one of his little front 
windows, and hailed him, with the hard glazed 
hat already on it, and the shirt collar like a 
sail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as 
usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he 
was always in that state, as if the Captain had 
been a bird and those had been his feathers. 
Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 9. 

DRESS— Of Miss Tox. 

Miss Tox's dress, though perfectly genteel 
and good, had a certain character of angularity 
and scantiness. She was accustomed to weai 
odd weedy little flowers in her bonnets and 
caps. Strange grasses were sometimes per- 
ceived in her hair ; and it was observed by the 
curious, of all her collars, frills, tuckers, wrist- 
bands, and other gossamer articles — indeed of 
everything she wore which had two ends to it 
intended to unite — that the two ends were never 
on good terms, and wouldn't quite meet without 
a struggle. She had furry articles for winter 
wear, as tippets, boas, and muffs, which stood 
up on end in a rampant manner, and were not 
at all sleek. She was much given to the carry- 
ing about of small bags with snaps to them, 
that went off like little pistols when they were 
shut up : and when full-dressed, she wore round 
her neck the barrenest of lockets, representing 
a fishy old eye, with no approach to speculation 
in it. — Dombey b' Son, Chap. i. 

DRESS— Party toilette. 

Mrs. Blimber appeared, looking lovely, Paul 
thought ; and attired in such a number of skirts 
that it was quite an excursion to walk round 
her. Miss Blimber came down soon after her 
mamma ; a little squeezed in appearance, but 
very charming. 

There was a grand array of white waistcoats 



158 



DRESS 



and cravats in the young gentlemen's bed- 
rooms as evening approached ; and such a smell 
of singed hair, that Doctor Blimber sent up the 
footman Avith his compliments, and wished to 
know if the house was on fire. But it was only 
the hair-dresser curling the young gentlemen, 
and overheating his tongs in the ardor of busi- 
ness. — Dombey &> Son, Chap. 14. 



"MissTox!" 

And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose 
and indescribably frosty face, referable to her 
being very thinly clad in a maze of fluttering 
odds and ends, to do honor to the ceremony. 

Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading 
gauzes, went down altogether like an opera- 
glass shutting-up. — Dombey ^^ Son, Chap. 5. 



Mr. Toots was one blaze of jewelry and but- 
tons ; and he felt the circumstance so strongly, 
that when he had shaken hands with the Doctor, 
and had bowed to Mrs. Blimber and Miss Blim- 
ber, he took Paul aside, and said " What do you 
think of this, Dombey?" 

But notwithstanding this modest confidence 
in himself, Mr. Toots appeared to be involved 
in a good deal of uncertainty whether, on the 
whole, it was judicious to button the bottom 
button of his Avaistcoat, and whether, on a calm 
revision of all the circumstances, it was best to 
wear his wristbands turned up or turned down. 
Observing that Mr. Feeder's were turned up, 
Mr. Toots turned his up ; but the wristbands 
of the next arrival being turned down, Mr. 
Toots turned his down. The differences in point 
of waistcoat buttoning, not only at the bottom, 
but at the top too, became so numerous and 
complicated as the arrivals thickened, that Mr. 
Toots was continually fingering that article of 
dress, as if he were performing on some instru- 
ment ; and appeared to find the incessant ex- 
ecution it demanded, quite bewildering. 

Dombey &= Son, Chap. 14. 

DRESS— The power of. 

What an excellent example of the power of 
dress young Oliver Twist was ! Wrapped in 
the blanket which had hitherto formed his only 
covering, he might have been the child of a 
nobleman or a beggar ; it would have been hard 
for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him 
his proper station in society. But now that he 
was enveloped in the old calico robes which had 
grown yellow in the same service, he was badged 
and ticketed, and fell into his place at once — a 
parish child — the orphan of a workhouse — the 
humble, half-staived drudge — to be cuffed and 
buffeted through the woHd — despised by all, and 
pitied by none. — Oliver Twist, Chap. i. 

DRESS— Its relations to dignity. 

There are some promotions in lif'», wV^cb. liv 
dependent of the more substanti^il re'vards t\ey 
offer, acquire peculiar value and dignity from 
the coats and waistcoats connected with them. 
A field-marshal has his uniform ; a bishop his 
silk apron ; a counsellor his silk gown ; a beadle 
his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron, 
or the beadle of his hat and lace ; what are 
they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even 
holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of 
coat and waistcoat than some people imagine. 
Oliver Twist, Chap. 37. 



DRESS-Of Barkis. 

Mr. Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of 
which the tailor had given him such good meas- 
ure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves 
unnecessary in the coldest weather, while the 
collar was so high that it pushed his hair up on 
end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, 
too, were of the largest size. Rendered com- 
plete by drab pantaloons and a buff waistcoat, 
I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respecta- 
bility. — David Copperjield, Chap. 10. 

DRESS— Of Mr. Bounderby. 

So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat — he al- 
ways threw it on, as expressing a man who had 
been far too busily employed in making himself, 
to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat — and 
with his hands in his pockets, sauntered out into 
the hall. " I never wear gloves," it was his cus- 
tom to say. " I didn't climb up the ladder in 
them. Shouldn't be so high up, if I had." 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 4. 

DRESS— A seedy. 

Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere 
adornment might require. His hat presents at 
the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening 
nature, as if it had been a favorite snail-promen- 
ade. The same phenomenon is visible on some 
parts of his coat, and particularly at the seams. 
He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in 
embarrassed circumstances ; even his light 
whiskers droop with something of a shabby air. 
Bleak House, Chap. 20. 

DRESS-Of Joe. 

I knew he made himself so dreadfully uncom- 
fortable entirely on my account, and that it was 
for me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high 
behind, that it made the hair on the crown of 
his head stand up like a tuft of feathers. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 13. 

As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they 
were perplexing to reflect upon — insoluble mys- 
teries both. Why should a man scrape himself 
to that extent, before he could consider himself 
full-dressed ? Why should he suppose it neces- 
sary to be purified by suffering for his holiday 
clothes ? — Great Expectations, Chap. 27. 

DRESS— Pip and Joe in uncomfortable. 

My sister having so much to do, was going to 
church vicariously ; that is to say, Joe, and I 
were going. In his working clothes, Joe was a 
well-knit, characteristic-looking blacksmith ; in 
his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow 
in good circumstances than any thing else. 
Nothing that he wore, then, fitted him or seemed 
to belong to him ; and everything that he wore 
then, grazed him. On the present festive oc- 
casion he emerged from his room, when the 
blithe bells were going, the picture of misery, 
in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me, 
I think my sister must have had some general 
idea that I was a young offender whom an ac- 
coucheur policeman had taken up (on my birth- 
day) and delivered over to her, to be dealt with 
according to the outraged majesty of the law. 
I was always treated as if I had insisted on be- 
ing born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, 
religion, and morality, and against the dissuad- 
ing arguments of my best friends. Even when 



DRESS 



159 



DROWNED 



I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the 
tailor had orders to make them like a kind of 
reformatory, and on no account to let me have 
the free use of my limbs. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

DRESS— Of Mr. Sloppy. 

The consideration of Mrs. Boffin had clothed 
Mr. Sloppy in a suit of black, on which the 
tailor had received personal directions from 
Rokesmith to expend the utmost cunning of his 
art, with a view to the concealment of the co- 
hering and sustaining buttons. But, so much 
more powerful were the frailties of Sloppy's 
form than the strongest resources of tailoring 
science, that he now stood before the Council a 
perfect Argus in the way of buttons: shining 
and winking and gleaming and twinkling out of 
a hundred of those eyes of bright metal, at the 
dazzled spectators. The artistic taste of some 
unknown hatter had furnished him with a hat- 
band of wholesale capacity, which was fluted 
behind, from the crown of his hat to the brim, 
and terminated in a black bunch, from which 
the imagination shrunk discomfited and the rea- 
son revolted. Some special powers with which 
his legs were endowed, had already hitched up 
his glossy trousers at the ankles, and bagged 
them at the knees ; while similar gifts in his 
arms had raised his coat-sleeves from his wrists 
and accumulated them at his elbows. Thus set 
forth, with the additional embellishments of a 
very little tail to his coat, and a yawning gulf 
at his waistband. Sloppy stood confessed. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 10. 

He was entombed by an honest jobbing tailor 
of the district in a perfect Sepulchre of coat and 
gaiters, sealed with ponderous buttons. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 9. 

DRESS-Of Mrs. Wilfer. 

Mrs. Wilfer was, of course, a tall woman and 
an angular. Her lord being cherubic, she was 
necessarily majestic, according to the principle 
which matrimonially unites contrasts. She was 
much given to tying up her head in a pocket- 
handkerchief, knotted under her chin. This 
head-gear, in conjunction with a pair of gloves 
worn within doors, she seemed to consider as at 
once a kind of armor against misfortune (inva- 
riably assuming it when in low spirits or diffi- 
culties), and as a species of full dress. It was 
therefore with some sinking of the spirit that 
her husband beheld her thus heroically attired, 
putting down her candle in the little hall, and 
coming down the doorsteps through the little 
front court to open the gate for him. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 4. 

DRESS-Dr. Marigold's. 

I am at present a middle-aged man of a broad- 
ish build, in cords, leggings, and a sleeved waist- 
coat, the strings of which is always gone behind. 
Repair them how you will, they go like fiddle- 
strings. You have been to the theatre, and you 
have seen one of the wiolin-players screw up his 
wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been 
whispering the secret to him that it feared it 
was out of order, and then you have heard it 
snap. That's as exactly similar tt) my waist- 
coat, as a waistcoat and a wiolin can be like one 
another. 



I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl 
round my neck worn loose and easy. Sitting 
down is my favorite posture. If I have a taste 
in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of- 
pearl buttons. There you have me again, as 
large as life. — Dr. Marigold. 

DRESS-A bad fit. 

The Native wore a pair of ear-rings in his 
dark-brown ears, and his European clothes sat 
with an outlandish impossibility of adjustment — 
being, of their own accord, and without any ref- 
erence to the tailor's art, long where they ought 
to be short, short where they ought to be long, 
tight where they ought to be loose, and loose 
where they ought to be tight — and to which he 
imparted a new grace, whenever the Major 
attacked him, by shrinking into them like a 
shrivelled nut, or a cold monkey. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 20. 

DRESS— Of an artiJB.cial woman. 

Whereabout in the bonnet and drapery an- 
nounced by her name, any fragment of the real 
woman may be concealed, is perhaps known to 
her maid ; but you could easily buy all you see 
of her, in Bond Street ; or you might scalp her, 
and peel her, and scrape her, and make two 
Lady Tippinses out of her, and yet not pene- 
trate to the genuine article. She has a large 
gold eye-glass, has Lady Tippins, to survey the 
proceedings with. If she had one in each eye, 
it might keep that other drooping lid up, and 
look more uniform. But perennial youth is in 
her artificial flowers, and her list of lovers is full. 
Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. to. 

DRESS— The rustle of. 

Through a fortuitous concourse of accidents, 
the matronly Tisher heaves in sight, rustling 
through the room like the legendary ghost of a 
dowager in silken skirts. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 3. 

DRESS— Its Influence on ag-e. 

What does she do to be so neat? How is it 
that every trifle she wears belongs to her, and 
cannot choose but be a part of her ? And even 
Mystery, look at her ! A model. Mystery is 
not young, not pretty, though still of an average 
candle-light passability ; but she does such mira- 
cles in her own behalf, that, one of these days, 
when she dies, they'll be amazed to find an old 
woman in her bed, distantly like her. 

A Flight. — Reprinted Pieces. 

DRESS. 

" Stop ! " cried the gentleman, stretching forth 
his right arm, which was so tightly wedged into 
his threadbare sleeve that it looked like a cloth 
sausage. — Martin Chuzzlexvit, Chap. 4. 

DRESS— An antediluvian pocket-handker- 
chief. 
* * * Mr. Tigg took from his hat what 
seemed to be the fossil remains of an antedilu- 
vian pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes 
therewith. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7. 

DROWNED— And resuscitated. (Robin Ri- 
derhood.) 
If you are not gone for good, Mr. Riderhood, 
it would be something to know where you are 



DROWNED 



160 



DRUNKARD 



hiding at present. This flabby lump of mor- 
tality that we work so hard at with such patient 
perseverance, yields no sign of you. If you are 
gone for good, Rogue, it is very solemn, and if 
you are coming back, it is hardly less so. Nay, 
in the suspense and mystery of the latter ques- 
tion, involving that of where you may be now, 
there is a solemnity even added to that of death, 
making us who are in attendance alike afraid to 
look on y<ju and to look off you, and making 
those below start at the least sound of a creak- 
ing plank on the floor. 

Stay ! Did that eyelid tremble ? So the doc- 
tor, breathing low, and closely watching, asks 
himself. 
No. 

Did that nostril twitch ? 
No. 

This artificial respiration ceasing, do I feel 
any faint flutter under my hand upon the chest ? 
No. 

Over and over again No. No. But try over 
and over again, nevertheless. 

See ! A token of life ! An indubitable token 
of life ! The spark may smoulder and go out, 
or it may glow and expand, but see ! The four 
rough fellows, seeing, shed tears. Neither 
Riderhood in this world, nor Riderhood in the 
other, could draw tears from them ; but a 
striving human soul between the two can do it 
easily. 

He is struggling to come back. Now, he is 
almost here, now he is faraway again. Now he 
is struggling harder to get back. And yet — like 
us all, when we swoon — like us all, every day 
of our lives when we wake — he is instinctively 
unwilling to be restored to the consciousness of 
this existence, and would be left dormant, if he 
could. 

***** 

But they minister to him with such extraordin- 
ary interest, their anxiety is so keen, their vigil- 
ance is so great, their excited joy grows so 
intense as the signs of life strengthen, that how 
can she resist it, poor thing ! And now he be- 
gins to breathe naturally, and he stirs, and the 
doctor declares him to have come back from that 
inexplicable journey where he stopped on the 
dark road, and to be here. 

There is intelligence in his eyes. He wants 
to ask a question. He wonders where he is. 
Tell him. 

" Father, you were run down on the river, and 
are at Miss Abbey Potterson's." 

He stares at his daughter, stares all round 
him, closes his eyes, and lies slumbering on her 
arm. 

The short-lived delusion begins to fade. The 
low, bad, unimpressible face is coming up from 
the depths of the river, or what other depths, to 
the surface again. As he grows warm, the doc- 
tor and the four men cool. As his lineaments 
soften with life, their faces and their hearts 
harden to him. 

" He will do now," says the doctor, washing 
his hands, and looking at the patient with grow- 
ing disfavor. 

" Many a better man," moralizes Tom Tootle 
with a gloomy shake of the head, " ain't had his 
luck." 

" It's to be hoped he'll make a better use of 
his life." says Bob Glamour, " than I expect he 
will." 



***** 
Becoming more and more uncomfortable, as 
though the prevalent dislike were finding him 
out somewhere in his sleep and expressing it- 
self to him, the patient at last opens his eyes 
wide, and is assisted by his daughter to sit up 
in bed. 

* * * * * 

He has an impression that his nose is bleed- 
ing, and several times draws the back of his 
hand across it, and looks for the result, in a pu- 
gilistic manner, greatly strengthening that in- 
congruous resemblance. 

" Where's my fur cap ? " he asks in a surly 
voice, when he has shuffled his clothes on. 

" In the river," somebody rejoins. 

" And wam't there no honest man to pick it 
up ? O' course there was, though, and to cut off 
with it arterwards. You are a rare lot, all on 
you 1 " 

Thus, Mr. Riderhood : taking from the hands 
of his daughter, with special ill-will, a lent cap, 
and grumbling as he pulls it down over his ears. 
Then, getting on his unsteady legs, leaning 
heavily upon her, and growling " Hold still, 
can't you ? What ! You must be a-staggering 
next, must you ? " he takes his departure out of 
the ring in which he has had that little turn-up 
with Death. 

Our Mutual Friend^ Book III,, Chap. 3. 

DROWNED-Gaffer. 

Father, was that you calling me ? Father I I 
thought I heard you call me twice before ! 
Words never to be answered, those, upon the 
earth-side of the grave. The wind sweeps jeer- 
ingly over Father, whips him with the frayed 
ends of his dress and his jagged hair, tries to 
turn him where he lies stark on his back, and 
force his face towards the rising sun, that he 
may be shamed the more. A lull, and the wind 
is secret and prying with him ; lifts and lets 
fall a rag ; hides palpitating under another rag ; 
runs nimbly through his hair and beard. Then, 
in a rush, it cruelly taunts him. Father, was 
that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless 
and the dead ? Was it you, thus buffeted as you 
lie here in a heap ? Was it you, thus baptized 
unto Death, with these flying impurities now 
flung upon your face? Why not speak, Father? 
Soaking into this filthy ground as you lie here, 
is your own shape. Did you never see such a 
shape soaked into your boat? Speak, Father. 
Speak to us, the winds, the only listeners left you ! 
Our Mutual Friend^ Book /., Chap. 14. 

DRUNKARD— His descent. 

We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely 
a man in the constant habit of walking, day 
after day, through any of the crowded thorough- 
fares of London, who cannot recollect among 
the people whom he " knows by sight," to use 
a familiar phrase, some being of abject and 
wretched appearance whom he remembers to 
have seen in a very different condition, whom 
he has observed sinking lower and lower, by 
almost imperceptible degrees, and the shabbi- 
ness and utter destitution of whose appearance, 
at last, strike forcibly and painfully upon him, 
as he passes by. Is there any man who has 
mixed much with society, or whose avocations 
have caused him to mingle, at one time or other, 
with a great number of people, who cannot call 



DRUNKARD 



161 



DRUNKARD 



to mind the time when some shabby, miserable 
wretch, in rags and filth, who shuffles past him 
now in all the squalor of disease and poverty, 
was a respectable tradesman, or a clerk, or a 
man following some thriving pursuit, with good 
prospects, and decent means ? — or cannot any 
of our readers call to mind from anriong the list 
of their quondam acquaintance, some fallen and 
degraded man, who lingers about the pavement 
in hungry misery — from whom every one turns 
coldly away, and who preserves himself from 
sheer starvation, nobody knows how? Alas ! 
such cases are of too frequent occurrence to be 
rare items in any man's experience ; and but 
too often arise from one cause — drunkenness — 
that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison that 
oversteps every other consideration ; that casts 
aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and sta- 
tion ; and hurries its victims madly on to degra- 
dation and death. 

Some of these men have been impelled, by 
misfortune and misery, to the vice that has de- 
graded them. The ruin of worldly expectations, 
the death of those they loved, the sorrow that 
slowly consumes, but will not break the heart, 
has driven them wild ; and they present the hid- 
eous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by their 
own hands. But by far the greater part have 
willfully, and with open eyes, plunged into the 
gulf from which the man who once enters it 
never rises more, but into which he sinks deep- 
er and deeper down, until recovery is hopeless. 
Tales, Chap. I2. 

DRTJNKARD-The death of the. 

He begged his bread from door to door. 
Every halfpenny he could wring from the pity 
or credulity of those to whom he addressed him- 
self, was spent in the old way. A year passed 
over his head ; the roof of a jail was the only 
ona that had sheltered him for many months. 
He slept under archways, and in brickfields — 
anywhere, where there was some warmth or 
shelter from the cold and rain. But in the last 
stage of poverty, disease, and houseless want, he 
was a drunkard still. 

At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a 
door-step, faint and ill. The premature decay 
of vice and profligacy had worn him to the bone. 
His cheeks were hollow and livid ; his eyes were 
sunken, and their sight was dim. His legs 
trembled beneath his weight, and a cold shiver 
ran through every limb. 

And now the long-forgotten scenes of a mis- 
spent life crowded thick and fast upon him. 
He thought of the time when he had a home — 
a happy, cheerful home— and of those who peo 
pled it, and flocked about him then, until the 
forms of his elder children seemed to rise from 
the grave, and stand about him— so plain, so 
clear, and so distinct they were, that he could 
touch and feel them. Looks that he had long 
forgotten were fixed upon him once more ; 
voices long since hushed in death sounded in 
his ears like the music of village bells. But it 
was only for an instant. The rain beat heavily 
upon him ; and cold and hunger were gnawing 
at his heart again. 

He rose, and dragged his feeble limbs a few 
paces further. The street was silent and empty ; 
the few passengers who passed by, at that late 
hour, hurried quickly on, and his tremulous 
voice was lost in the violence of the storm. 



Again that heavy chill struck through his frame, 
and his blood seemed to stagnate beneath it. 
He coiled himself up in a projecting doorway, 
and tried to sleep. 

But sleep had fled from his dull and glazed 
eyes. His mind wandered strangely, but he 
was awake, and conscious. The well-known 
shout of drunken mirth sounded in his ear, the 
glass was at his lips, the board was covered 
with choice rich food — they were before him ; 
he could see them all, he had but to reach out 
his hand, and take them — and, though the illu- 
sion was reality itself, he knew that he was sit- 
ting alone in the deserted street, watching the 
rain-drops as they pattered on the stones ; that 
death was coming upon him by inches — and 
that there were none to care for or help him. 

Suddenly he started up in the extremity of 
terror. He had heard his own voice shouting 
in the night air, he knew not what or why. 
Hark ! A groan ! — another ! His senses were 
leaving him : half-formed and incoherent words 
burst from his lips ; and his hands sought to 
tear and lacerate his flesh. He was going mad, 
and he shrieked for help till his voice failed 
him. 

He raised his head and looked up the long, 
dismal street. He recollected that outcasts like 
himself, condemned to wander day and night in 
those dreadful streets, had sometimes gone dis- 
tracted with their own loneliness. He remem- 
bered to have heard many years before that a 
homeless wretch had once been found in a soli- 
tary corner, sharpening a rusty knife to plunge 
into his own heart, preferring death to that end- 
less, weary. Meandering to and fro. In an instant 
his resolve was taken, his limbs received new 
life ; he ran quickly from the spot, and paused 
not for breath until he reached the river-side. 

He crept softly down the steep stone stairs 
that lead from the commencement of Waterloo 
Bridge, down to the water's level. He crouched 
into a corner, and held his breath, as the patrol 
passed. Never did prisoner's heart throb with 
the hope of liberty and life half so eagerly as did 
that of the wretched man at the prospect of 
death. The watch passed close to him, but he 
remained unobserved ; and after waiting till the 
sound of footsteps had died away in the dis- 
tance, he cautiously descended, and stood be- 
neath the gloomy arch that forms the landing- 
place from the river. 

The tide was in, and the water flowed at his 
feet. The rain had ceased, the wind was lulled, 
and all was, for the moment, still and quiet — so 
quiet, that the slightest sound on the opposite 
bank, even the rippling of the water against the 
barges that were moored there, was distinctly 
audible to his ear. The stream stole languidly 
and sluggishly on. Strange and fantastic forms 
rose to the surface, and beckoned him to ap- 
proach ; dark gleaming eyes peered from the 
water, and seemed to mock his hesitation, while 
hollow murmurs from behind urged him on- 
wards. He retreated a few paces, took a short 
run, a desperate leap, and plunged into the water. 

Not five seconds had passed when he rose 
to the water's surface — but what a change had 
taken place in that short time, in all his thoughts 
and feelings ! Life — life— in any form, poverty, 
misery, starvation — anything but death. lie 
fought and struggled with the water that closed 
over his head, and screamed in agonies of terror. 



DBTJITXENNESS 



DRUNKENNESS 



The curse of his own son rang in his ears. The 
shore — but one foot of dry ground — he could 
almost touch the step. One hand's-breadth 
nearer, and he was saved — but the tide bore 
him onward, under the dark arches of the 
bridge, and he sank to the bottom. 

Again he rose, and struggled for life. For 
one instant — for one brief instant — the build- 
ings on the river's banks, the lights on the 
bridge through which the current had borne 
him, the black water, and the fast-flying clouds, 
were distinctly visible — once more he sunk, and 
once again he rose. Bright flames of fire shot 
up from earth to heaven, and reeled before his 
eyes, while the water thundered in his ears, and 
stunned him with its furious roar. 

A week afterwards the body was washed 
ashore, some miles down the river, a swollen 
and disfigured mass. Unrecognised and unpit- 
ied, it was borne to the grave ; and there it has 
long since mouldered away! — Tales^ Chap. 12. 

DRUNKENNESS-Tlie Pickwickians. 

Mr, Pickwick, with his hands in his pockets, 
and his hat cocked completely over his left eye, 
was leaning against the dresser, shaking his head 
from side to side, and producing a constant suc- 
cession of the blandest and most benevolent 
smiles without being moved thereunto by any 
discernible cause or pretence whatsoever ; old 
Mr. Wardle, with a highly-inflamed countenance, 
was grasping the hand of a strange gentleman, 
muttering protestations of eternal friendship ; 
Mr. Winkle, supporting himself by the eight- 
day clock, was feebly invoking destruction upon 
the head of any member of the family who 
should suggest the propriety of his retiring for 
the night ; and Mr. Snodgrass had sunk into a 
chair, with an expression of the most abject and 
hopeless misery that the human mind can im- 
agine, portrayed in every lineament of his ex- 
pressive face. 

Ht ^ H: H: ^ ^ 

" It wasn't the wine," murmured Mr. Snod- 
grass, in a broken voice. " It was the salmon." 
(Somehow or other, it never is the wine, in these 
cases.) 

" Hadn't they better go to bed, ma'am ? " in- 
quired Emma. " Two of the boys will carry the 
gentlemen up stairs." 

" I won't go to bed," said Mr. Winkle, firmly. 

" No living boy shall carry me," said Mr. 
Pickwick, stoutly ; and he went on smiling as 
before. 

" Hurrah ! " gasped Mr. Winkle, faintly. 

" Hurrah ! " echoed Mr. Pickwick, taking off 
his hat and dashing it on the floor, and insanely 
casting his spectacles into the middle of the 
kitchen. At this humorous feat he laughed out- 
right. 

"Let's — have — 'nother — bottle," cried Mr. 
Winkle, commencing in a very loud key, and 
ending in a very faint one. His head dropped 
upon his breast ; and, muttering his invincible 
determination not to go to his bed, and a san- 
guinary regret that he had not " done for old 
Tupman " in the morning, he fell fast asleep ; 
in which condition he was borne to his apart- 
ment by two young giants, under the personal 
superintendence of the fat boy, to whose pro- 
tecting care Mr. Snodgrass shortly afterwards 
confided his own person. Mr. Pickwick ac- 
cepted the proffered arm of Mr. Tupman and 



quietly disappeared, smiling more than ever ; and 
Mr. Wardle, after taking as aff'ectionate a leave 
of the whole family as if he were ordered for 
immediate execution, consigned to Mr. Trundle 
the honor of conveying him up stairs, and re- 
tired with a very futile attempt to look impres 
sively solemn and dignified. 

Pickwick, Chap, 8. 

DRTJNKENNESS-Of Dick Swiveller. 

Mr. Swiveller chanced at the moment to be 
sprinkling a glass of warm gin and water on the 
dust of the law, and to be moistening his clay, 
as the phrase goes, rather copiously. But as 
clay in the abstract, when too much moistened, 
becomes of a weak and uncertain consistency, 
breaking down in unexpected places, retain- 
ing impressions but faintly, and preserving no 
strength or steadiness of character, so Mr. Swiv- 
eller's clay, having imbibed a considerable 
quantity of moisture, was in a very loose and 
slippery state, insomuch that the various ideas 
impressed upon it were fast losing their distinc- 
tive character, and running into each other. It 
is not uncommon for human clay in this condi- 
tion to value itself above all things upon its 
great prudence and sagacity. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 48. 

DRTJNKENNESS-Of Mr. Pecksniff. 

They carried him up stairs, and crushed the 
youngest gentleman at every step. His bedroom 
was at the top of the house, and it was a long 
way ; but they got him there in course of time. 
He asked them frequently on the road for a 
little drop of something to drink. It seemed an 
idiosyncrasy. The youngest gentleman in com- 
pany proposed a draught of water. Mr. Peck- 
sniff called him opprobrious names for the sug- 
gestion. 

Jinkins and Gander took the rest upon them- 
selves, and made him as comfortable as they 
could, on the outside of his bed ; and when he 
seemed disposed to sleep, they left him. But 
before they had all gained the bottom of the 
staircase, a vision of Mr. Pecksniff, strangely at- 
tired, was seen to flutter on the top landing. He 
desired to collect their sentiments, it seemed, 
upon the nature of human life. 

" My friends," cried Mr. Pecksniff, looking 
over the banisters, " let us improve our minds 
by mutual inquiry and discussion. Let us be 
moral. Let us contemplate existence. Where 
is Jinkins ? " 

" Here," cried that gentleman. " Go to bed 
again ! " 

" To bed ! " said Mr. Pecksniff. " Bed ! 'Tis 
the voice of the sluggard, I hear him complain, 
you have woke me too soon, I must slumber 
again. If any young orphan will repeat the 
remainder of that simple piece from Doctor 
Watts's collection an eligible opportunity now 
offers." 

Nobody volunteered. 

*' This is very soothing," said Mr. Pecksniff, 
after a pause. " Extremely so. Cool and re- 
freshing ; particularly to the legs ! The legs of 
the human subject, my friends, are a beautiful 
production. Compare them with wooden legs, 
and observe the difference between the anatomj 
of nature and the anatomy of art. Do you 
know," said Mr. Pecksniff, leaning over the 
banisters, with an odd recollection of his familial 



DRUNKENNESS 



163 



DRUNKENNESS 



manner among new pupils at home, " that I 
should very much like to see Mrs. Todgers's 
notion of a wooden leg, if perfectly agreeable 
to herself!" 

As it appeared impossible to entertain any 
reasonable hopes of him after this speech, Mr. 
Jinkins and Mr. Gander went up stairs again, 
and once more got him into bed. But they had 
not descended to the second floor before he was 
out again ; nor, when they had repeated the pro- 
cess, had they descended the first flight, before 
he was out again. In a word, as often as he 
was shut up in his own room, he darted out 
afresh, charged with some new moral sentiment, 
which he continually repeated over the banisters, 
with extraordinary relish, and an irrepressible 
desire for the improvement of his fellow-creatures 
that nothing could subdue. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. g. 

DRUNKENNESS- Of David Copperfteld. 

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom 
window, refreshing his forehead against the cool 
stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon 
his face. It was myself. I was addressing my- 
self as " Copperfield," and saying, " Why did 
you try to smoke ? You might have known you 
couldn't do it." Now, somebody was un- 
steadily contemplating his features in the look- 
ing-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in 
the looking-glass ; my eyes had a vacant appear- 
ance ; and my hair — only my hair, and nothing 
else — looked drunk. 

Somebody said to me, " Let us go to the thea- 
tre, Copperfield ! " There was no bedroom be- 
fore me, but again the jingling table covered 
with glasses ; the lamp ; Grainger on my right 
hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth op- 
posite — all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. 
The theatre ! To be sure. The very thing. 
Come along ! But they must excuse me if I 
saw everybody out first, and turned the lamp off 
— in case of fire. 

Owing to some confusion in the dark, the 
door was gone. I was feeling for it in the 
window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, 
took me by the arm and led me out. We went 
down stairs, one behind another. Near the bot- 
tom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Some- 
body else said it was Copperfield, I was angry 
at that false report, until, finding myself on my 
back in the passage, I began to think there 
might be some foundation for it. 

A very foggy night, with great rings round the 
lamps in the streets ! There was an indistinct 
talk of its being wet. / considered it frosty. 
Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and 
put my hat into shape, which somebody pro- 
duced from somewhere in a most extraordinary 
manner, for I hadn't had it on before. Steer- 
forth then said, " You are all right. Copper- 
field, are you not ? " and I told him, " Never- 
berrer," 

A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole place, looked 
out of the fog, and took money from somebody, 
inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid 
for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I remem- 
ber in the glimpse I had of him) whether to 
take the money for me or not. Shortly after- 
wards, we were very high up in a very hot theatre, 
looking down into a large pit, tliat seemed to 
me to smoke ; the people with whom it was 
crammed were so indistinct. There was a great 



stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after 
the streets ; and there were people upon it, talk- 
ing about something or other, but not at all in- 
telligibly. There was an abundance of bright 
lights, and there was music, and there were ladies 
down in the boxes, and I don't know what more. 
The whole building looked to me as if it were 
learning to swim ; it conducted itself in such 
an unaccountable manner, when I tried to 
steady it. 

On somebody's motion, we resolved to go 
down stairs to the dress-boxes, where the ladies 
were. A gentleman lounging, full-dressed, on 
a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, passed 
before my view, and also my own figure at full 
length in a glass. Then I was being ushered 
into one of these boxes, and found myself say- 
ing something as I sat down, and people about 
me crying "Silence !" to somebody, and ladies 
casting indignant glances at me, and — what ! 
yes ! — Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in 
the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside 
her, whom I didn't know. I see her face now 
better than I did then, I dare say, with its in- 
delible look of regret and wonder turned upon 
me. 

" Agnes ! " I said thickly, " Lorblessmer ! Ag- 
nes ! " 

'• Hush ! Pray ! " she answered, I could not 
conceive why. " You disturb the company. 
Look at the stage ! " 

I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear 
something of what was going on there, but quite 
in vain. I looked at her again by-and-by, and 
saw her shrink into her corner, and put her 
gloved hand to her forehead. 

" Agnes ! " I said. " I'mafraidyou'renorwell." . 

"Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood," she 
returned. " Listen ! Are you going away soon ? " 

" Amigoarawaysoo ? " I repeated. 

'' Yes." 

I had a stupid intention of replying that I was 
going to wait, to hand her down stairs. I sup- 
pose I expressed it somehow ; for, after she had 
looked at me attentively for a little while, she 
appeared to understand, and replied in a low 
tone : 

" I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell 
you I am very earnest in it. Go away now, Trot- 
wood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take 
you home." 

She had so far improved me, for the time, 
that though I was angry with her, I felt ashamed, 
and with a short " Goori ! " (which I intended 
for " Good-night ! ") got up and went away. 
They followed, and I stepped at once out of the 
box-door into my bedroom, where only Steer- 
forth was with me, helping me to undress, and 
where I was by turns telling him that Agnes was 
my sister, and adjuring him to bring the cork- 
screw, that I might open another bottle of 
wine. 

How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying 
and doing all this over again, at cross purposes, 
in a feverish dream all night — the bed a rocking 
sea that was never still ! How, as that some- 
body slowly settled down into myself, did I be- 
gin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of 
skin were a hard board ; my tongue the bottom 
of an empty kettle, furred with long service, and 
burning up over a slow fire ; the palms of my 
hands hot plates of metal which no ice could 
cool \— David Copperfield, Cfuip. 24. 



DRUNKENNESS 



164 



DITEL 



DRUNKENNESS-The effects of. 

An odd confusion in my mind, as if a body of 
Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed 
the day before yesterday some months back. 
David Copperfield^ Chap. 25. 

DRINKINGK-Without moderation. 

" ' Do you drink ? ' said the baron, touching 
the bottle with the bowl of his pipe. 

" ' Nine times out of ten, and then very hard,' 
rejoined the figure, drily. 

" ' Never in moderation ? ' asked the baron. 

" ' Never,' replied the figure, with a shudder ; 
• that breeds cheerfulness.' " 

NicJwlas Nickleby, Chap. 6. 

DRY ROT— in men— The. 

A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, 
and difficult to detect the beginning of. It had 
carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the old 
King's Bench prison, and it had carried him out 
with his feet foremost. He was a likely man to 
look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as clever 
as he needed to be, and popular among many 
friends. He was suitably married, and had 
healthy and pretty children. But, like some 
fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he 
took the Dry Rot. The first strong external 
revelation of the Dry Rot in men is a tendency 
to lurk' and lounge ; to be at street corners 
without intelligible reason ; to be going any- 
where when met ; to be about many places 
rather than at any ; to do nothing tangible, but 
to have an intention of performing a variety of 
intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. 
When this manifestation of the disease is ob- 
served, the observer will usually connect it with 
a vague impression once formed or received, 
that the patient was living a little too hard. 
He will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over 
in his mind, and form the terrible suspicion 
" Dry Rot," when he will notice a change for 
the worse in the patient's appeai-ance — a certain 
slovenliness and deterioration, which is not pov- 
erty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor ill-health, 
but simply Dry Rot. To this succeeds a smell 
as of strong waters, in the morning ; to- that, a 
looseness respecting money ; to that, a stronger 
smell as of strong waters, at all times ; to that, 
a looseness respecting everything ; to that, a 
trembling of the limbs, somnolency, misery, and 
crumbling to pieces. As it is in wood, so it is 
in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound 
usury quite incalculable. A plank is found in- 
fected with it, and the whole structure is de- 
voted. Thus it had been with the unhappy 
Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small sub- 
scription. Those who knew him had not nigh 
done saying, " So well off, so comfortably estab- 
lished, with such hope before him— and yet, it 
is feared, with a slight touch of Dry Rot ! " 
when, lo ! the man was all Dry Rot and dust. 
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13. 

DTJEIi— Description of a. 

"We shall just have comfortable time, my 
lord," said the captain, when he had communi- 
cated the arrangements, " to call at my rooms 
for a case of pistols, and then jog coolly down. 
If you will allow me to dismiss your servant, 
we'll take my cab ; for yours, perhaps, might be 
recognized." 

What a contrast, when they reached the street, 



to the scene they had just left ! It was already 
daybreak. For the flaring yellow light within, 
was substituted the clear, bright, glorious morn- 
ing : for a hot, close atmosphere, tainted with 
the smell of expiring lamps, and reeking with 
the steams of riot and dissipation, the free, fresh, 
wholesome air. But to the fevered head on 
which that cool air blew, it seemed to come 
laden with remorse for the time misspent and 
countless opportunities neglected. With throb- 
bing veins and burning skin, eyes wild and 
hea\y, thoughts hurried and disordered, he felt 
as though the light were a reproach, and shrank 
involuntarily from the day as if he were some 
foul and hideous thing. 

" Shivering ? " said the captain. " You are 
cold." 

" Rather." 

"It does strike cool, coming out of those hot 
rooms. Wrap that cloak about you. So, so ; 
now we're off." 

They rattled through the quiet streets, made 
their call at the captain's lodgings, cleared the 
town, and emerged upon the open road without 
hindrance or molestation. 

Fields, trees, gardens, hedges, everything 
looked very beautiful : the young man scarcely 
seemed to have noticed them before, though he 
had passed the same objects a thousand times. 
There was a peace and serenity upon them all, 
strangely at variance with the bewilderment 
and confusion of his own half-sobered thoughts, 
and yet impressive and welcome. He had no 
fear upon his mind ; but, as he looked about 
him, he had less anger ; and though all old delu- 
sions, relative to his worthless late companion, 
were now cleared away, he rather wished he 
had never known him than thought of its hav- 
ing come to this. 

The past night, the day before, and many 
other days and nights beside, all mingled them- 
selves up in one unintelligible and senseless 
whirl ; he could not separate the transactions 
of one time from those of another. Now, the 
noise of the wheels resolved itself into some 
wild tune in which he could recognize scraps 
of airs he knew ; now, there was nothing in his 
ears but a stunning and bewildering sound, like 
rushing water. But his companion rallied him 
on being so silent, and they ta-lked and laughed 
boisterously. When they stopped, he was a 
little surprised to find himself in the act of 
smoking; but, on reflection, he remembered 
when and where he had taken a cigar. 

They stopped at the avenue gate and alighted, 
leaving the carriage to the care of the ser\'ant, 
who was a smart fellow, and nearly as well ac- 
customed to such proceedings as his master. 
Sir Mulberry and his friend were already there. 
All four walked in profound silence up the 
aisle of stately elm-trees, which, meeting far 
above their heads, formed a long green per- 
spective of Gothic arches, terminating, like some 
old ruin, in the open sky. 

After a pause, and a brief conference between 
the seconds, they, at length, turned to the right, 
and taking a track across a little meadow, passed 
Ham House and came into some fields beyond. 
In one of these they stopped. The ground was 
measured, some usual forms gone through, the 
two principals were placed front to front at the 
distance agreed upon, and Sir Mulberry turned 
his face towards his young adversary for the first 



DUST 



165 



EARLY mSINO 



time. He was very pale, his eyes were blood- 
shot, his dress disordered, and his hair dishev- 
elled. For the face, it expressed nothing but 
violent and evil passions. He shaded his eyes 
with his hands; gazed at his opponent, stead- 
fastly, for a few moments ; and then, taking the 
weapon which was tendered to him, bent his 
eyes upon that, and looked up no more until 
the word was given, when he instantly fired. 

The two shots were fired, as nearly as possi- 
ble, at the same instant. In that instant, the 
young lord turned his head sharply round, fixed 
upon his adversary a ghastly stare, and, without 
a groan or stagger, fell down dead. 

" He's gone ! " cried Westwood, who, with 
the other second, had run up to the body, and 
fallen on one knee beside it. 

" His blood is on his own head," said Sir 
Mulberry. " He brought this upon himself, and 
forced it upon me." 

" Captain Adams," cried Westwood, hastily, 
" I call you to witness that this was fairly done. 
Hawk, we have not a moment to lose. We 
must leave this place immediately, push for 
Brighton, and cross to France with all speed. 
This has been a bad business, and may be 
worse, if we delay a moment. Adams, consult 
your own safety, and don't remain here ; the liv- 
ing before the dead ; good-bye ! " 

With these words, he seized Sir Mulberry by 
the arm, and hurried him away. Captain Adams 
— only pausing to convince himself, beyond all 
question, of the fatal result — sped off in the same 
direction, to concert measures with his servant 
for removing the body, and securing his own 
safety likewise. 

So died Lord Frederick Verisopht, by the 
hand which he had loaded with gifts, and 
clasped a thousand times ; by the act of him, 
but for whom, and others like him, he might 
have lived a happy man, and died with chil- 
dren's faces round his bed. 

The sun came proudly up in all his majesty, 
the noble river ran its winding cour>e, the 
leaves quivered and rustled in the air, the birds 
poured their cheerful songs from every tree, the 
short-lived butterfly fluttered its little wings ; all 
the light and life of day came on ; and, amidst 
it all, and pressing down the grass whose every 
blade bore twenty tiny lives, lay the dead man, 
with his stark and rigid face turned upward to 
the sVy.— Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 50. 

DUST-In liondon. 

A very dark night it was, and bitter cold ; the 
east wind blowing bleak, and bringing with it 
stinging particles from marsh, and moor, and 
fen — from the Great Desert and Old Egypt, 
may be. Some of the component parts of the 
sharp-edged vapor that came flying up the 
Thames at London might be mummy-dust, dry 
atoms from the Temple at Jerusalem, camels' 
foot-prints, crocodiles' hatching places, loosened 
grains of expression from the visages of blunt- 
nosed sphynxes, waifs and strays from caravans 
of turbaned merchants, vegetation from jungles, 
frozen snow from the Himalayas. O ! It was 
very dark upon the Thames, and it was bitter, 
bitter cold. 

Down with the Tide. Reprinted Pieces. 

DTJTY-The test of a ^eat sotd. 

He was simply and stanchly true to his duty, 



alike in the large case and in the small. So all 
true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, 
ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing lit- 
tle to the really great in spirit. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 17. 

DUTY— To society. 

*' No, my good sir," said Mr. Pecksniff", firmly, 
" No. But I have a duty to discharge which I 
owe to society ; and it shall be discharged, my 
friend, at any cost ! " 

Oh, late-remembered, much-forgotten, mouth- 
ing, braggart duty ! always owed, and seldom 
paid in any other coin than punishment and 
wrath, when will mankind begm to know thee ? 
When will men acknowledge thee in thy ne- 
glected cradle and thy stunted youth, and not 
begin their recognition in thy sinful manhood 
and thy desolate old age ? Oh, ermined Judge ! 
whose duty to society is, now, to doom the 
ragged criminal to punishment and death, hadst 
thou never, Man, a duty to discharge in barring 
up the hundred open gates that wooed him to 
the felon's dock, and throwing but ajar the por- 
tals to a decent life ? Oh, Prelate, Prelate ! whose 
duty to society it is to mourn in melancholy 
phrase the sad degeneracy of these bad times 
in which thy lot of honors has been cast, did 
nothing go before thy elevation to the lofty seat, 
from which thou dealest out thy homilies to 
other tarriers for dead men's shoes, whose duty 
to society has not begun? Oh, Magistrate ! so 
rare a country gentleman and brave a squire, 
had you no duty to society, before the ricks 
were blazing and the mob were mad ; or did it 
spring up, armed and booted from the earth, a 
corps of yeomanry, full-grown ? 

Martin Chuzzlewity Chap. 31. 

DUTY— The world's idea of. 

" I have heard some talk about duty first and 
last ; but it has always been of my duty to other 
people. I have wondered now and then — to 
pass away the time — whether no one ever owed 
any duty to me." — Dombey &= Son, Chap. 34. 



E. 



EAQLE-The French. 

The Eagle of France, apparently afflicted with 
the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on 
the poultry, is in a very undecided state of 
policy, and as a bird moulting. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Cfiap. 25. 

EARLY RISING. 

If there be one thing in existence more miser- 
able than another, it most unquestionably is the 
being compelled to rise by candle-light. If you 
ever doubted the fact, you are painfully con- 
vinced of your error, on the morning of your 
departure. You left strict orders, overnight, to 
be called at half-past four, and you have done 
nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a 
time and start up suddenly from a terrific dream 
of a large church clock with the small hand run- 
ning round, with astonisuing rapidity, to every 



EATING 



166 



EATING 



figure on the dial-plate. At last, completely 
exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing 
sleep — your thoughts grow confused — the stage- 
coaches, which have been " going off" before 
your eyes all night, become less and less dis- 
tinct, until they go off altogether ; one moment 
you are driving with all the skill and smartness 
of an experienced whip — the next you are ex- 
hibiting, d la Ducrow, on the off leader ; anon 
you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just 
recognized in the person of the guard an old 
schoolfellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, 
you remember to have attended eighteen years 
ago. At last you fall into a state of complete 
oblivion, from which you are aroused, as if into 
a new state of existence, by a singular illusion. 
You are apprenticed to a trunk-maker ; how, or 
why, or when, or wherefore, you don't take the 
trouble to inquire ; but there you are, pasting 
the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Con- 
found that other apprentice in the back shop, 
how he is hammering ! — rap, rap, rap — what an 
industrious fellow he must be ! you have heard 
him at work for half an hour past, and he has 
been hammering incessantly the whole time. 
Rap, rap, rap, again — he's talking now — what's 
that he said? Five o'clock ! You make a vio- 
lent exertion, and start up in bed. The vision 
is at once dispelled ; the trunk-maker's shop is 
your own bed-room, and the other apprentice 
your shivering servant, who has been vainly en- 
deavoring to wake you for the last quarter of an 
hour, at the imminent risk of breaking either 
his own knuckles or the panels of the door. 

You proceed to dress yourself, with all possi- 
ble despatch. The flaring flat candle with the 
long snuff, gives light enough to show that the 
things you want are not where they ought to be, 
and you undergo a trifling delay in consequence 
of having carefully packed up one of your boots 
in your over-anxiety of the preceding night. 
You soon complete your toilet, however, for you 
are not particular on such an occasion, and you 
shaved yesterday evening ; so, mounting your 
Petersham great-coat, and green travelling- 
shawl, and grasping your carpet-bag in your 
right hand, you walk lightly down-stairs, lest 
you should awaken any of the family, and after 
pausing in the common sitting-room for one 
moment, just to have a cup of coffee (the said 
common sitting-room looking remarkably com- 
fortable, with everything out of its place, and 
strewed with the crumbs of last night's supper), 
you undo the chain and bolts of the street-door, 
and find yourself fairly in the street. 

Scenes, Chap. 15. 



It became high time to remember the first 
clause of that great discovery made by the an- 
cient philosopher, for securing health, riches, 
and wisdom ; the infallibility of which has been 
for generations verified by the enormous for- 
tunes constantly amassed by chimney-sweepers 
and other persons who get up early and go to 
bed betimes. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5. 

EATING— A pauper overfed. 

" It's not madness, ma'am," replied Mr. Bum- 
ble, after a few moments of deep meditation. 
" It's meat." 

" What ? " exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. 

*' Meat, ma'am, meat," replied Bumble, with 
stem emphasis. "You've overfed him, ma'am. 



You've raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, 
ma'am, unbecoming a person of his condition ; 
as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practi- 
cal philosophers, will tell you. What have pau- 
pers to do with soul or spirit ? It's quite enough 
that we let 'em have live bodies. If you had 
kept the boy on gruel, ma'am, this would never 
have happened." — Oliver Twist, Chap. 7. 

EATING— A biU of fare. 

She put forth a bill of fare that might kindle 
exhilaration in the breast of a misanthrope. 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 24. 

EATING— Bread and butter (Joe and Pip). 

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our 
bread-and-butter for us, that never varied. 
First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf 
hard and fast against her bib — where it some- 
times got a pin into it, and sometimes a needle, 
which we afterward got into our mouths. Then 
she took some butter (not too much) on a knife 
and spread it on the ioaf, in an apothecary kind 
of way, as if she was making a plaster — using 
both sides of the knife with a slapping dexter- 
ity, and trimming and moulding the butter off 
round the crust. Then she gave the knife a 
final smart wipe on the edge of the plaster, 
and then sawed a very thick round off the 
loaf: which she finally, before separating 
from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of 
which Joe got one, and I the other. I knew 
Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest 
kind, and that my larcenous researches might 
find nothing available in the safe. Therefore 
I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter 
down the leg of my trousers. Joe was evi- 
dently made uncomfortable by what he sup- 
posed to be my loss of appetite, and took 
a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he 
didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in 
his mouth much longer than usual, pondering 
over it a good deal, and after all gulped it 
down like a pill. He was about to take an- 
other bite, and had just got his head on one 
side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell 
on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter 
was gone. 

The wonder and consternation with which 
Joe stopped on the threshold of his bite and 
stared at me, were too evident to escape my 
sister's observation. 

" What's the matter now ? " said she, smartly, 
as she put down her cup. 

" I say, you know ! " muttered Joe, shaking 
his head at me in very serious remonstrance, 
" Pip, old chap ! You'll do yourself a mischief. 
It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed 

" What's the matter now ? repeated my sis- 
ter, more sharply than before. 

" If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, 
I'd recommend you to do it," said Joe, all 
aghast. " Manners is manners, but still your 
elth's your elth." 

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, 
so she pounced on Joe, and, taking him by the 
two whiskers, knocked his head for a little 
while against the wall behind him : while I sat 
in the corner, looking guiltily on. 

" Now, perhaps, you'll mention what's the 
matter," said my sister, out of breath, "you 
staring great stuck pig." 



EATING AND GBOWTH 



167 



EDUCATIOIT 



Joe looked at her in a helpless way ; then 
took a helpless bite, and looked at me again. 

" You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, with 
his last bite in his cheek, and speaking in a 
confidential voice, as if we two were quite 
alone, " you and me is always friends, and I'd 
be the last to tell upon you, any time. But 
such a — " he moved his chair, and looked about 
the floor between us, and then again at me — 
" such a most oncommon bolt as that ! " 

*' Been bolting his food, has he ? " cried my 
sister. 

" You know, old chap," said Joe, looking at 
me, and not at Mrs. Joe, with his bite still in 
his cheek, " I Bolted, myself, when I was your 
age — frequent — and as a boy I've been among 
a many Bolters ; but I never see your bolting 
equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't Bolted 
dead." — Great Expectations, Chap, 2. 

EATING AND GROWTH-Guppy'a Ixmch. 

Beholding him in which glow of contentment, 
Mr. Guppy says : 

" You are a man again, Tony !" 

" Well, not quite, yet," says Mr. Jobling. 
" Say, just born." 

" Will you take any other vegetables ? Grass ? 
Peas ? Summer cabbage ? " 

" Thank you, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling. " I 
really don't know but what I wi// take summer 
cabbage." 

Order given ; with the sarcastic addition (from 
Mr. Smallweed) of " Without slugs, Polly 1 " 
And cabbage produced. 

" I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, 
plying his knife and fork with a relishing steadi- 
ness. 

" Glad to hear it." 

" In fact I have just turned into my teens," 
says Mr. Jobling. 

He says no more until he has performed his 
task, which he achieves as Messrs. Guppy and 
Smallweed finish theirs ; thus getting over the 
ground in excellent style, and beating those two 
gentlemen easily by a veal and ham and a cab- 



" Now, Small," says Mr. Guppy, " what would 
you recommend about pastry ? " 

" Marrow puddings," says Mr. Smallweed, in- 
stantly. 

Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. 
Jobling adds, in a pleasant humor, that he is 
coming of age fast. To these succeed, by com- 
mand of Mr. Smallweed, " three Cheshires ; " and 
to those, " three small rums." This apex of the 
entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts 
up his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own 
side of the box to himself), leans against the 
wall, and says, " I am grown up, now, Guppy. 
I have arrived at maturity." 

" What do you think, now," says Mr. Guppy. 

"Why, what I may think after dinner," re- 
turns Mr. Jobling, " is one thing, my dear Gup- 
py, and what I may think before dinner is another 
thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask my- 
self the question, What am I to do ? How am 
1 to live? Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr. 
Jobling, pronouncing that word as if he meant 
a necessary fixture in an English stable. " 111 
fo manger. That's the French saying, and 
mangering is as necessary to me a% it is to a 
Frenchman. Or more so." 

Bleak House, Chap. 20. 



EATING— Its "mellering" influence. 

Wegg, who had been going to put on his 
spectacles, immediately laid them down, with 
the sprightly observation : 

"You read my thoughts, sir. Do my eyes 
deceive me, or is that object up there a — a pie ? 
It can't be a pie." 

" Yes, it's a pie, Wegg," replied Mr. Boffin, 
with a glance of some little discomfiture at the 
Decline and Fall. 

" Have I lost my smell for fruits, or is it a 
apple pie, sir ? " asked Wegg. 

" It's a veal and ham pie," said Mr. Boffin. 

" Is it indeed, sir ? And it would be hard, sir, 
to name the pie that is a better pie than a weal 
and hammer," said Mr. Wegg, nodding his head 
emotionally. 

" Have some, Wegg ? " 

" Thank you, Mr. Boffin, I think I will, at 
your invitation. I wouldn't at any other party's 
at the present juncture ; but at yours, sir — And 
m.eaty jelly too, especially when a little salt, 
which is the case where there's ham, is mellering 
to the organ, is very mellering to the organ." 
Mr. Wegg did not say what organ, but spoke 
with a cheerful generality. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap, 5. 

EATING— Beef and mutton. 

" Here I am ! This is my frugal breakfast. 
Some men want legs of beef and mutton for 
breakfast ; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup 
of coffee, and my claret ; I am content. I don't 
want them for themselves, but they remind me 
of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of 
beef and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction !" 
Bleak House, Cliap. 43. 

EDUCATION-Of children. 

Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-na- 
tured little body, although a disciple of that 
school of trainers of the young idea which holds 
that childhood, like money, must be shaken and 
rattled and jostled about a good deal to keep it 
bright. — Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 3. 

EDUCATION— Mrs. Pipchin's system. 

Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a 
pedigree from Genesis (judiciously selected by 
Mrs. Pipchin), getting over the names v/ith the 
ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the 
treadmill. That done. Miss Pankey was borne 
away to be shampoo'd ; and Master Bitherstone 
to have something else done to him with salt 
water, from which he always returned very blue 
and dejected. About noon Mrs. Pipchin pre- 
sided over some Early Readings. It being a 
part of Mrs. Pipchin's system not to encourage 
a child's mind to develop and expand itself like 
a young flower, but to open it by force like an 
oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of 
a violent and stunning character : the hero — a 
naughty boy — seldom, in the mildest catastrophe 
being finished off" by anything less than a lion, 
or a bear. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 8. 

EDUC ATION-A victim of. 

Rob the Grinder, whose reverence for the in- 
spired writings, under the admirable system of 
the Grinders' School, had been developed by a 
perpetual bruising of his intellectual shins against 
all the proper names of all the tribes of Judah, 
and by the monotonous repetition of hard verses. 



13DT7CATION 



168 



EDUCATION 



especially by way by punishment, and by the 
parading of him at six years old in leather 
breeches, three times a Sunday, veiy high up, 
in a very hot church, with a great organ buz- 
zing against his drowsy head, like an exceedingly 
busy bee — Rob the Grinder made a mighty show 
of being edified when the Captain ceased to 
read, and generally yawned and nodded while 
the reading was in progress. 

Dombey ^Son, Ch. 39. 
EDUCATION-Early. 

'* There is a great deal of nonsense — and 
worse — talked about young people not being 
pressed too hard at first, and being tempted on, 
and all the rest of it, Sir," said Mrs. Pipchin, 
impatiently rubbing her hooked nose. " It never 
was thought of in my time, and it has no busi- 
ness to be thought of now. My opinion is, 
* keep 'em at it.' " — Dombey df Son, Chap. 11. 

EDUCATION— The forcingr process in Dr. 
Blimber's Scliool. 

Whenever a young gentleman was taken in 
hand by Doctor Blimber, he might consider him- 
self sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The doctor 
only undertook the charge of ten young gentle- 
men, but he had, always ready, a supply of learn- 
ing for a hundred, on the lowest estimate : and 
it was at once the business and delight of his 
life to gorge the unhappy ten with it. 

It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too 
hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant 
to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in 
general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which 
she had been bred ; and the Doctor, in some 
partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the 
young gentlemen as if they were all Doctors, 
and were born grown up. Comforted by the 
applause of the young gentlemen's nearest rela- 
tions, and urged on by their blind vanity and 
ill-considered haste, it would have been strange 
if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or 
trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack. 

Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor 
Blimber said he made great progress, and was 
naturally clever, Mr. Dombey was more bent 
than ever on his being forced and crammed. 
In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimber 
reported that he did not make great progress 
yet, and was not naturally clever, Briggs senior 
was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, 
however high and false the temperature at which 
the Doctor kept his hot-house, the owners of the 
plants were always ready to lend a helping hand 
at the bellows, and to stir the fire. 

***** 

In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was 
a great hot-house, in which there was a forcing 
apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys 
blew before their time. Mental green-peas were 
produced at Christmas, and intellectual aspar- 
agus all the year round. Mathematical goose- 
berries (very sour ones, too) were common at 
untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of 
bushes, under Doctor Blimber's cultivation. 
Every description of Greek and Latin vegeta- 
ble was got off the driest twigs of boys, under 
the frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no 
^ consequence at all. No matter what a young 
gentleman was intended to bear. Doctor Blim- 
ber made him bear to pattern, somehow or 
other. 

This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but 



the system of forcing was attended with its usual 
disadvantages. There was not the right taste 
about the premature productions, and they 
didn't keep well. Moreover, one young gentle- 
man, with a swollen nose and an excessively 
large head (the oldest of the ten who had " gone 
through " everything), suddenly left off blowing 
one day, and remained in the establishment a 
mere stalk. And people did say that the Doc- 
tor had rather overdone it with young Toots, 
and that when he began to have whiskers he 
left off having brains. 

***** 

The young gentlemen were prematurely full 
of carking anxieties. They knew no rest from the 
pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun- 
substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and 
ghosts of exercises that appeared to them in 
their dreams. Under the forcing system, a 
young gentleman usually took leave of his spi- 
rits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the 
world on his head in three months. He con- 
ceived bitter sentiments against his parents or 
guardians in four ; he was an old misanthrope, 
in five ; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in 
the earth, in six ; and at the end of the first 
twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, 
from which he never afterwards departed, that 
all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the 
sages, were a mere collection of words and gram- 
mar, and had no other meaning in the world. 

***** 

The studies went round like a mighty wheel, 
and the young gentlemen were always stretched 
upon it. — Dombey df Son, Chap. 12. 

EDUCATION-In England. 

Of the monstrous neglect of education in Eng- 
land, and the disregard of it by the state as 
the means of forming good or bad citizens, and 
miserable or happy men, private schools long 
afforded a notable example. Although any 
man who had proved his unfitness for any other 
occupation in life, was free, without examina- 
tion or qualification, to open a school anywhere ; 
although preparation for the functions he un- 
dertook, was required in the surgeon who as- 
sisted to bring a boy into the world, or might 
one day assist, perhaps, to send him out of it ; 
in the chemist, the attorney, the butcher, the 
baker, the candlestick-maker ; the whole round 
of crafts and trades, the schoolmaster excepted : 
and although schoolmasters, as a race, weie the 
blockheads and impostors who might naturally 
be expected to spring from such a state of 
things, and to flourish in it ; these Yorkshire 
schoolmasters were the lowest and most rotten 
round in the whole ladder. Traders in the ava- 
rice, indifference, or imbecility of parents, and 
the helplessness of children ; ignorant, sordid, 
brutal men, to whom few considerate persons 
would have entrusted the board and lodging of 
a horse or a dog ; they formed the worthy cor- 
ner-stone of a structure, which, for absurdity 
and a magnificent high-minded laissez-aller neg- 
lect, has rarely been exceeded in the world. 

We hear sometimes of an action for damages 
against the unqualified medical practitioner, 
who has deformed a broken limb in pretending 
to heal it. But what of the hundreds of thou- 
sands of minds that have been deformed for- 
ever by the incapable pettifoggers who have 
pretended to form them ! 



EDUCATION 



EDUCATION 



I make mention of the race, as of the York- 
shire schoolmasters, in the past tense. Though 
it has not yet finally disappeared, it is dwin- 
dling daily. A long day's work remains to be 
done about us in the way ot education, Heaven 
knows ; but great improvements and facilities 
towards the attainment of a good one, have been 
furnished of late years. 

I cannot call to mind, now, how I came to 
hear about Yorkshire schools when I was a not 
very robust child, sitting in bye-places near 
Rochester Castle, with a head fuU of Par- 
tridge, Strap, Tom Pipes, and Sancho 
Panza ; but I know that my first impressions 
of them were picked up at that time, and that 
they were somehow or other connected with a 
suppurated abscess that some boy had come 
home with, in consequence of his Yorkshire 
guide, philosopher, and friend, having ripped it 
open with an inky pen-knife. The impression 
made upon me, however made, never left me. 
I was always curious about Yorkshire schools — 
fell, long afterwards, and at sundry times, into 
the way of hearing more about them — at last, 
having an audience, resolved to write about 
them. — Preface to Nicholas Nickleby. 

EDUCATION-Practical. 

" No man of sense who has been generally im- 
proved, and has improved himself, can be called 
quite uneducated as to anything. I don't par- 
ticularly favor mysteries. I would as soon, on 
a fair and clear explanation, be judged by one 
class of man as another, provided he had the 
qualification I have named." 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 8. 

EDUCATION— The Gradgrind scliool of. 

Let us strike the key-note again, before pur- 
suing the tune. 

When she was half a dozen years younger, 
Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversa- 
tion with her brother one day, by saying, " Tom, 
I wonder" — upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who 
was the person overhearing, stepped forth into 
the light, and said, " Louisa, never wonder ! " 

Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art 
and mystery of educating the reason without 
stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments 
and affections. Never wonder. By means of 
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and divi- 
sion, settle everything somehow, and never won- 
der. Bring to me, said M'Choakumchild, yon- 
der baby just able to walk, and I will engage 
that it shall never wonder. 

Now, besides very many babies just able to 
walk, there happened to be in Coketown a con- 
siderable population of babies who had been 
walking against time towards the infinite world, 
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. 
These portentous infants being alarming crea- 
tures to stalk about in any human society, the 
eighteen denominations incessantly scratched 
one another's faces, and pulled one another's 
hair, by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken 
for their improvement — which they never did ; 
a surprising circumstance, when the happy adap- 
tation of the means to the end is considered. 
Still, although they differed in every other par- 
ticular, conceivable and inconceivable (espe- 
cially inconceivable), they were pretty well 
united on the point that these unlucky infants 
were never to wonder. Body number one said. 



they must take everything on trust. Body 
number two said, they must take everything 
on political economy. Body number three 
wrote leaden little books for them, showing 
how the good grown-up baby invariably got 
to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up 
baby invariably got transported. Body number 
four, under dreary pretences of being droll 
(when it was very melancholy indeed), made 
the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls 
of knowledge, into which it was the duty of 
these babies to be smuggled and inveigled. 
But all the bodies agreed that they were never 
to wonder. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap, 8. 

EDUCATION-The misfortune of. 

It seemed that Tozer had a dreadful uncle, 
who not only volunteered examinations of him, 
in the holidays, on abstruse points, but twisted 
innocent events and things, and wrenched them 
to the same fell purpose. So that if this uncle 
took him to the Play, or, on a similar pretence 
of kindness, carried him to see a Giant, or a 
Dwarf, or a Conjuror, or anything, Tozer 
knew he had read up some classical allusion to 
the subject beforehand, and was thrown into a 
state of mortal apprehension : not foreseeing 
where he might break out, or what authority 
he might not quote against him. 

***** 

Mr. Tozer, now a young man of lofty stature, 
in Wellington boots, was so extremely full of 
antiquity as to be nearly on a par with a genu- 
ine ancient Roman in his knowledge of En- 
glish : a triumph that affected his good parents 
with the tenderest emotions, and caused the 
father and mother of Mr. Briggs (whose learn- 
ing, like ill-arranged luggage, was so tightly 
packed that he couldn't get at anything he 
wanted) to hide their diminished heads. The 
fruit laboriously gathered from the tree of 
knowledge by this latter young gentleman, in 
fact, had been subjected to so much pressure, 
that it had become a kind of intellectual Nor- 
folk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form 
or flavor remaining. — Donibey &^ Son, Chap. 6o. 

EDUCATION— Josiah Bounderby's practi- 
cal. 

" I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. 
Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not, 
ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, though 
nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, er- 
rand boy, vagabond, laborer, porter, clerk, chief 
manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of 
Coketown. Those are the antecedents and the 
culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown 
learned his letters from the outsides of the shops, 
Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the 
time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple- 
clock of St. Giles's Church, London, under the 
direction of a drunken cripple, who was a con- 
victed thief, and an incorrigible vagrant. Tell 
Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district 
schools, and your model scliools, and your train- 
ing schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of 
schools ; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown 
tells you plainly, all right, all correct — he hadn't 
such advantages — but let us have hard-headed, 
solid-fisted people — the education that made him 
won't do for everybody, he knows well — such 
and such his education was, however, and you 



EDUCATION 



170 



EliECTION 



may force him to swallow boiling fat, but you 
shall never force him to suppress the facts of 
his life." — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 4 

EDTJCATION-A perverted. 

For the same reason, that young man's coarse 
allusions, even to himself, filled him with a 
stealthy glee ; causing him to rub his hands and 
chuckle covertly, as if he said in his sleeve, " / 
taught him. / trained him. This is the heir 
of my bringing-up. Sly, cunning, and covetous, 
he'll not squander my money. I worked for 
this ; I hoped for this ; it has been the great 
end and aim of my life." 

What a noble end and aim it was to contem- 
plate in the attainment, truly ! But there be 
some who manufacture idols after the fashion of 
themselves, and fail to worship them when they 
are made ; charging their deformity on outraged 
nature. Anthony was better than these at any 
rate. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap, 11. 

EDUCATION— Early— The alphabet. 

I struggled through the alphabet as if it had 
been a bramble-bush ; getting considerably wor- 
ried and scratched by every letter. After that 
I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who 
seemed every evening to do something new to 
disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, 
at last I began, in a purblind, groping way, to 
read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest 
scale. 

■^ ^ * % -^ 

I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my 
forefinger, read him the whole letter. 

" Astonishing ! " said Joe, when I had finished. 
" You ARE a scholar." 

" How do you spell Gargery, Joe ? " I asked 
him, with modest patronage. 

" I don't spell it at all," said Joe. 

" But supposing you did ? " 

" It can't be supposed," said Joe. " The' I'm 
oncommon fond of reading, too." 

" Are you, Joe ? " 

" On-common. Give me," said Joe, " a good 
book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down 
afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord ! " 
he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, 
" when you do come to a J and a O, and says 
you, * Here, at last, is a J-0, Joe,' how interest- 
ing reading is ! " 

I derived from this, that Joe's education, like 
steam, was yet in its infancy. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 7. 

EDUCATION-From A to Z. 

" You are oncommon in some things. You're 
oncommon small. Likewise, you're a oncom- 
mon scholar." 

" No ; I am ignorant and backward, Joe." 
*' Well, Pip," said Joe, " be it so or be it son't, 
you must be a common scholar afore you can be 
a oncommon one, I should hope ! The king upon 
his throne, with his crown -upon his 'ed, can't 
sit and write his acts of Parliament in print, 
without having begun, when he were a unpro- 
moted prince, with the alphabet — ah ! " added 
Joe, with a shake of the head that was full of 
meaning, " and begun at A too, and worked his 
way to Z. And / know what that is to do, 
though I can't say I've exactly done it. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 7. 



EGOTISM. 

And again he said " Dom-bey and Son," in 
exactly the same tone as before. 

Those three words conveyed the one idea of 
Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for 
Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and 
moon were made to give them light. Rivers 
and seas were formed to float their ships ; rain- 
bows gave them promise of fair weather ; winds 
blew for or against their enterprises ; stars and 
planets circled in their orbits, to preserve in- 
violate a system of which they were the centre. 
Common abbreviations took new meanings iii 
his eyes, and had sole reference to them : A. D. 
had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood 
for Anno Dombei — and Son. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. i. 

EliECTION-Mr. WeUer at an. 

" * Oh, I know you,' says the gen'l'm'n ; 
' know'd jsou when you was a boy,' says he. — 
' Well, I don't remember you,' says my father — 
' That's very odd,' says the gen'l'm'n — ' Werry,* 
says my father — ' You must have a bad mem'ry, 
Mr. Weller,' says the gen'l'm'n — ' Well, it is a 
werry bad 'un,' says my father — ' I thought so,' 
says the gen'l'm'n. So then they pours him out 
a glass of wane, and gammons him about his 
driving, and gets him into a reg'lar good humor, 
and at last shoves a twenty-pound note in his 
hand. ' It's a werry bad road between this and 
London,' says the gen'l'm'n — ' Here and there 
it is a heavy road,' says my father — ' Specially 
near the canal, I think,' says the gen'l'm'n — 
' Nasty bit that 'ere,' says my father — ' Well, Mr. 
Weller,' says the gen'l'm'n, ' you're a wery good 
whip, and can do what you like with your horses, 
we know. We're all wery fond o' you, Mr. 
Weller, so in case you should have an accident 
when you're a bringing these here woters down, 
and should tip 'em over into the canal vithout 
hurtin' of 'em, this is for yourself,' says he — 
' Gen'l'm'n, you're wery kind,' says my father, 
' and I'll drink your health in another glass of 
wine,' says he ; which he did, and then buttons 
up the money, and bows himself out. You 
wouldn't believe, sir," continued Sam, with a 
look of inexpressible impudence at his master, 
" that on the wery day as he came down with 
them woters, his coach was upset on that 'ere 
wery spot, and ev'ry man on 'em was turned into 
the canal." 

" And got out again ?" inquired Mr. Pickwick, 
hastily. 

" Why," replied Sam, very slowly, " I rather 
think one old gen'l'm'n was missin' ; I know his 
hat was found, but I a'n't quite certain whether 
his head was in it or not. But what I look at, 
is the hex-traordinary and wonderful coinci- 
dence, that arter what that gen'l'm'n said, my 
father's coach should be upset in that wery place, 
and on that wery day ! " 

Pickwick, Chap. 13. 

ELECTION— A public ; the devotion of par- 
ty. 

" Ah," said Mr. Pickwick, " do they seem de- 
voted to their party, Sam ? " 

" Never see such dewotion in my life, sir." 

" Energetic, eh ?" said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Ujicommon," replied Sam ; " I never see 
men eat and drink so much afore. I wonder 
they a'n't afeer'd o' bustin." 



ELECTION 



171 



EMIQBANT SHIP 



" That's the mistaken kindness of the gentry 
here," said Mr. Pickwick. 

*' Wery likely," replied Sam, briefly. 

*' Fine, fresh, hearty fellows they seem," said 
Mr. Pickwick, glancing from the window. 

" Wery fresh," replied Sam ; " me, and the 
two waiters at the Peacock, has been a pumpin' 
over the independent woters as supped there last 
night." 

" Pumping over independent voters ! " ex- 
claimed Mr. Pickwick. 

" Yes," said his attendant, " every man slept 
vere he fell down ; we dragged 'em out, one by 
one, this mornin', and put 'em under the pump, 
and they're in reg'lar fine order, now. Shillin' a 
head the committee paid for that 'ere job." 

" Can such things be ! " exclaimed the aston- 
ished Mr, Pickwick. 

" Lord bless your heart, sir," said Sam, ** why, 
where was you half baptized? — that's nothin', 
that a'nt." 

"Nothing?" said Mr. Pickwick. 

"Nothin' at all, sir," replied his attendant. 
" The night afore the last day o' the last election 
here, the opposite party bribed the bar-maid at 
the Town Arms, to hocus the brandy and water 
of fourteen unpolled electors as was a stoppin' 
in the house." 

" What do you mean by ' hocussing ' brandy 
and water ? " inquired Mr. Pickwick. 

" Puttin' laud'num in it," replied Sam. 
" Blessed if she didn't send 'em all to sleep till 
twelve hours arter the election was over. They 
took one man up to the booth, in a truck, fast 
asleep, by way of experiment, but it was no go — 
they wouldn't poll him ; so they brought him 
back, and put him to bed again." 

Pickwick, Chap. 13. 
\ 
ELECTION-A spirited. 

"And what are the probabilities as to the 
result of the contest?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. 

" Why, doubtful, my dear sir ; rather doubtful 
as yet," replied the little man. " Fizkin's peo- 
ple have got three-and-thirty voters in the lock- 
up coach-house at the White Hart." 

" In the coach-house ! " .said Mr. Pickwick, 
considerably astonished by this second stroke 
of policy. 

" They keep 'em locked up there till they 
want 'em," resumed the little man. " The 
effect ol that is, you see, to prevent our getting 
at them ; and even if we could, it would be of 
no use, for they keep them very drunk on pur- 
pose. Smart fellow Fizkin's agent — very smart 
fellow indeed." 

Mr. Pickwick stared, but said nothmg. 

"We are pretty confident, though," said Mr. 
Perker, sinking his voice almost to a whisper. 
" We had a little tea-party here, last night — five- 
and-forty women, my dear sir — and gave every 
one of 'em a green parasol when she went away." 

" A parasol ! " said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Fact, my dear sir, fact. Five-and-forty 
green parasols, at seven and sixpence a-piece. 
All women like finery, — extraordinary the effect 
of those parasols. Secured all their husbands, 
and half their brothers — beats stockings and 
flannel, and all that sort of thing hollow. My 
idea, my dear sir, entirely. Hail, rain, or sun- 
shine, you can't walk half a dozen yards up the 
street, without encountering half a dozen green 
parasols." — Pickwick, Chap. 13. 



ELECTION CANDIDATES. 

Mr. Horatio Fizkin, and the honora'ble Sam- 
uel Slumkey, with their hands upon their hearts, 
were bowing with the utmost affability to the 
troubled sea of heads that inundated the open 
space in front ; and from whence arose a storm 
of groans, and shouts, and yells, and hootings, 
that would have done honor to an earthquake. 
Pickwick, Chap. 13. 

EMIGRANT SHIP. 

Gigantic in the basin just beyond the church 
looms my Emigrant Ship, her name, the Ama- 
zon. Her figure-head is not ^/jfigured, as those 
beauteous founders of the race of strong-minded 
women are fabled to have been, for the conve- 
nience of drawing the bow ; but I sympathize 
with the carver: — 

"A flattering carver, who made it his care 
To carve busts as they ought to be,— not as they 
were." 

My Emigrant Ship lies broadside on-to the wharf. 
Two great gangways made of spars and planks 
connect her with the wharf ; and up and down 
these gangways, perpetually crowding to and 
fro and in and out, like ants, are the Emigrants 
who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship. 
Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, 
some with cheese and butter, some with milk 
and beer, some with boxes, beds, and bundles, 
some with babies — nearly all with children — 
nearly all with bran-new tin cans for their daily 
allowance of water, uncomfortably suggestive 
of a tin flavor in the drink. To and fro, up and 
down, aboard and ashore, swarming here and 
there and everywhere, my Emigrants. And 
still, as the Dock Gate swings upon its hinges, 
cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans appear, 
bringing more of my Emigrants, with more 
cabbages, more loaves, more cheese and butter, 
more milk and beer, more boxes, beds, and 
bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping 
investments accumulated compound interest of 
children. 

I go aboard my Emigrant Ship, I go first to 
the great cabin, and find it in the usual condi- 
tion of a cabin at that pass. Perspiring lands- 
men, with loose papers, and with pens and ink- 
stands, pervade it ; and the general appearance 
of things is as if the late Mr. Amazon's funeral 
had just come home from the cemetery, and the 
disconsolate Mrs. Amazon's trustees found the 
affairs in great disorder, and were looking high 
and low for the will, I go out on the poop- 
deck for air, and, surveying the emigrants on 
the deck below (indeed they are crowded all 
about me, up there too), find more pens and 
inkstands in action, and more papers, and inter- 
minable complications respecting accounts with 
individuals for tin cans and what not. But no- 
body is in an ill-temper, nobody is the worse 
for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a 
coarse word, nobody appears depressed, nobody 
is weeping ; and down upon the deck, in every 
corner where it is possible to find a few square 
feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people in every 
unsuitable attitude for writing are writing letters. 

Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this 
day in June. And these people are so strikingly 
different from all other people in like circum- 
stances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder 
aloud, "What would a stranger suppose these 
emigrants to be ! " 



EMIGRANTS 



172 



ENERGY 



The vigilant, bright face of the weather- 
browned captain of the Amazon is at my shoul- 
der, and he says : " What, indeed ! The most 
of these came aboard yesterday evening. They 
came from various parts of England in small 
parties that had never seen one another before. 
Yet they had not been a couple of hours on 
board when they established their own police, 
made their own regulations, and set their own 
watches at all the hatchways. Before nine 
oxlock the ship was as orderly and as quiet as 
a man-of-war." 

I looked about me again, and saw the letter- 
writing going on with the most curious com- 
posure. Perfectly abstracted in the midst of 
the crowd ; while great casks were swinging 
aloft, and being lowered into the hold ; while 
hot agents were hurrying up and down, adjust- 
ing the interminable accounts ; while two hun- 
dred strangers were searching everywhere for 
two hundred other strangers, and were asking 
questions about them of two hundred more ; 
while the children played up and down all the 
steps, and in and out among all the people's 
legs, and were beheld, to the general dismay, 
toppling over all the dangerous places, — the 
letter-writers wrote on calmly. On the star- 
board side of the ship a grizzled man dictated 
a long letter to another grizzled man in an im- 
mense fur cap ; which letter was of so profound 
a quality, that it became necessary for the 
amanuensis at intervals to take off his fur cap 
in both his hands, for the ventilation of his 
brain, and stare at him who dictated, as a man 
of many mysteries, who was worth looking at. 
On the larboard side a woman had covered a 
belaying-pin with a white cloth, to make a neat 
desk of it, and was sitting on a little box, writ- 
ing with the deliberation of a bookkeeper. 
Down upon her breast on the .planks of the 
deck at this woman's feet, with her head diving 
in under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, 
as an eligible place of refuge for her sheet of 
paper, a neat and pretty girl wrote for a good 
hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the sur- 
face occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the 
boat, close to me on the poop-deck, another 
girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl, was writ- 
ing another letter on the bare deck. Later in 
the day, when this self-same boat was filled 
with a choir who sang glees and catches for a 
long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her 
part mechanically all the while, and wrote a 
letter in the bottom of the boat while doing so. 
Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 19. 

EMIGRANTS-On ship-board. 

There were English people, Irish people, 
Welsh people, and Scotch people there ; all with 
their little store of coarse food and shabby 
clothes ; and nearly all, with their families of 
children. There were children of all ages ; 
from the baby at the breast to the slattern-girl 
who was as much a grown woman as her mother. 
Every kind of domestic suffering that is bred in 
poverty, illness, banishment, sorrow, and long 
travel in bad weather, was crammed into the 
little space ; and yet was there infinitely less of 
complaint and querulousness, and infinitely more 
of mutual assistance and general kindness to be 
found in that unwholesome ark, than in many 
brilliant ball-rooms. 

Mark looked about him wistfully, and his face 



brightened as he looked. Here an old grand- 
mother was crooning over a sick child, and rock- 
ing it to and fro, in arms hardly more wasted 
than its own young limbs ; here a poor woman 
with an infant in her lap, mended another little 
creature's clothes, and quieted another who was 
creeping up about her from their scanty bed 
upon the floor. Here were old men awkwardly 
engaged in little household offices, wherein they 
would have been ridiculous but for their good- 
will and kind purpose ; and here were swarthy 
fellows— giants in their way — doing such little 
acts of tenderness for those about them, as might 
have belonged to gentlest-hearted dwarfs. The 
very idiot in the corner who sat mowing there 
all day, had his faculty of imitation roused by 
what he saw about him ; and snapped his fin- 
gers, to amuse a crying child. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 15. 

EMBRACE— An earnest. 

You never will derive so much delight from 
seeing a glorious little woman in the arms of a 
third party, as you would have felt if you had 
seen Dot run into the Carrier's embrace. It was 
the most complete, unmitigated, soul-fraught 
little piece of earnestness that ever you beheld 
in all your days. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 3. 

EMBRACE— An; likened to the path of 
virtue. 
By-and-by, I noticed Wemmick's arm begin- 
ning to disappear again, and gradually fading 
out of view. Shortly afterward, his mouth be- 
gan to widen again. After an interval of sus- 
pense on my part that was quite enthralling and 
almost painful, I saw his hand appear on the 
other side of Miss Skiffins. Instantly, Miss 
Skiffins stopped it with the neatness of a placid 
boxer, took off that girdle or cestus as before, 
and laid it on the table. Taking the table to 
represent the path of virtue, I am justified in 
stating that during the whole time of the Aged's 
reading, Wemmick's arm was straying from the 
path of virtue and being recalled to it by Miss 
Skiffins. — Great Expectations, Chap. 37. 

EMBRACE- An. 

" A fraternal railing." 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 14. 

ENTHUSIASM. 

" We are all enthusiastic, are we not, Mam- 
ma ? " said Edith, with a cold smile. 

" Too much so for our peace, perhaps, my 
dear," returned her mother ; " but we won't 
complain. Our own emotions are our recom- 
pense. If, as your cousin Feenbc says, the sword 
wears out the what's-its-name — " 

*' The scabbard, perhaps," said Edith. 

" Exactly— a little too fast, it is because it is 
bright and glowing, you know, my dearest love." 
Dombey &' Son, Chap. 27. 

ENERGY. 

" Then idiots talk," said Eugene, leaning 
back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes 
shut, and speaking sHghtly through his nose, 
" of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary 
under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, 
it is energy. It is such a conventional supersti- 
tion, such parrot gabble ! What the deuce I Am 



ENQLISHMEN 



173 



EVENING 



I to rush out into the street, collar the first man 
of a wealthy appearance that I meet, shake him, 
and say, ' Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and 
retain me, or I'll be the death of you ? ' Yet that 
would be energy." 

Our Mtitual Friend, Book /., Chap. 3. 

ENGLISHMEN- As travellers. 

We left Philadelphia by steamboat at six 
o'clock one very cold morning, and turned our 
faces towards Washington. 

In the course of this day's journey, as on sub- 
sequent occasions, we encountered some Eng- 
lishmen (small farmers, perhaps, or country 
publicans at home) who were settled in America, 
and were travelling on their own affairs. Of all 
grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the 
public conveyances of the States, these are often 
the most intolerable and the most insufferable 
companions. United to every disagreeable 
characteristic that the worst kind of American 
travellers possess, these countrymen of ours dis- 
play an amount of insolent conceit and cool as- 
sumption of superiority quite monstrous to 
behold. In the coarse familiarity of their ap- 
proach, and the effrontery of their inquisitive- 
ness (which they are in great haste to assert, as 
if they panted to revenge themselves upon the 
decent old restraints of home), they surpass any 
native specimens that came within my range of 
observation ; and I often grew so patriotic, 
when I saw and heard them, that I would cheer- 
fully have submitted to a reasonable fine, if I 
could have given any other country in the whole 
world the honor of claiming them for its chil- 
dren, — American Notes, Chap. 8. 

EPIDEMICS-Moral. 

That it is at least as difficult to stay a moral 
infection as a physical one ; that such a disease 
will spread with the malignity and rapidity of 
the Plague ; that the contagion, when it has 
once made head, will spare no pursuit or condi- 
tion, but will lay hold on people in the soundest 
health, and become developed in the most un- 
likely constitutions, is a fact as firmly established 
by experience as that we human creatures 
breathe an atmosphere. A blessing beyond ap- 
preciation would be conferred upon mankind, if 
the tainted, in whose weakness or wickedness 
these virulent disorders are bred, could be in- 
stantly seized and placed in close confinement 
(not to say summarily smothered) before the 
poison is communicable. 

4> « « * ♦ 

Bred at first, as many physical diseases are, in 
the wickedness of men, and then disseminated 
in their ignorance, these epidemics, after a 
period, get communicated to many sufferers who 
are neither ignorant nor wicked. Mr. Pancks 
might or might not have caught the illness him- 
self from a subject of this class ; but, in this 
category he appeared before Clennam, and the 
infection he threw off was all the more virulent. 
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13. 

EPITHET-Deflnitlon of an. 

A very common imprecation concerning the 
most beautiful of human features : which, if it 
were heard above, only once out of every fifty 
thousand times that it is uttered below, would 
render blindness as common a disorder as 
measles. — Oliver Twist, Clmp. 16. 



ESSAY— Pott's mode of preparing- an. 

" They appeared in the form of a copious re- 
view of a work on Chinese metaphysics, sir," 
said Pott. 

" Oh," observed Mr. Pickwick ; " from your 
pen, I hope ? " 

" From the pen of my critic, sir," rejoined 
Pott, with dignity. 

*' An abstruse subject, I should conceive," 
said Mr. Pickwick. 

"Very, sir," responded Pott, looking in- 
tensely sage. " He crammed for it, to use a 
technical but expressive term ; he read up for 
the subject, at my desire, in the Encyclopcedia 
Bf itannica." 

" Indeed ! " said Mr. Pickwick ; " I was not 
aware that that valuable work contained any 
information respecting Chinese metaphysics." 

" He read, sir," rejoined Pott, laying his hand 
on Mr. Pickwick's knee, and looking around 
with a smile of intellectual superiority, " he 
read for metaphysics under the letter M, and 
for China under the letter C, and combined his 
information, sir !" — Pickwick, Chap. 51. 

ETERNITY. 

Alas, alas ! that the few bubbles on the sur- 
face of eternity — all that Heaven wills we should 
see of that dark, deep stream — should be so 
lightly scattered ! — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6. 

EVIDENCE— Of a witness. 

I remember, too, how hard her mistress was 
upon her (she was a servant of all work), and 
with what a cruel pertinacity that piece of Vir- 
tue spun her thread of evidence double by in- 
tertwisting it with the sternest thread of con- 
struction. — Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 18. 

EVIDENCE— Circumstantial. 

In his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting 
down in the damp to such an insane extent, 
that when his coat was taken off to be dried at 
the kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on 
his trousers would have hanged him if it had been 
a capital offence. — Great Expectatiojis, Chap. 6. 

EVENING— The influences of a summer. 

No doubt there are a great many things to 
be said appropriate to a summer evening, and 
no doubt they are best said in a low voice, as 
being most suitable to the peace and serenity 
of the hour ; long pauses, too, at times, and 
then an earnest word or so, and then another 
interval of silence, which, somehow, does not 
seem like silence, either ; and perhaps now and 
then a hasty turning away of the head, or droop- 
ing of the eyes towards the ground, all these 
minor circumstances, with a disinclination to 
have candles introduced and a tendency to con- 
fuse hours with minutes, are doubtless mere in- 
fluences of the time, as many lovely lips can 
clearly \A%'(\iy.— Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 49. 

EVENING— A summer Sunday. 

It was a hot summer Sunday evening. The 
residence in the centre of the habitable globe, 
at all times stuffed and close as if it had an in- 
curable cold in its head, was that evening par- 
ticularly stifling. The bells of the churches 
had done their worst in the way of clanging 
among the unmelodious echoes of the streets, 
and the lighted windows of the churches hud 



EVENING 



174 



EXAGGERATION 



ceased to be yellow in the gray dusk, and had 
died out opaque black. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 24. 

EVENING— In the city. 

The City looked unpromising enough, as 
Bella made her way along its gritty streets. 
Most of its money-mills were slackening sail, 
or had left off grinding for the day. The mas- 
ter-millers had already departed, and the jour- 
neymen M^ere departing. There was a jaded 
aspect on the business lanes and courts, and 
the very payements had a weary appearance, 
confused by the tread of a million of feet. 
There must be hours of night to temper down 
the day's distraction of so feverish a place. 
As yet the worry of the newly-stopped whirling 
and grinding on the part of the money -mills 
seemed to linger in the air, and the quiet was 
more like the prostration of a spent giant than 
the repose of one who was renewing his strength. 
Our MiUual Friend, Book III, Chap. 16. 

EVENING— in London— A dusty. 

A gray, dusty, withered evening in London 
city has not a hopeful aspect. The closed 
warehouses and offices have an air of death 
about them, and the national dread of color 
has an ,'*ir of mourning. The towers and 
steeples of the many house-encompassed 
churches, dark and dingy as the sky that 
seems descending on them, are no relief to the 
general gloom ; a sun-dial on a church-wall 
has the look, in its useless black shade, of hav- 
ing failed in its business enterprise and stopped 
payment forever ; melancholy waifs and strays 
of housekeepers and porters sweep melancholy 
waifs and strays of papers and pins into the 
kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and 
strays explore them, searching and stooping and 
poking for anything to sell. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 15. 

EVENING— In tlie spring-time. 

It was a lovely evening, in the spring-time of 
the year ; and in the soft stillness of the twi- 
light, all nature was very calm and beautiful. 
The day had been fine and warm ; but at the 
coming on of night the air grew cool, and in 
the mellowing distance, smoke was rising gently 
from the cottage chimneys. There were a thou- 
sand pleasant scents diffused around, from 
young leaves and fresh buds ; the cuckoo had 
been singing all day long, and was but just now 
hushed ; ihe smell of earth newly upturned, first 
breath of hope to the first laborer, after his gar- 
den withered, was fragrant in the evening breeze. 
It was a time when most men cherish good re- 
solves, and sorrow for the wasted past ; when 
most men, looking on the shadows, as they 
gather, think of that evening which must close 
on all, and that to-morrow which has none be- 
yond. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 20. 

EVENING— An autumn. 

A moment, and its glory was no more. The 
sun went down beneath the long dark lines of 
hill and cloud which piled up in the west an 
airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement 
on battlement ; the light was all withdrawn ; the 
shining church turned cold and dark ; the stream 
forgot to smile ; the birds were silent ; and the 
gloom of winter dwelt on everything. 



An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter 
branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in J 
skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The ■ 
withering leaves, no longer quiet, hurried to and ■ 
fro, in search of shelter from its chill pursuit ; 
the laborer unyoked his horses, and with head 
bent down, trudged briskly home beside them ; 
and from the cottage windows lights began to 
glance and wink upon the darkening fields. 

Then the village forge came out in all its 
bright importance. The lusty bellows roared 
Ha, ha ! to the clear fire, which roared in turn, 
and bade the shining sparks dance gaily to the 
merry clinking of the hammers on the anvil. 
The gleaming iron, in its emulation, sparkled 
too, and shed its red-hot gems around profusely. 
The strong smith and his men dealt such strokes 
upon their work as made even the melancholy 
night rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark 
face as it hovered about the door and windows, 
peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a 
dozen loungers. As to this idle company, there 
they stood, spell-bound by the place, and, cast- 
ing now and then a glance upon the darkness 
in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at 
ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in : 
no more disposed to tear themselves away, than 
if they had been born to cluster round the blaz- 
ing hearth like so many crickets. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

EXAGGERATION— Of Caleb Plummer. 

" So you were out in the rain last night, father, 
in your beautiful new great-coat," said Caleb's 
daughter. 

" In my beautiful new great-coat," answered 
Caleb, glancing towards a clothes-line in the 
room, on which the sackcloth garment, previous- 
ly described, was carefully hung up to dry. 

'* How glad I am you bought it, father ! " 

"And of such a tailor, too," said Caleb. 
" Quite a fashionable tailor. It's too good for 
me." 

The Blind Girl rested from her work, and 
laughed with delight. " Too good, father ! 
What can be too good for you ?" 

" I'm half ashamed to wear it though," said 
Caleb, watching the effect of what he said, upon 
her brightening face, " upon my word ! When 
I hear the boys and people say behind me, 
' Hal-loa ! Here's a swell ! ' I don't know which 
way to look. And when the beggar wouldn't 
go away last night ; and, when I said I was a 
very common man, said ' No, your Honor ! 
Bless your Honor, don't say that !' I was quite 
ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn't a right to 
wear it." 

Happy Blind Girl ! How meriy she was in 
her exultation ! 

" I see you, father," she said, clasping her 
hands, "as plainly, as if I had the eyes I never 
want when you are with me.« A blue coat — " 

" Bright blue," said Caleb. 

" Yes, yes 1 Bright blue ! " exclaimed the girl, 
turning up her radiant face ; " the color I can 
just remember in the blessed sky ! You told me 
it was blue before ! A bright blue coat — " 

" Made loose to the figure," suggested Caleb. 

" Yes ! loose to the figure ! " cried the Blind 
Girl, laughing heartily; "and in it, you, dear 
father, with your merry eye, your smiling face, 
your free step, and your dark hair — looking 50 
young and handsome !" 



EXECUTION 



175 



EXECUTION 



"Halloa! Halloa!" said Caleb. "I shall 
be vain, presently." 

"/ think you are, already," cried the Blind 
Girl, pointing at him, in her glee. " I know 
you, father ! Ha, ha, ha ! I've found you out, 
you see ! " 

How different the picture in her mind, from 
Caleb, as he sat observing her ! She had spoken 
of his free step. She was right in that. For 
years and years, he had never once crossed that 
threshold at his own slow pace, but with a foot- 
fall counterfeited for her ear ; and never had he, 
when his heart was heaviest, forgotten the light 
tread that was to render hers so cheerful and 
courageous ! 

Heaven knows ! But I think Caleb's vague 
bewilderment of manner may have half origin- 
ated in his having confused himself about him- 
self and everything around him, for the love of 
his Blind Daughter. How could the little man 
be otherwise than bewildered, after laboring for 
so many years to destroy his own identity, and 
that of all the objects that had any bearing on it ? 

" There we are," said Caleb, falling back a 
pace or two to form the better judgment of his 
work ; " as near the real thing as sixpenn'orth 
of halfpence is to sixpence. What a pity that 
the whole front of the house opens at once I If 
there was only a staircase in it, now, and regu- 
lar doors to the rooms to go in at ! But that's 
the worst of my calling, I'm always deluding 
myself, and swindling myself." 

" You are speaking quite softly. You are not 
tired, father ? " 

"Tired," echoed Caleb, with a great burst of 
animation, "what should tire me. Bertha? /was 
never tired. What does it mean ? " 

To give the greater force to his words, he 
checked himself in an involuntary imitation of 
two half-length stretching and yawning figures 
on the mantel-shelf, who were represented as in 
one eternal state of weariness from the waist 
upwards ; and hummed a fragment of a song. 
It was a Bacchanalian song, something about a 
Sparkling Bowl. He sang it with an assump- 
tion of a Devil-may-care voice, that made his 
face a thousand times more meagre and more 
thoughtful than ever. 

Cricket on the Hearth^ Chap. 2. 

EXECUTION-The gallows. 

The time wore on. The noises in the streets 
became less frequent by degrees, until silence 
was scarcely broken save by the bells in church 
towers, marking the progress — softer and more 
stealthy while the city slumbered — of that Great 
Watcher with the hoary head, who never sleeps 
or rests. In the brief interval of darkness and 
repose which feverish towns enjoy, all busy 
sounds were hushed ; and those who awoke from 
dreams lay listening in their beds, and longed 
for dawn, and wishad the dead of the night were 
past. 

Into the street outside the jail's main wall, 
workmen came straggling at this solemn hour, 
in groups of two or three, and meeting in the 
centre, cast their tools upon the ground and 
spoke in whispers. Others soon issued from the 
jail itself, bearing on their shoulders planks and 
beams ; these materials being all brought forth, 
the rest bestirred themselves, and the dull sound 
of hammers began to echo through the still- 
ness. 



Here and there among this knot of laborers, 
one, with a lantern or a smoky link, stood by to 
light his fellows at their work ; and by its doubt- 
ful aid, some might be dimly seen taking up the 
pavement of the road, while others held great 
upright posts, or fixed them in the holes thus 
made for their reception. Some dragged slowly 
on towards the rest an empty cart, which they 
brought rumbling from the prison yard ; while 
others erected strong barriers across the street. 
All were busily engaged. Their dusky figures 
moving to and fro, at that unusual hour, so 
active and so silent, might have been taken for 
those of shadowy creatures toiling at midnight 
on some ghostly, unsubstantial work, which, 
like themselves, would vanish with the first 
gleam of day, and leave but morning mist and 
vapor. 

While it was yet dark, a few lookers-on col- 
lected, who had plainly come there for the pur- 
pose and intended to remain : even those who 
had to pass the spot on their way to some other 
place, lingered yet, as though the attraction of 
that were irresistible. Meanwhile the noise of 
saw and mallet went on briskly, mingled with 
the clattering of boards on the stone pavement 
of the road, and sometimes with the workmen's 
voices as they called to one another. Whenever 
the chimes of the neighboring church were heard 
— and that was every quarter of an hour — a 
strange sensation, instantaneous and indescrib- 
able, but perfectly obvious, seemed to pervade 
them all. 

Gradually a faint brightness appeared in the 
east, and the air, which had been very warm 
all through the night, felt cool and chilly. 
Though there was no daylight yet, the darkness 
was diminished, and the stars looked pale. The 
prison, which had been a mere black mass with 
little shape or form, put on its usual aspect ; and 
ever and anon a solitary watchman could be 
seen upon its roof, stopping to look down upon 
the preparations in the street. This man, from 
forming, as it were, a part of the jail, and know- 
ing, or being supposed to know, all that was 
passing within, became an object of as much 
interest, and was as eagerly looked for, and as 
awfully pointed out, as if he had been a spirit. 

By-and-bye, the feeble light grew stronger, and 
the houses, with their sign boards and inscrip- 
tions, stood plainly out, in the dull gray morning. 
Heavy stage wagons crawled from the inn -yard 
opposite, and travellers peeped ' out ; and as 
they rolled sluggishly away, cast many a back- 
ward look towards the jail. And now the sun's 
first beams came glancing into the street ; and 
the night's work, which, in its various stages and 
in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken 
a hundred shapes, wore its own proper form — a 
scaffold and a gibbet. 

As the warmth of cheerful day began to shed 
itself upon the scanty crowd, the murmur of 
tongues was heard, shutters were thrown open 
and blinds drawn up, and those who had slept 
in rooms over against the prison, where pl.ices 
to see the execution were let at high prices, rose 
hastily from their beds. In some of the houses, 
people were busy taking out the window sashes 
for the better accommodation of spectators ; in 
others, the spectators were already seated, and 
beguiling the time with cards, or drinks, or jokes 
among themselves. Some had purchased seats 
upon the house-tops, and were already crawling 



EXECUTION 



176 



EXECUTION 



to their stations from parapet and garret win- 
dow. Some were yet bargaining for good places, 
and stood in them in a state of indecision ; 
gazing at the slowly-swelling crowd, and at the 
workmen as they rested listlessly against the 
scaffold — affecting to listen with indifference to 
the proprietor's eulogy of the commanding view 
his house afforded, and the surpassing cheapness 
of his terms. 

A fairer morning never shone. From the 
roofs and upper stories of these buildings, the 
spires of city churches and the great cathedral 
dome were visible, rising up beyond the prison, 
into the blue sky, and clad in the color of light 
summer clouds, and showing in the clear atmos- 
phere their every scrap of tracery and fret-work, 
and every niche and loophole. All was bright- 
ness and promise, excepting in the street below, 
into which (for it yet lay in shadow) the eye 
looked down as into a dark trench, where, in 
the midst of so much life, and hope, and re- 
newal of existence, stood the terrible instrument 
of death. It seemed as if the very sun forebore 
to look upon it. 

But it was better, grim and sombre in the 
shade, than when, the day being more advanced, 
it stood confessed in the full glare and glory of 
the sun, with its black paint blistering, and its 
nooses dangling in the light like loathsome gar- 
lands. It was better in the solitude and gloom 
of midnight, with a few forms clustering about it, 
than in the freshness and the stir of morning, 
the centre of an eager crowd. It was better 
haunting the street like a spectre, when men 
were in their beds, and influencing perchance 
the city's dreams, than braving the broad day, 
and thrusting its obscene presence upon their 
waking senses. 

Five o'clock had struck — six — seven — and 
eighth Along the two main streets at either end 
of the cross-way, a living stream had now set in, 
rolling towards the marts of gain and business. 
Carts, coaches, wagons, trucks, and barrows, 
forced a passage through the outskirts of the 
throng, and clattered onward in the same direc- 
tion. Some of these, which were public. convey- 
ances and had come from a short distance in the 
country, stopped ; and the driver pointed to the 
gibbet with his whip, though he might have 
spared himself the pains, for the heads of all the 
passengers were turned that way without his 
help, and the coach windows were stuck full of 
staring eyes. In some of the carts and wagons, 
women might be seen, glancing fearfully at the 
same unsightly thing ; and even little children 
were held up above the people's heads to see 
what kind of toy a gallows was, and learn how 
men were hanged. 

Two rioters were to die before the prison, who 
had been concerned in the attack upon it ; and 
one directly afterwards in Bloomsbury Square. 

***** 

As the hour approached, a buzz and hum arose, 
which, deepening every moment, soon swelled 
into a roar, and seemed to fill the air. No 
words or even voices could be distinguished in 
this clamor, nor did they speak much to each 
other ; though such as were better informed 
upon the topic than the rest, would tell their 
neighbors, perhaps, that they might know the 
hangman when he came out, by his being the 
shorter one : and that the man who was to suffer 
with him was named Hugh : and that it was 



Barnaby Rudge who would be hanged in 
Bloomsbury Square. 

The hum grew, as the time drew near, so 
loud, that those who were at the windows could 
not hear the church-clock strike, though it was 
close at hand. Nor had they any need to hear 
it, either, for they could see it in the people's 
faces. So surely as another quarter chimed, 
there was a movement in the crowd — as if 
something had passed over it — as if the light 
upon them had been changed — in which the 
fact was readable as on a brazen dial, figured 
by a giant's hand. 

Three quarters past eleven ! The murmur now 
was deafening, yet every man seemed mute. 
Look where you would among the crowd, you 
saw strained eyes and lips compressed ; it would 
have been difficult for the most vigilant observer 
to point this way or that, and say that yonder 
man had cried out. It were as easy to detect 
the motion of lips in a sea-shell. 

Three quarters past eleven ! Many specta- 
tors who had retired from the windows came 
back refreshed, as though their watch had just 
begun. Those who had fallen asleep roused 
themselves ; and every person in the crowd 
made one last effort to better his position — 
which caused a press against the sturdy barriers 
that made them bend and yield like twigs. 
The officers, who until now had kept together, 
fell into their several positions, and gave the 
words of command. Swords were drawn, mus- 
kets shouldered, and the bright steel, winding 
its way among the crowd, gleamed and glittered 
in the sun like a river. Along this shining path 
two men came hurrying on, leading a horse, 
which was speedily harnessed to the cart at the 
prison door. Then, a profound silence replaced 
the tumult that had so long been gathering, and 
a breathless pause ensued. Every window was 
now choked up with heads ; the house-tops teem- 
ed with people — clinging to chimneys, peering 
over gable-ends, and holding on where the sud- 
den loosening of any brick or stone would dash 
them down into the street. The church-tower, 
the church-roof, the church-yard, the prison- 
leads, the very water-spouts and lamp-posts — 
every inch of room — swarm.ed with human life. 

At the first stroke of twelve the prison-bell 
began to toll. Then the roar — mingled now 
with cries of "Hats off!" and "Poor fellows !" 
and, from some specks in the great concourse, 
with a shriek or groan — burst forth again. It 
was terrible to see — if any one in that distrac- 
tion of excitement could have seen — the world 
of eager eyes, all strained upon the scaffold and 
the beam. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 77. 

EXECUTION OF FAGrIN— HoTirs preced- 
ing" the. 
He sat down on a stone bench opposite the 
door, which served for seat and bedstead ; and 
casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground, 
tried to collect his thoughts. After a while, he 
began to remember a few disjointed fragments 
of what the judge had said : though it had 
seemed to him, at the time, that he could not 
hear a word. These gradually fell into their 
proper places, and by degrees suggested more : 
so that in a little time he had the whole, almost 
as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck, 
till he was dead — that was the end. To be 
hanged by the neck till he was dead. 




Fagan, the Jew, in the Condemned Cell. 



176 



EXECUTION 



177 



EXPRESSION 



As it came on very dark, he began to think 
of all the men he had known who had died 
upon the scaffold ; some of them through his 
means. They rose up in such quick succession, 
that he could hardly count them. He had seen 
some of them die — and had joked, too, because 
they died with prayers upon their lips. With 
what a rattling noise the drop went down ; and 
how suddenly they changed, from strong and 
vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes ! 

Some of them might have inhabited that very 
cell — sat upon that very spot. It was very 
dark; why didn't they bring a light? The cell 
had been built for many years. Scores of men 
must have passed their last hours there. It 
was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead 
bodies — the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, 
the faces that he knew, even beneath that hid- 
eous veil. — Light, light ! 

At length, when his hands were raw with 
beating against the heavy door and walls, two 
men appeared : one bearing a candle, which 
he thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against 
the wall : the other dragging in a mattress on 
which to pass the night ; for the prisoner was 
to be left alone no more. 

Then came night — dark, dismal, silent night. 
Other watchers are glad to hear the church- 
clocks strike, for they tell of life and coming 
day. To the Jew they brought despair. The 
boom of every iron bell came laden with the 
one, deep, hollow sound — Death. What availed 
the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which 
penetrated even there, to him ? It was another 
form of knell, with mockery added to the warn- 
ing. 

The day passed off— day ! — there was no 
day ; it was gone as soon as come — and night 
came on again ; night so long, and yet so short ; 
long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleet- 
ing hours. At one time he raved and blas- 
phemed, and at another howled and tore his 
hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion 
had come to pray beside him, but he had driven 
them away with curses. They renewed their 
charitable efforts, and he beat them off. 

Saturday night. He had only one night 
more to live. And as he thought of this, the 
day broke — Sunday. 

It was not until the night of this last awful 
day, that a withering sense of his helpless, des- 
perate state came in its full intensity upon his 
blighted soul ; not that he had ever held any 
defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he 
had never been able to consider more than the 
dim probability of dying so soon. He had 
spoken little to either of the two men who re- 
lieved each other in their attendance upon 
him , and they, for their parts, made no effort 
to rouse his attention. He had sat there, awake, 
but dreaming. Now, he started up, every min- 
ute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin, 
hurried to and fro, in such a paroxysm of fear 
and wrath that even they — used to such sights 
— recoiled from him with horror. He grew so 
terrible, at last, in all the tortures of his evil 
conscience, that one man could not bear to sit 
there, eying him alone ; and so the two kept 
watch together. 

He cowered down upon his stone bed, and 
thought of the past. He had been wounded 
with some missiles from the crowd on the day 
of his capture, and his head was bandaged 



with a linen cloth. His red hair hung down 
upon his bloodless face ; his beard was torn, 
and twisted into knots ; his eyes shone with a 
terrible light ; his unwashed flesh crackled with 
the fever that burnt him up. Eight — nine — 
ten. If it was not a trick to frighten him, and 
those were the real hours treading on each 
other's heels, where would he be when they 
came round again ? Eleven ! Another struck 
before the voice of the previous hour had ceased 
to vibrate. At eight, he would be the only 
mourner in his own funeral train ; at eleven — 
Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have 
hidden so much misery and such unspeakable 
anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often, 
and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never 
held so dread a spectacle as that. The few who 
lingered as they passed, and wondered what the 
man was doing who was to be hung to-morrow, 
would have slept but ill that night, if they could 
have seen him. 

A great multitude had already assembled ; 
the windows were filled with people, smoking 
and playing cards to beguile the time ; the 
crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and joking. 
Everything told of life and animation, but one 
dark cluster of objects in the very centre of all 
— the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and 
all ♦:he hi leous apparatus of death. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 52. 

EXCITEKENT-Mental. 

His little black eyes sparkled electrically. 
His very hair seemed to sparkle, as he rough- 
ened it. He was in that highly-charged state 
that one might have expected to draw sparks 
and snaps from him by presenting a knuckle to 
any part of his figure. 

Unle Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 32. 

EXPECTORATION-In America. 

Chollop sat smoking and improving the cir- 
cle, without making any attempts either to con- 
verse, or to take leave ; apparently laboring un- 
der the not uncommon delusion, that for a free 
and enlightened citizen of the United States to 
convert another man's house into a spittoon for 
two or three hours together, was a delicate at- 
tention, full of interest and politeness, of which 
nobody could ever tire. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 33. 

EXPRESSION— A triumphant. 

The hard-headed man looked triumphantly 
round, as if he had been very much contradicted 
by somebody, but had got the better of him at 
\2L%\..—Pickivick, Chap. 6. 

EXPRESSION-A fierce. 

The old lady, quite unconscious that she had 
spoken above a whisper, drew herself up, and 
looked carving-knives at the hard-headed delin. 
quent. — Pickwick, Chap. 6. 

EXPRESSION-Of feature (Joe)» 

" Supper's ready, sir," was the prompt reply. 

"Have you just come here, sir?" inquired 
Mr. Tupman, with a piercing look. 

"Just," replied the fat boy. 

Mr. Tupman looked at him very hand again ; 
but there was not a. wink in his ey.e,. op a curve 



EXPRESSION 



178 



BYES 



ia his face ; there was not a gleam of mirth, or 
Jiaything but feeding in his whole visage. 

Pickwick, Chap. 8. 

EXPRESSION— An unhappy. 

Mr. Winkle responded with a forced smile, 
and took up the spare gun with an expression 
of countenance which a metaphysical rook, im- 
pressed with a foreboding of his approaching 
death by violence, may be supposed to assume. 
It might have been keenness, but it looked re- 
markably like misery. — Pickwick, Chap. 7. 

EXPRESSION-A weighty. 

Amidst the general hum of mirth and conver- 
sation that ensued, there was a little man with 
a puffy Say-nothing- to-me,or-I']l-contradict-you 
sort of countenance, who remained very quiet ; 
occasionally looking round him when the con- 
versation slackened, as if he contemplated put- 
ting in something very weighty ; and now and 
then bursting into a short cough of inexpressible 
grandeur. — Pickwick, Chap. 7. 

EXPRESSION. 

Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon 
his own hinges, as he delivered this opinion. 
Battle of Life, Chap. i. 

EXPRESSION— A convivial. 

As they drank with a great relish, and were 
naturally of a red-nosed, pimple-faced, convivial 
look, their presence rather increased than de- 
tracted from that decided appearance of com- 
fort which was the great characteristic of the 
party. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 49. 

EXPRESSION-After sleep. 

Here Bazzard awoke himself by his own 
snoring ; and, as is usual in such cases, sat 
apoplectically staring at vacancy, as defying 
vacancy to accuse him of having been asleep. 
Edwin Drood, Chap. ii. 

EXPRESSION-The imitation of. 

Any strongly marked expression of face on 
the part of a chief actor in a scene of great in- 
terest, to whom many eyes are directed, will be 
unconsciously imitated by the spectators. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 3. 

EXPRESSION-Of dress. 

" He is the most friendly and amenable crea- 
ture in existence ; and as for advice ! — But no- 
body knows what that man's mind is, except 
myself." 

My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her 
head, as if she smoothed defiance of the whole 
world out of the one, and shook it out of the 
other. — David Copperfield, Chap. 14. 

EXPRESSION— Of benevolence. 

As to the General, he observed, with his usual 
benevolence, that being one of the company, he 
wouldn't interfere in the transaction on any 
account ; so he appropriated the rocking-chair 
to himself, and looked at the prospect, like a 
good Samaritan waiting for a traveller. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 21. 

EXPRESSION— A concentrated. 

With the quick observation of his class, Ste- 
pfccn Idlaclcpool bent his attentive face — his face, 



which, like the faces of many of his order, by 
dint of long working with eyes and hands in the 
midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the 
concentrated look with which we are familiar in 
the countenances of th6 deaf — the better to hear 
what she asked him. 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 12. 

EYES. 

But his eyes, too close together, were not so 
nobly set in his head as those of the king of 
beasts are in his, and they were sharp rather 
than bright — pointed weapons with little surface 
to betray them. They had no depth or change ; 
they glittered, and they opened and shut. So 
far, and waiving their use to himself, a clock- 
maker could have made a better pair. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. i. 

EYES— Sinister. 

He had eyes of a surface black, with no depth 
in the color or form, and much too near together 
— as if they were afraid of being found out in 
something, singly, if they kept too far apart. 
They had a sinister expression, under an old 
cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and 
over a great muffler for the chin and throat, 
which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. 
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 3. 

EYE— A solemn. 

It made him hot to think what the Chief But- 
ler's opinion of him would have been, if that 
illustrious personage could have plumbed with 
that heavy eye of his the stream of his medita- 
tions. — Little Dorrit, Book II,, Chap. 18. 

EYES— Of Mr. Crisparkle. 

He had the eyes of a microscope and a tele- 
scope combined, when they were unassisted. 
Edwin Drood, Chap. 6. 

EYES— Inexpressive. 

Mr. Charles Kitterbell was a small, sharp, 
spare man, with a very large head, and a broad, 
good-humored countenance. He looked like a 
feded giant, with the head and face partially re- 
stored ; and he had a cast in his eye which ren- 
dered it quite impossible for any one with whom 
he conversed to know where he was looking. 
His eyes appeared fixed on the wall, and he was 
staring you out of countenance : in short, there 
was no catching his eye, and perhaps it is a mer- 
ciful dispensation of Providence that such eyes 
are not catching. — Tales, Chap. il. 

EYES— Inquisitive. 

A tall, thin, bony man, with an interrogative 
nose, and little restless perking eyes, which ap- 
pear to have been given him for the sole pur- 
pose of peeping into other people's affairs with. 
Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 4. 

EYES-Of Ruth. 

They walked up and down three or four times, 
speaking about Tom and his mysterious employ- 
ment. Now that was a very natural and in- 
nocent subject, surely. Then why, whenever 
Ruth lifted up her eyes, did she let them fall again 
immediately, and seek the uncongenial pave-: 
ment of the court? They were not such eyes 
as shun the light : they were not such eyes as 
require to be hoarded to enhance their value. 



179 



FACES 



They were much too precious and too genuine 
to stand in need of arts like those. Somebody 
.nust have been looking at them ! 

Martin Chuzzlettnt, Chap. 45. 



There was no flour on Ruth's hands when she 
received them in the triangular parlor, but there 
were pleasant smiles upon her face, and a crowd 
of welcomes shining out of every smile, and 
gleaming in her bright eyes. By-the-bye, how 
bright they were 1 Looking into them for but 
a moment, when you took her hand, you saw, in 
each, such a capital miniature of yourself, repre- 
senting you as such a restless, flashing, eager, 
brilliant little fellow — 

Ah ! if you could only have kept them for 
your own miniature ! But, wicked, roving, rest- 
less, too impartial eyes, it was enough for any 
one to stand before them, and straightway, there 
he danced and sparkled quite as merrily as you ! 
Martin Chuzzlewity Chap. 39. 

EYE— Its expression. 

He gave me only a look with his aiming eye 
— no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders 
may be done with an eye by hiding it. 

Great Expectations^ Chap. 10. 

EYES— Bright. 

Bright eyes they were. Eyes that would bear 
a world of looking in, before their depth was 
fathomed. Dark eyes, that reflected back the 
eyes which searched them ; not flashingly, or at 
the owner's will, but with a clear, calm, honest, 
patient radiance, claiming kindred with that light 
which Heaven called into being. Eyes that 
were beautiful and true, and beaming with Hope. 
With Hope so young and fresh ; with Hope so 
buoyant, vigorous, and bright, despite the twenty 
years of work and poverty on which they had 
looked, that they became a voice to Trotty 
Veck, and said : " I think we have some busi- 
ness here — a little ! " 

Christmas Chime s^ 1st quarter. 

EYE— Its devilish expression. 

Witch Two laughs at us. Witch Three 
scowls at us. Witch sisterhood all stitch, stitch. 
First Witch has a red circle round each eye. I 
fancy it like the beginning of the development 
of a perverted diabolical halo, and that, when it 
spreads all round her head, she will die in the 
odor of devilry. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 5. 

EYE— A learned. 

As Mr. Pickwick said this, he looked ency- 
clopaedias at Mr. Peter Magnus. 

Pickwick^ Chap. 24. 

EYE— An expressive. 

He had always one eye wide open, and one 
eye nearly shut ; and the one eye nearly shut 
«ras always the expressive eye. 

Cricket on the Hearth^ Chap. i. 



F 



PACES— Their expression. 

He had that rather wild, strained, seared 
marking about the eyes, which may be observed 
in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of 
Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, 
under various disguises of Art, through the 
portraits of every Drinking Age. 

H* «r ^ 3fS SfC 

Shouldering itself towards the visage of the 
Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's 
Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver 
might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of 
wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at 
the sun from among a rank garden-full of flar- 
ing companions. 

Stryver, in Tale of Two Cities^ Chap. 5. 

Mr. Pancks was making a very porcupine of 
himself by sticking his hair up, in the contem- 
plation of this state of accounts. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13. 



Mrs. General stopped, and added internally 
for the setting of her face, " Papa, potatoes, 
poultry, prunes, and prism." 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16. 

Mr. Pancks listened with such interest that 
regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe, 
he put it in the grate among the fire-irons, and 
occupied his hands during the whole recital in 
so erecting the loops and hooks of hair all over 
his head, that he looked, when it came to a con^ 
elusion, like a journeyman Hamlet in conversa- 
tion with his father's spirit. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13. 

His villainous countenance was a regular 
stamped receipt for cruelty. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 3. 



With a face that might have been carved out 
of lignum 7Jitce, for anything that appeared to 
the contrary. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 14. 



At the word Suspect, she turned her eyes 
momentarily upon her son, with a dark frown, 
as if the sculptor of old Egypt had indented 
it in the hard granite face, to frown for ages. 
Mrs. Clennam, in Little Dorrit, Book!, CJiap. 5, 



A pale, puffy-faced, dark-haired person of 
thirty, with big dark eyes that wholly wanted 
lustre, and a dissatisfied, doughy complexion, 
that seemed to ask to be sent to the baker's. 
A gloomy person, with tangled locks, and a 
general air of having been reared under the 
shadow of that baleful tree of Java which has 
given shelter to more lies than the whole botan- 
ical kingdom. — Edwin Drood, Chap. ii. 



His color has turned to a livid white, and 
ominous marks have come to light about his 
nose, as if the finger of the very devil himself 
had, within the last few moments, touched it 
here and there. 
« ♦ « * * 

Here, too, the bride's aunt and next relation ; 
a widowed female of a Medusa sort, in a stony 
cap, glaring petrifaction at her fellow-creatures. 



FACES 



180 



FACES 



Here, too, the bride's trustee ; an oilcake-fed 
style of business-gentleman with mooney spec- 
tacles, and an object of much interest. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. lo. 



Mrs. Varden slightly raised her hands, shook 
her head, and looked at the ground, as though 
she saw straight through the globe, out at the 
other end, and into the immensity of space be- 
yond. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 27. 



" To be plain with you, friend, you don't 
carry in your countenance a letter of recom- 
mendation." 

" It's not my wish," said the traveller. " My 
humor is to be avoided." 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 2. 



Mr. Willet drew back from his guest's ear, 
and without any visible alteration of features, 
chuckled thrice audibly. This nearest approach 
to a laugh in which he ever indulged (and that 
but seldom, and only on extreme occasions) 
never even curled his lip or effected the small- 
est change in — no, not so much as a slight wag- 
ging of — his great fat, double chin, which at 
these times, as at all others, remained a perfect 
desert in the broad map of his face ; one change- 
less, dull, tremendous blank. 

Barnaby Rudge^ Chap. 29. 



His imperturbable face has been as inexpres- 
sive as his rusty clothes. One could not even 
say he has been thinking all this while. He 
has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor 
attention nor abstraction. He has shown noth- 
ing but his shell. As easily might the tone of 
a delicate musical instrument be inferred from 
its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from 
his case. — Bleak House, Chap. 11. 



" Here, sir," replied Job, presenting himself 
on the staircase. We have described him, by- 
the-bye, as having deeply sunken eyes, in the 
best of times. In his present state of want and 
distress, he looked as if those features had gone 
out of town altogether. — Pickwick, Chap. 42. 



Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable 
shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, 
but had a dismal Hght about it, like a bad lob- 
ster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or fero- 
cious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to 
look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its 
ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stir- 
red, as if by breath or hot air ; and, though the 
eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motion- 
less. That, and its livid color, made it horrible ; 
but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face, 
and beyond its control, rather than a part of its 
own expression. — Christinas Carol, Stave I. 

A gracious change had come over Benjamin 
from head to foot. He was much broader, much 
redder, much more cheerful, and much jollier in 
all respects. It seemed as if his face had been 
tied up in a knot before, and was now untwisted 
and smoothed out. — Battle of Life, Chap. 2. 



He was tall, thin, and pale ; he always fancied 
he had a severe pain somewhere or other, and 
his face invariably wore a pinched, screwed-up 



expression : he looked, indeed, like a man who 
had got his feet in a tub of exceedingly hot 
water, against his will. — Tales, Chap. I. 



" I told you not to bang the door so ! " repeat- 
ed Dumps, with an expression of countenance 
like the knave of clubs, in convulsions. 

Tales, Chap. ii. 

Such a thoroughly Irish face, that it seemed 
as if he ought, as a matter of right and principle, 
to be in rags, and could have no sort of business 
to be looking cheerfully at anybody out of a 
whole suit of clothes. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17. 



Miss Sarah Pock»;t, whom I now saw to be a 
little, dry, brown, corrugated old woman, with a 
small face, that might have been made of walnut- 
shells, and a large mouth, like a cat's without 
the whiskers. — Greet Expectations, Chap. ii. 



All his features seemed, with delight, to be 
going up into his forehead, and never coming 
back again any more. 

Miirtin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13. 



Her severe face had no thread of relaxation 
in it, by which any explorer could have been 
guided to the gloomy labyrinth of her thoughts. 
L',ttle Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5. 



Mrs. Meagles was like Mr. Meagles, comely 
and healthy, with a pleasant English face which 
had been looking at homely things for five-and- 
fifty years or more, and shone with a bright re- 
flection of them. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 2. 



There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues 
under the sun, at all like the whiteness of Mon- 
sieur Rigaud's face as it was then. Neither is 
there any expression of the human countenance 
at all like that expression, in every little line of 
which the frightened heart is seen to beat. Both 
are conventionally compared with death ; but the 
difference is the whole deep gulf between the 
struggle done, and the fight atjts most desper- M 



ate extremity. — Little L^orrit, Book I., CJiap. i. 



" Persons don't make their own faces, and it's 
no more my fault if mine is a good one than it 
is other people's fault if theirs is a bad one." 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 12. 



The expression of a man's face is commonly 
a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech ; 
but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his 
ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch 
of ingenuity could solve. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 3. 



Mr. Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-neck- 
ed, middle-sized man, with no great quantity 
of hair, and what he had, growing on the back 
and sides of his head. His face was stem, and 
mi«ch flushed. If he were really not in the 
habit of drinking rather more than was exactly 
good for him, he might have brought an action 
against his countenance for libel, and have re- 
covered heavy damages. — Oliver Twist, Chap. ii. 

Squeers scowled at him with the worst and 



FACE 



181 



FACE 



most malicious expression of which his face was 
capable — it was a face of remarkable capability, 
too, in that way — and shook his fist stealthily. 

" Coom, coom, schoolmeasther," said John, 
" dinnot make a fool o' thyself ; for if I was to 
sheake mine — only once — thou'd fa' doon wi' the 
wind o' it." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap, 42. 



" I will not look for blushes in such a quar- 
ter," said Miss Squeers, haughtily, "for that 
countenance is a stranger to everything but hig- 
nominiousness and red-faced boldness." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 42. 

He had the special peculiarity of some birds 
of prey, that when he knitted his brow, his ruf- 
fled crest stood highest. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 3. 



What my aunt saw, or did not see, I defy 
the science of physiognomy to have made out, 
without her own consent. I believe there never 
was anybody with such an imperturbable coun- 
tenance when she chose. Her face might have 
been a dead wall on the occasion in question, 
for any light it threw upon her thoughts. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 35. 



Having done the honors of his house in this 
hospitable manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to 
wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, re- 
marking that " cold would never get his muck 
off." He soon returned, greatly improved in 
appearance ; but so rubicund, that I couldn't 
help thinking his face had this in common with 
the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish — that it went 
into the hot water very black and came out very 
red. — David Copperfield, Chap. 3. 



Tom stopping in the street to look at him, 
Mr. Tapley for a moment presented to his view 
an utterly stolid and expressionless face : a per- 
fect dead wall of countenance. But opening 
window after window in it, with astonishing 
rapidity, and lighting them all up as for a gen- 
eral illumination, he repeated. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 48. 



With these parting words, and with a grin 
upon his features altogether indescribable, but 
which seemed to be compounded of every mon- 
strous grimace of which men or monkeys are 
capable, the dwarf slowly retreated and closed 
the door behind him. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 48. 



He was something the worse for it, undenia- 
bly. The thick mist hung in clots upon his 
eyelashes like candied thaw ; and, between the 
fog a»d fire together, there were rainbows in 
his very whiskers. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 



The features of her companion were less easy 
to him. The great broad chin, with creases in 
it large enough to hide a finger in ; the aston- 
ished eyes, that seemed to expostulate with 
themselves for sinking deeper and deeper into 
the yielding fat of the soft face ; the nose, af- 
flicted with that disordered action of its func- 
tions which is generally termed The Snuffles ; 
the short thick throat and laboring chest, with 
other beauties of the like description, though 



calculated to impress the memory, Trotty could 
at first allot to nobody he had ever known ; 
and yet he had some recollection of them too. 
Chimes, ^th qtiarter. 



With that, and with an expression of face in 
which a great number of opposite ingredients, 
such as mischief, cunning, malice, triumph, and 
patient expectation, were all mixed up together 
in a kind of physiognomical punch. Miss Miggs 
composed herself to wait and listen, like some 
fair ogress who had set a trap and was watching 
for a nibble from a plump young traveller. 
Miss Miggs, in Barnaby Rudge, Chap. g. 



Happening to look down into the pit, I saw 
Mr. Guppy, with his hair flattened down upon 
his head, and woe depicted in his face, looking 
up at me. I felt, all through the performance, 
that he never looked at the actors, but con- 
stantly looked at me, and always with a care- 
fully prepared expression of the deepest misery 
and the profoundest dejection. 

Bleak House, Chap. 13. 



With Mr. Gusher, appeared Mr. Quale again. 
Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a 
moist surface, and eyes so much too small for 
his moon of a face that they seemed to have 
been originally made for somebody else, was 
not at first sight prepossessing. 

Bleak House, Chap. 15. 



" By my soul, the countenance of that fellow, 
when he was a boy, was the blackest image of 
perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a 
scarecrow in a field of scoundrels. If I were to 
meet that most unparalleled despot in the streets 
to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree ! " 
Bleak House, Chap. 9. 



The dear little fellow, having recovered his 
animal spirits, was standing upon her most ten- 
der foot, by way of getting his face (which looked 
like a capital O in a red-lettered play-bill) on a 
level with the writing-table. — Tales, Chap. 3. 



The Major, with his complexion like a Stil- 
ton cheese, and his eyes like a prawn's, went 
roving about, perfectly indifferent. 



Every knob in the Captain's face turned 
white with astonishment and indignation ; even 
the red rim on his forehead faded, like a rain- 
bow among the gathering clouds. 

Was Mr. Dombey pleased to see this? He 
testified no pleasure by the relaxation of a 
nerve ; but outward tokens of any kind of feel- 
ing were unusual with him. If any sunbeam 
stole into the room to light the children at their 
play, it never reached his face. He looked on 
so fixedly and coldly, that the warm light van- 
ished even from the laughing eyes of little Flor- 
ence, when, at last, they happened to meet his. 



There was an entire change in the Captain's 
face, as he went up stairs. He wiped his eyes 
with his handkerchief, and he polished the 
bridge of his nose with his sleeve as he had 
done already that morning, but his face was 
absolutely changed. Now, he might have been 
thought supremely happy ; now, he might have 



FACE 



182 



FACE 



been thought sad ; but the kind of gravity that 
sat upon his features was quite new to them, 
and was as great an improvement to them as if 
they had undergone some sublimating process. 

* :{: H: H: H: 

But never in all his life had the Captain's 
face so shone and glistened, as when, at last, he 
sat stationary at the tea-board, looking from 
Florence to Walter, and from Walter to Flor- 
ence. Nor was this effect produced or at all 
heightened by the immense quantity of polish- 
ing he had administered to his face with his 
coat-sleeve during the last half-hour. It was 
solely the effect of his internal emotions. There 
was a glory and delight within the Captain that 
spread itself over his whole visage, and made a 
perfect illumination there. 

* * * The yellow face with its grotesque 
action, and the ferret eyes with their keen, cold, 
wintry gaze. — 'Do7nbey ^ Son. 

FACE— Of Mr. arewgious. 

" Death is not pounds, shillings, and pence." 
His voice was as hard and dry as himself, and 
Fancy might have ground it straight, like him- 
self, into high-dried snuff. And yet, through 
the very limited means of expression that he 
possessed, he seemed to express kindness. If 
Nature had but finished him off, kindness might 
have been recognizable in his face at this mo- 
ment. But if the notches in his forehead 
wouldn't fuse together, and if his face would 
work and couldn't play, what could he do, poor 
man ? — Edwin Drood, Chap. 9. 

FACE— Of Job Trotter. 

Nature's handiwork never was disguised with 
such extraordinary artificial carving as the man 
had overlaid his countenance with, in one mo- 
ment. 

" It won't do. Job Trotter," said Sam. " Come ! 
None o' that 'ere nonsense. You ain't so wery 
'andsome that you can afford to throw avay many 
o' your good looks. Bring them 'ere eyes o' 
your'n back into their proper places, or I'll knock 
'em out of yonr head. Dy'e hear ? " 

* * * Mr. Trotter burst into a regular in- 
undation of tears, and flinging his arms around 
those of Mr. Weller, embraced him closely, in 
an ecstasy of joy. 

" Get off ! " cried Sam, indignant at this pro- 
cess, arid vainly endeavoring to extricate him- 
self from the grasp of his enthusiastic acquaint- 
ance. " Get off, I tell you. What are you crying 
over me for, you portable ingine ? " 

Pickwick, Chap. 23. 

FACE— Of a hypocrite. 

His smooth face had a bloom upon it, like 
ripe wall-fruit. What with his blooming face, 
and that head, and his blue eyes, he seemed to 
be delivering sentiments of rare wisdom and 
virtue. In like manner, his physiognomical ex- 
pression seemed to teem with benignity. No- 
body could have said where the wisdom was, or 
where the virtue was, or where the benignity 
was ; but they all seemed to be somewhere 
about him. — Little Dotrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 

FACE— A frosty. 

It was morning ; and the beautiful Aurora, of 
whom so much hath been written, said, and 



sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tv/eak 
Miss Pecksniff's noae. It was the frolicsome 
custom of the Goddess, in her intercourse with 
the fair Cherry, so to do ; or, in more prosaic 
phrase, the tip of that feature in the sweet girl's 
countenance was always very red at breakfast- 
time. For the most part, indeed, it wore, at 
that season of the day, a scraped and frosty 
look, as if it had been rasped ; while a similar 
phenomenon developed itself in her humor, 
which was then observed to be of a sharp and 
acid quality, as though an extra lemon (figura- 
tively speaking) had been squeezed into the 
nectar of her disposition, and had rather dam- 
aged its flavor. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 6. 

FACE— Of a proud and scornful woman. 

The shadow in which she sat, falling like a 
gloomy veil across her forehead, accorded very 
well with the character of her beauty. One 
could hardly see the face, so still and scornful, 
set off by the arched dark eyebrows, and the 
folds of dark hair, without wondering what its 
expression would be if a change came over it. 
That it could soften or relent, appeared next to 
impossible. That it could deepen into anger or 
any extreme of defiance, and that it must change 
in that direction when it changed at all, would 
have been its peculiar impression upon most 
observers. It was dressed and trimmed into no 
cei^emony of expression. Although not an open 
face, there was no pretence in it. I am self- 
contained and self-reliant ; your opinion is 
nothing to me ; I have no interest in you, care 
nothing for you, and see and hear you with in- 
difference — this it said plainly. It said so in the 
proud eyes, in the lifted nostril, in the hand- 
some, but compressed and even cruel mouth. 
Cover either two of those channels of expres- 
sion, and the third would have said so still. 
Mask them all, and the mere turn of the head 
would have shown an unsubduable nature. 

Lady Dedlock, in Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 2. 

FACE— Shadowed by a memory. 

She was about forty — perhaps two or three 
years older — with a cheerful aspect, and a face 
that had once been pretty. It bore traces of 
affliction and care, but they were of an old date, 
and Time had smoothed them. Any one who 
had bestowed but a casual glance on Bamaby 
might have known that this was his mother, 
from the strong resemblance between them ; but 
where in his face there was wildness and vacan- 
cy, in hers there was the patient composure of 
long effort and quiet resignation. 

One thing about this face was very strange 
and startling. You could not look upon it in its 
most cheerful mood without feeling that it had 
some extraordinary capacity of expressing ter- 
ror. It was not on the surface. It was in no 
one feature that it lingered. You could not take 
the eyes, or mouth, or lines upon the cheek, and 
say if this or that were otherwise, it would not 
be so. Yet there it always lurked — something 
forever dimly seen, but ever there, and never 
absent for a moment. It was the faintest, palest 
shadow of some look, to which an instant of in- 
tense and most unutterable horror only could 
have given birth ; but indistinct and feeble as it 
was, it did suggest what that look must have 
been, and fixed it in the mind as if it had had 
existence in a dream. 



FACTORY-TOWN 



183 



FACTORY-TOWN 



More faintly imaged, and wanting force and 
purpose, as it were, because of his darkened in- 
tellect, there was this same stamp upon the son. 
Seen in a picture, it must have had some legend 
with it, and would have haunted those who 
looked upon the canvas. They who knew the 
Maypole story, and could remember what the 
widow was, before her husband's and his mas- 
ter's murder, understood it well. They recol- 
lected how the change had come, and could call 
to mind that when her son was bom, upon the 
very day the deed was known, he bore upon his 
wrist what seemed a smear of blood but half 
washed out. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap, 5. 

FACTORY-TOWN-A triumph of fact. 

Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and 
Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact ; 
it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. 
Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, 
Coketown, before pursuing our tune. 

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that 
would have been red if the smoke and ashes had 
allowed it ; but as matters stood it was a town 
of unnatural red and black, like the painted face 
of a savage. It was a town of machinery and 
tall chimneys, out of which interminable ser- 
pents of smoke trailed themselves forever and 
ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black 
canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill- 
smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of 
windows, where there was a rattling and a trem- 
bling all day long, and where the piston of the 
steam-engine worked monotonously up and 
down, like the head of an elephant in a state 
of melancholy madness. It contained several 
large streets all very like one another, and many 
small streets still more like one another, inhab- 
ited by people equally like one another, who all 
went in and out at the same hours, with the 
same sound upon the same pavements, to do the 
same work, and to whom every day was the same 
as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the 
counterpart of the last and the next. 

These attributes of Coketown were in the 
main inseparable from the work by which it was 
sustained ; against them were to be set off, com- 
forts of life which found their way all over the 
world, and elegancies of life which made, we 
will not ask how much of the fine lady, who 
could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. 
The rest of its features were voluntary, and they 
were these. 

You saw nothing in Coketown but what was 
severely workful. If the members of a religious 
persuasion built a chapel there — as the members 
of eighteen religious persuasions had done — they 
made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with 
sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamented 
examples) a bell in a bird-cage on the top of it. 
The solitary exception was the New Church ; a 
stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the 
door, terminating in four short pinnacles like 
florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions 
in the town were painted alike, in severe char- 
acters of black and white. The jail might have 
been the infirmary, the infirmary might have 
been the jail, the town-hall might have been 
either, or both, or anything else, for anything 
that appeared to the contrary in the graces 
of their cohstruction. Fact, fact, fact, every- 
where in the material aspect of the town ; 
fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. 



The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and 
the school of design was all fact, and the rela 
tions between master and man were all fact, 
and everything was fact between the lying-in- 
hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't 
state in figures, or show to be purchasable in 
the cheapest market and salable in the dearest, 
was not, and never should be, world without 
end, Amen. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 5. 

F ACTOR Y-TOWN-Its pecuUarities. 

A sunny midsummer day. There was such a 
thing sometimes, even in Coketown. 

Seen from a distance in such weather, Coke- 
town lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which 
appeared impervious to the sun's rays. You 
only knew the town was there, because you knew 
there could have been no such sulky blotch upon 
the prospect without a town. A blur of soot 
and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, 
now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Hea- 
ven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as 
the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter : 
a dense, formless jumble, with sheets of cross 
light in it, that showed nothing but masses of 
darkness : — Coketown in the distance was sug- 
gestive of itself, though not a brick of it could 
be seen. 

The wonder was, it was there at all. It had 
been ruined so often, that it was amazing how it 
had borne so many shocks. Surely there never 
was such fragile china-ware as that of which the 
millers of Coketown were made. Handle them 
never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such 
ease that you might suspect them of having been 
flawed before. They were ruined when they 
were required to send laboring children to 
school ; they were ruined when inspectors were 
appointed to look into their works ; they were 
ruined when such inspectors considered it doubt- 
ful whether they were quite justified in chopping 
people up with their machinery ; they were ut- 
terly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps 
they need not always make quite so much smoke. 
Besides Mr. Bounderby's gold spoon, which was 
generally received in Coketown, another preva- 
lent fiction was very popular there. It took the 
form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner felt 
he was ill-used — that is to say, whenever he was 
not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to 
hold him accountable for the consequences of 
any of his acts — he was sure to come out with 
the awful menace, that he would " sooner pitch 
his property into the Atlantic." This had terri- 
fied the Home Secretary within an inch of his 
life, on several occasions. 

However, the Coketowners were so patriotic, 
after all, that they never had pitched their prop- 
erty into the Atlantic yet, but on the contrary, 
had been kind enough to take mighty good care 
of it. So there it was, in the haze yonder ; and 
it increased and multiplied. 

***** 

The streets were hot and dusty on the sum- 
mer day, and the sun was so bright that it even 
shone through the heavy vapor drooping over 
Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. 
Stokers emerged from low underground door- 
ways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and 
posts, and palings, wiping their swarthy visages, 
and contemplating coals. The whole town 
seemed to be frying in oil. There was a sti- 
fling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam- 



FACTORY-TOWN 



184 



FACTORIES 



engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands 
were soiled with it, the mills throughout their 
many stories oozed and trickled it. The atmos- 
phere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath 
of the simoon ; and their inhabitants, wasting 
with heat, toiled languidly in the desert. But 
no temperature made the melancholy - mad 
elephants more mad or more sane. Their weari- 
some heads went up and down at the same rate, 
in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, 
fair weather and foul. The measured motion 
of their shadows on the walls, was the substitute 
Coketown had to show for the shadows of rus- 
tling woods ; while, for the summer hum of in- 
sects, it could offer, all the year round, from the 
dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the 
whirr of shafts and wheels. 

Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny 
day, making the passenger more sleepy and more 
hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills. 
Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little 
cooled the main streets and the shops ; but the 
mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a 
fierce heat. Down upon the river, that was black 
and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who 
were at large — a rare sight there — rowed a crazy 
boat, which made a spumous track upon the 
water as it jogged along, while every dip of an 
oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, 
however beneficent generally, was less kind to 
Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked in- 
tently into any of its closer regions without 
engendering more death than life. So does the 
eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when 
incapable or sordid hands are interposed between 
it and the things it looks upon to bless. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. i. 

FACTORY-TOWN— The working-men. 

I entertain a weak idea that the English peo- 
ple are as hard-worked as any people upon whom 
the sun shines. I acknowledge to this ridiculous 
idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them 
a little more play. 

In the hardest working part of Coketown ; in 
the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, 
where Nature was as strongly bricked out as 
killing airs and gases were bricked in ; at the 
heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon 
courts, and close streets upon streets, which had 
come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a 
violent hurry for some one man's purpose, and 
the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and 
trampling, and pressing one another to death ; 
in the last close nook of this great exhausted 
receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to 
make a draught, were built in an immense vari- 
ety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though 
every house put out a sign of the kind of peo- 
ple who might be expected to be born in it ; 
among the multitude of Coketown, generically 
called " the Hands," — a race who would have 
found more favor with some people, if Provi- 
dence had seen fit to make them only hands, or 
like the lower creatures of the sea-shore, only 
hands and stomachs — lived a certain Stephen 
Blackpool, forty years of age. 

Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard 
life. It is said that every life has its roses and 
thorns ; there seemed, however, to have been a 
misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, 
whereby somebody else had become possessed 
of his roses, and he had become possessed of 



the same somebody else's thorns in addition to 
his own. He had known, to use his words, 
a peck of trouble. He was usually called Old 
Stephen, in a kind of rough homage to the fact. 

A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a 
pondering expression of face, and a hard-look- 
ing head sufficiently capacious, on which his iron- 
grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might 
have passed for a particularly intelligent man in 
his condition. Yet he was not. He took no 
place among those remarkable " Hands," who, 
piecing together their broken intervals of leisure 
through many years, had mastered difficult 
sciences, and acquired a knowledge of most 
unlikely things. He held no station among the 
Hands who could make speeches and carry on 
debates. Thousands of his compeers could talk 
much better than he, at any time. He was a 
good power-loom weaver, and a man of perfect 
integrity. What more he was, or what else he 
had in him, if anything, let him show for him- 
self. 

The lights in the great factories, which looked, 
when they were illuminated, like Fairy palaces — 
or the travellers by express-train said so — were 
all extinguished ; and the bells had rung for 
knocking off for the night, and had ceased again ; 
and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl, 
were clattering home. Old Stephen was stand- 
ing in the street, with the odd sensation upon 
him which the stoppage of the machinery always 
produced — the sensation of its having worked 
and stopped in his own head. 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 10. 

FACTORY— Iron- Works. 

He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks 
in, and sees a great perplexity of iron lying 
about, in every stage, and in a vast variety of 
shapes ; in bars, in wedges, in sheets ; in tanks, 
in boilers, in axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, 
in rails ; twisted and wrenched into eccentric 
and perverse forms, as separate parts of machin- 
ery ; mountains of it broken-up, and rusty in 
its age ; distant furnaces of it glowing and bub- 
bling in its youth ; bright fireworks of it shower- 
ing about, under the blows of the steam ham- 
mer ; red-hot iron, white-hot iron, cold-black 
iron ; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a Babel 
of iron sounds. 

***** 

There is iron-dust on everything ; and the 
smoke is seen, through the windows, rolling 
heavily out of the tall chimneys, to mingle with 
the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other 
chimneys. — Bleak House, Chap. 63. 

FACTORIES. 

Machinery slackened ; throbbing feebly like 
a fainting pulse ; stopped. The bell again ; the 
glare of light and heat dispelled ; the factories, 
looming heavy in the black wet night — their tall 
chimneys rising up into the air like competing 
Towers of Babel. 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap, 12. 

FACTORIES-The hands. 

The Fairy palaces burst into illumination, 
before pale morning showed the monstrous ser- 
pents of smoke trailing themselves over Coke- 
town. A clattering of clogs upon the pave- 
ment ; a rapid ringing of bells ; and all the 
melancholy-mad elephants, polished and oiled 



FACTS 



185 



FACTS 



up for ,the day's monotony, were at their heavy 
exercise again. 

Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, 
and steady. A special contrast, as every man 
was in the forest of looms where Stephen 
worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing 
piece of mechanism at which he labored. 
Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of 
mind, that Art will consign Nature to oblivion. 
Set anywhere, side by side, the work of God 
and the work of man ; and the former, even 
though it be a troop of Hands of very small ac- 
count, will gain in dignity from the comparison. 

So many hundred Hands in this Mill ; so 
many hundred horse Steam Power. It is 
known, to the force of a single pound weight, 
what the engine will do ; but not all the calcu- 
lators of the National Debt can tell me the ca- 
pacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for 
patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition 
of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single 
moment in the soul of one of these, its quiet 
servants, with the composed faces and the reg- 
ulated actions. There is no mystery in it ; 
there is an unfathomable mystery in the mean- 
est of them, forever. — Supposing we were to 
reserve our arithmetic for material objects, and 
to govern these awful unknown quantities by 
other means ! 

The day grew strong, and showed itself out- 
side, even against the flaming lights within. 
The lights were turned out, and the work went 
on. The rain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, 
submissive to the curse of all that tribe, trailed 
themselves upon the earth. In the waste-yard 
outside, the steam from the escape pipe, the litter 
of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, 
the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veil 
of mist and rain. 

The work went on until the noon-bell rang. 
More clattering upon the pavements. The 
looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear 
for an hour. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. ii. 

FACTS— Gradgrind tlie man of. 

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. 
A man of facts and calculations. A man who 
proceeds upon the principle that two and two 
are four, and nothing over, and who is not to 
be talked into allowing for anything over. 
Thomas Gradgrind, sir — peremptorily Thomas 
— Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair 
of scales, and the multiplication table always 
in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure 
any parcel of human nature, and tell you ex- 
actly what it comes to. It is a mere question 
of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You 
might hope to get some other nonsensical be- 
lief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Au- 
gustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Jo- 
seph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent 
persons), but into the head of Thomas Grad- 
grind — no, sir. 

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always men- 
tally introduced himself, whether to his private 
circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. 
In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words 
" boys and girls," for " sir," Thomas Gradgrind 
now presented ThonVas Gradgrind to the little 
pitchers before him, who were to be filled so 
full of facts. 

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from 
the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a 



kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, 
and prepared to blow them clean out of the 
regions of childhood at one discharge. He 
seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged 
with a grim mechanical substitute for the ten- 
der young imaginations that were to be stormed 
away. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 2. 

FACTS— Gradgrind' s lessons of. 

Mr. Gradgrind walked homeward from the 
school, in a state of considerable satisfaction. 
It was his school, and he intended it to be a mod- 
el. He intended every child in it to be a model 
— ^just as the young Gradgrinds were all models. 

There were five young Gradgrinds, and they 
were models every one. They had been lec- 
tured at, from their tenderest years; coursed 
like little hares. Almost as soon as they could 
run alone, they had been made to run to the 
lecture-room. The first object with which they 
had an association, or of which they had a re- 
membrance, was a large black-board with a dry 
Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it. 

Not that they knew, by name or nature, any- 
thing about an Ogre. Fact forbid ! I only use 
the word to express a monster in a lecturing 
castle, with Heaven knows how many heads 
manipulated into one, taking childhood cap- 
tive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical 
dens by the hair. 

No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in 
the moon ; it was up in the moon before it 
could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind 
had ever learned the silly jingle, Twinkle, 
twinkle, little star ; how I wonder what you 
are ! No little Gradgrind had ever known won- 
der on the subject, each little Gradgrind hav- 
ing at five years old dissected the Great Bear 
lil«e a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's 
Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No 
little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a 
field with that famous cow with the crumpled 
horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat 
who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with 
that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom 
Thumb : it had never heard of those celebrities, 
and had only been introduced to a cow as a 
graminiverous, ruminating quadruped with sev- 
eral stomachs. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap, 3. 

FACTS— The man of. 

In gauging fathomless deeps with his little 
mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the uni- 
verse with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he 
had meant to do great things. Within the lim- 
its of his short tether he had tumbled about, an- 
nihilating the flowers of existence with greater 
singleness of purpose than many of the blatant 
personages whose company he kept. 

Hard Times, Book III., Chap. I. 

FACTS— A disg-ust for. 

" I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear 
so much about," said Tom, spitefully setting his 
teeth, " and all the Figures, and all the people 
who found them out ; and I wish I could put a 
thousand barrels of gunpowder under them, and 
blow them all up together ! " 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 8. 

FACTS— The Gradg-rind philosophers. 

The Gradgrind party wanted assistance in 
cutting the throats of the Graces. They went 



FACTS 



186 



PAINTING 



about recruiting; and where could they enlist 
recruits more hopefully, than among the fine 
gentlemen who, having found out everything to 
be worth nothing, were equally ready for any- 
thing ? 

Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted 
to this sublime height were attractive to many of 
the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentle- 
men ; they pretended that they did not, but they 
did. They became exhausted in imitation of 
them ; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like 
them ; and they served out, with an enervated 
air, the little mouldy rations of political econo- 
my, on which they regaled their disciples. There 
never before was seen on earth such a wonder- 
ful hybrid race as was thus produced. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 2. 

FACTS— Mr. Gradgrind on. 

"Now, what I want is. Facts. Teach these 
boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone 
are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root 
out everything else. You can only form the 
minds of reasoning animals upon Facts : nothing 
else will ever be of any service to them. This 
is the principle on which I bring up my own 
children, and this is the principle on which I 
bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir ! " 

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault 
of a school-room, and the speaker's square fore- 
finger emphasized his observations by under- 
scoring every sentence with a line on the school- 
master's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by 
the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which 
had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes 
found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, 
overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was 
helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, 
thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped 
by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, 
and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by 
the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts 
of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the 
wind from its shining surface, all covered with 
knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the 
head had scarcely wai-ehouse-room for the hard 
facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate 
carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoul- 
ders — nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take 
him by the throat with an unaccommodating 
grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was — all helped 
the emphasis. 

" In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir ; 
nothing but Facts ! " 

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the 
third grown person present, all backed a little, 
and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of 
little vessels then and there arranged in order, 
ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured 
into them until they were full to the brim. 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. I. 

FACTS versus fancies. 

" Girl number twenty," said the gentleman, 
smiling in the calm strength of knowledge. 

Sissy blushed, and stood up. 

" So you would carpet your room — or your 
husband's room, if you were a grown woman, 
and had a husband — with representations of 
flowers, would you," said the gentleman. " Why 
would you ? " 

" If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers," 
returned the girl. 



" And is that why you would put tables and 
chairs upon them, and have people walking ovei 
them with heavy boots ? " 

" It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't 
crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would 
be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleas- 
ant, and I would fancy — " 

" Ay, ay, ay ! But you mustn't fancy," cried 
the gentleman, quite elated by coming so hap- 
pily to his point. " That's it ! You are never 
to fancy." 

" You are not, Cecilia Jupe," Thomas Grad- 
grind solemnly repeated, " to do anything of that 
kind." 

" Fact, fact, fact I " said the gentleman. And 
" Fact, fact, fact ! " repeated Thomas Gradgrind. 

" You are to be in all things regulated and 
governed," said the gentleman, " by fact. We 
hope to have, before long, a board of fact, com- 
posed of commissioners of fact, who will force 
the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing 
but fact. You must discard the word Fancy 
altogether. You have nothing to do with it. 
You are not to have, in any object of use or 
ornament, what would be a contradiction in 
fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact ; 
you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in 
carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and 
butterflies come and p^ch upon your crockery ; 
you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds 
and butterflies upon your crockery. You never 
meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls ; 
you must not have quadrupeds represented upon 
walls. You must use," said the gentleman, " for 
all these purposes, combinations and modifica- 
tions (in primary colors) of mathematical figures 
which are susceptible of proof and demonstra- 
tion. This is the new discovery. This is fact. 
This is taste." 

The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was 
very young, and she looked as if she were fright- 
ened by the matter of fact prospect the world 
afforded. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 2. 

FAINTING— Mrs. Varden's family tactics. 

Mrs. Varden wept, and laughed, and sobbed, 
and shivered, and hiccoughed, and choaked ; 
and said she knew it was very foolish, but she 
couldn't help it ; and that when she was dead 
and gone, perhaps they would be sorry for it — 
which really, under the circumstances, did not 
appear quite so probable as she seemed to think 
— with a great deal more to the same effect. 
In a word, she passed with great decency 
thiough all the ceremonies incidental to such 
occasions ; and being supported up-stairs, was 
deposited in a highly spasmodic state on her 
own bed, where Miss Miggs shortly afterwards 
flung herself upon the body. 

The philosophy of all this was, that Mrs. 
Varden wanted to go to Chigwell ; that she did 
not want to make any concession or explana- 
tion ; that she would only go on being im- 
plored and entreated so to do ; and that she 
would accept no other terms. Accordingly, 
after a vast amount of moaning and crying up- 
stairs, and much dampening of foreheads, and 
vinegaring of temples, and hartshorning of 
noses, and so forth ; and after most pathetic 
adjurations from Miggs, assisted by warm bran- 
dy-and-water not over-weak, and divers other 
cordials also of a stimulating quality, adminis- 
tered at first in teaspoonsful, and afterwards in 



PAINTING 



187 



FAIR 



increasing doses, and of which Miss Miggs her- 
self partook as a preventive measure (for faint- 
ing is infectious) ; after all these remedies, and 
many more too numerous to mention, but not 
to take, had been applied ; and many verbal 
consolations, moral, religious, and miscellaneous, 
had been superadded thereto, the locksmith 
humbled himself, and the end was gained. 

" If it's only for the sake of peace and quiet- 
ness, father," said Dolly, urging him to go up- 
stairs. 

"Oh, Doll, Doll," said her good-natured fa- 
ther. "If you ever have a husband of your 
own — " 

Dolly glanced at the glass. 

"Well, when you have," said the locksmith, 
" never faint, my darling. More domestic un- 
happiness has come of easy fainting, Doll, than 
from all the greater passions put together. Re- 
member that, my dear, if you would be truly 
happy, which you never can be, if your hus- 
band isn't. And a word in your ear, my pre- 
cious. Never have a Miggs about you ! " 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 19. 

FAINTING-Of Miss Miggs. 

Having helped the wayward 'prentice in, she 
faintly articulated the words " Simmun is safe ! " 
and yielding to her woman's nature, immedi- 
ately became insensible. 

"I knew I should quench her," said Sim, 
rather embarrassed by this circumstance. " Of 
course I was certain it would come to this, but 
there was nothing else to be done — if I hadn't 
eyed her over, she wouldn't have come down. 
Here. Keep up a minute, Miggs. What a slip- 
pery figure she is ! There's no holding her com- 
fortably. Do keep up a minute, Miggs, will you ? " 

As Miggs, however, was deaf to all entrea- 
ties, Mr. Tappertit leaned her against the wall 
as one might dispose of a walking-stick or um- 
brella, until he had secured the window, when 
he took her in his arms again, and, in short 
stages and with great difficulty — arising mainly 
from her being tall and his being short, and 
perhaps in some degree from that peculiar phy- 
sical conformation on which he had already re- 
marked — carried her up-stairs, and planting her 
in the same umbrella or walking-stick fashion, 
just inside her own door, left her to her repose. 

" He may be as cool as he likes," said Miss 
Miggs, recovering as soon as she was left alone ; 
" but I'm in his confidence and he can't help 
himself, nor couldn't if he was twenty Sim- 
munses 1 " — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 9. 

FAINTINO-The freemasonry of. 

But none of that gentle concern which usually 
characterizes the daughters of Eve in their tend- 
ing of each other ; none of that freemasonry iij 
fainting, by which they are generally bound to- 
gether in a mysterious bond of sisterhood, was 
visible in Mrs. Chick's demeanor. Rather like 
the executioner who restores the victim to sen- 
sation previous to proceeding with the torture 
(or was wont to do so, in the good old times for 
which all true men wear perpetual mourning), 
did Mrs. Chick administer the smelling-bottle, 
the slapping on the hands, the dashing of cold 
water on the face, and the other proved reme- 
dies. And when, at length, Miss Tox opened 
her eyes, and gradually became restored to ani- 
mation and consciousness, Mrs. Chick drew off 



as from a criminal, and reversing the precedent 
of the murdered king of Denmark, regarded 
her more in anger than in sorrow. 

Dombey dr' Son, Chap. 29. 

FAIR— A village. 

It was a Saturday evening, and at such a time 
the village dogs, always much more interested 
in the doings of humanity than in the affairs of 
their own species, were particularly active. At 
the general shop, at the butcher's, and at the 
public-house, they evinced an inquiring spirit 
never to be satiated. Their especial interest in 
the public-house' would seem to imply some 
latent rakishness in the canine character ; for 
little was eaten there, and they, having no taste 
for beer or tobacco (Mrs. Hubbard's dog is said 
to have smoked, but proof is wanting), could 
only have been attracted by sympathy with loose 
convivial habits. Moreover, a most wretched 
fiddle played within ; a fiddle so unutterably 
vile, that one lean, long-bodied cur, with a bet- 
ter ear than the rest, found himself under com- 
pulsion at intervals to go round the corner and 
howl. Yet, even he returned to the public- 
house on each occasion with the tenacity of a 
confirmed drunkard. 

Fearful to relate, there was even a sort of little 
Fair in the village. Some despairing ginger- 
bread that had been vainly trying to dispose of 
itself all over the country, and had cast a quan- 
tity of dust upon its head in its mortification, 
again appealed to the public from an infirm 
booth. So did a heap of nuts, long, long exiled 
from Barcelona, and yet speaking English so in- 
differently as to call fourteen of themselves a 
pint. A Peep-show which had originally started 
with the Battle of Waterloo, and had since made 
it every other battle of later date by altering the 
Duke of Wellington's nose, tempted the student 
of illustrated history. A Fat Lady, perhaps in 
part sustained upon postponed pork, her pro- 
fessional associate being a Learned Pig, dis- 
played her life-size picture in a low dress as she 
appeared when presented at Court, several yards 
round. All this was a vicious spectacle, as any 
poor idea of amusement on the part of the 
rougher hewers of wood and drawers of water 
in this land of England ever is and shall be. 
They musi not vary the rheumatism with amuse- 
ment. They may vary it with fever and ague, 
or with as many rheumatic variations as they 
have joints ; but positively not with entertain- 
ment after their own manner. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 6. 

FAIR— The Greenwich. 

If the Parks be " the lungs of London," we 
wonder what Greenwich Fair is — a periodical 
breaking out, we suppose ; a sort of spring-rash ; 
a three days' fever, which cools the blood for 
six months afterwards, and at the expiration of 
which London is restored to its old habits of 
plodding industry, as suddenly and completely 
as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them. 

Pedestrians linger in groups at the roadside, 
unable to resist the allurements of the stout pro- 
prietress of the " Jack-in-the box, three shies a 
penny," or the more splendid offers of the man 
with three thimbles and a pea on a little round 
board, who astonishes the bewildered crowd with 
some such address as, " Here's the sort o' game 
to make you laugh seven years arter you're dead, 



FASHIONABLE PARTY 



188 



FASHIONABLE PEOPLE 



and turn ev'ry air on your ed gray with delight ! 
Three thimbles and vun little pea — with a vun, 
two, three, and a two, three, vun : catch him who 
can, look on, keep your eyes open, and niver say 
die ! niver mind the change, and the expense : 
all fair and above board : them as don't play 
can't vin, and luck attend the ryal sportsman ! 
Bet any gen'lm'n any sum of money, from harf- 
a-crown up to a suverin, as he doesn't name the 
thimble as kivers the pea ! " Here some green- 
horn whispers his friend that he distinctly saw 
the pea roll under the middle thimble — an im- 
pression which is immediately confirmed by a 
gentleman in top-boots, who is standing by, and 
who, in a low tone, regrets his own inability to 
bet in consequence of having unfortunately left 
his purse at home, but strongly urges the stran- 
ger not to neglect such a golden opportunity. 
The "plant" is successful, the bet is made, the 
stranger of course loses ; and the gentleman 
with the thimble consoles him, as he pockets the 
money, with an assurance that it's " all the fortin 
of war ! this time I vin, next time you vin : niver 
mind the loss of two bob and a bender ! Do 
it up in a small parcel, and break out in a fresh 
place. Here's the sort o' game," etc. — and the 
eloquent harangue, with some variations as the 
speaker's exuberant fancy suggests, is again re- 
peated to the gaping crowd, reinforced by the 
accession of several new comers. 

* ^ H: Hi H: 

Imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd, 
which swings you to and fro, and in and out, 
and every way but the right one ; add to this 
the screams of women, the shouts of boys, the 
clanging of gongs, the firing of pistols, the ring- 
ing of bells, the bellowings of speaking-trum- 
pets, the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise 
of a dozen bands, with three drums in each, all 
playing different tunes at the same time, the 
hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar 
from the wild-beast shows ; and you are in the 
very centre and heart of the fair. 

Scenes^ Chap. I2. 

FASHIONABLE PARTY-A. 

And now the haunch of mutton vapor-bath 
having received a gamey infusion, and a few last 
touches of sweets and coffee, was quite ready, 
the bathers came ; but not before the dis- 
creet automaton had got behind the bars of the 
piano music-desk, and there presented the ap- 
pearance of a captive languishing in a rosewood 
jail. — Our Mutual Friejtd, Book I., Chap. il. 

FASHIONABLE SOCIETY. 

They all go up again into the gorgeous draw- 
ing rooms — all of them flushed with breakfast, 
as having taken scarlatina sociably — and there 
the combined unknowns do malignant things 
with their legs to ottomans, and take as much as 
possible out of the splendid furniture. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. lo. 

FASHIONABLE CONVENTIONALITIES. 

The social ice on which all the children of 
Podsnappery, with genteel souls to be saved, are 
required to skate in circles, or to slide in long 
rows. — Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 8. 

FASHIONABLE CALLS. 

And now, in the blooming summer days, be- 
hold Mr. and Mr«. Boffin established in the emi- 



nently aristocratic family mansion, an 1 behold 
all manner of crawling, creeping, fluttering, and 
buzzing creatures, attracted by the gold-dust of 
the Golden Dustman ! 

Foremost among those leaving cards at the 
eminently aristocratic door, before it is quite 
painted, are the Veneerings ; out of breath, one 
might imagine, from the impetuosity of their 
rush to the eminently aristocratic steps. One 
copper-plate Mrs. Veneering, two copper-plate 
Mr. Veneerings, and a connubial copper-plate 
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, requesting the honor 
of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin's company at dinner with 
the utmost Analytical solemnities. The enchant 
ing Lady Tippins leaves a card. Twemlow 
leaves cards. A tall custard-colored phaeton 
tooling up in a solemn manner leaves four cards, 
to wit, a couple of Mr. Podsnaps, a Mrs. Pod- 
snap, and a Miss Podsnap. All the world and 
his wife and daughter leave cards. Some- 
times the -world's wife has so many daughters, 
that her card reads rather like a Miscellaneous 
Lot at an Auction ; comprising Mrs. Tapkins, 
Miss Tapkins, Miss Frederica Tapkins, Miss 
Antonia Tapkins, Miss Malvina Tapkins, and 
Miss Euphemia Tapkins ; at the same time the 
same lady leaves the card of Mrs. Plenry George 
Alfred Swoshle, nee Tapkins ; also a card, Mrs. 
Tapkins at Home Wednesdays, Music, Port- 
land Place. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap, 17. 

FASHIONABLE EXCLTJSIVENESS. 

The Podsnaps lived in a shady angle adjoin- 
ing Portman Square. They were a kind of peo- 
ple certain to dwell in the shade, wherever they 
dwelt. Miss Podsnap's life had been, from her 
first appearance on this planet, altogether of a 
shady order ; for, Mr. Podsnap's young person 
was likely to get little good out of association 
with other young persons, and had therefore 
been restricted to companionship with not very 
congenial older persons, and with massive furni- 
ture. Miss Podsnap's early views of life being 
principally derived from the reflections of it in 
her father's boots, and in the walnut and rose- 
wood tables of the dim drawing-rooms, and in 
their swarthy giants of looking glasses, were of 
a sombre cast ; and it was not wonderful that 
now, when she was on most days solemnly 
tooled through the Park by the side of her moth- 
er, in a great, tall, custard-colored phaeton, she 
showed above the apron of that vehicle like a 
dejected young person sitting up in bed to take 
a startled look at things in general, and very 
strongly desiring to get her head under the 
counterpane again. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 11. 

FASHIONABLE PEOPLE — The Veneer- 
ing-s. 

Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new peo- 
ple in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter 
of London. Everything about the Veneerings 
was spick and span new. All their furniture 
was new, all their friends were new, all their 
servants were new, their plate was new, their 
carriage was new, their harness was new, their 
horses were new, their pictures were new, they 
themselves were new, they were as newly mar- 
ried as was lawfully compatible with their hav- 
ing a bran-new baby, and if they had set up a 
great-grandfather, he would have come home 



FASHION ABIiE PEOPIiB 



189 



FASHION 



in matting from the Pantechnicon, without a 
scratch upon him, French polished to the crown 
of his head. 

For, in the Veneering establishment, from the 
hall-chairs with the new coat of arms to the 
grand pianoforte with the new action, and up- 
stairs again to the new fire-escape, all things 
were in a state of high varnish and polish. And 
what was observable in the furniture was ob- 
servable in the Veneerings — the surface smelt a 
little too much of the workshop and was a trifle 
sticky. 

There was an innocent piece of dinner-furni- 
ture that went upon easy castors and was kept 
over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street, St. 
James's, when not in use, to whom the Veneer- 
ings were a source of blind confusion. The 
name of this article was TVemlow. Being first 
cousin to Lord Snigsworth, he was in frequent 
requisition, and at many houses might be said 
to represent the dining-table in its normal state. 
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, for example, arranging 
a dinner, habitually started with Twemlow, and 
then put leaves in him, or added guests to him. 
Sometimes the table consisted of Twemlow and 
half a dozen leaves ; sometimes, of Twemlow 
and a dozen leaves ; sometimes, Twemlow was 
pulled out to his utmost extent of twenty leaves. 
Mr. and Mrs. Veneering on occasions of cere- 
mony faced each other in the centre of the 
board, and thus the parallel still held ; for, it 
always happened that the more Twemlow was 
pulled out, the farther he found himself from 
the centre, and the nearer to the sideboard at 
one end of the room, or the window-curtains at 
the other. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 2. 

FASHIONABLE PEOPLE-How they are 
znanag-ed. 
There is this remarkable circumstance to be 
noted in everything associated with my Lady 
Dedlock as one of a class — as one of the leaders 
amd representatives of her little world — she 
suoposes herself to be an inscrutable Being, 
quite out of the reach and ken of ordinary mor- 
taL ; seeing herself in her glass, where indeed 
she looks so. Yet, every dim little star revolv- 
ing ibout her, from her maid to the manager of 
the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, pre- 
judices, follies, haughtinesses, and caprices ; and 
lives upon as accurate a calculation and as nice 
a me.'tsure of her moral nature, as her dress- 
maker takes of her physical proportions. Is a 
new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new 
dancer, a new form of jewelry, a new dwarf or 
giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set 
up ? There are deferential people, in a dozen 
callings, whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of 
nothing but prostration before her, who can tell 
you how to manage her as if she were a baby ; 
who do nothing but nurse her all their lives ; 
who, humbly affecting to follow with profound 
subservience, lead her and her whole troop after 
them ; who, in hooking one, hook all and bear 
them off, as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the 
stately fleet of the majestic Lilliput. *' If you 
want to addiess our people, sir," say Blaze and 
Sparkle, the jewellers — meaning by our people, 
Lady Dedlock and the rest — •* you must remem- 
ber that you are not dealing with the general 
public ; you must hit our people in their weak- 
est place, and their weakest place is such a 



place." " To make this article go down, gen- 
tlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to 
their friends the manufacturers, " you must come 
to us, because we know where to have the fash- 
ionable people, and we can make it fashiona- 
ble." " If you want to get this print upon the 
tables of my high connection, sir," says Mr. 
Sladdery, the librarian, " or if you want to get 
this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high 
connection, sir, or if you want to secure to this 
entertainment the patronage of my high con- 
nection, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to 
me ; for I have been accustomed to study the 
leaders of my high connection, sir ; and I may 
tell you, without vanity, that I can turn them 
round my finger." — in which Mr. Sladdery, who 
is an honest man, does not exaggerate at all. 
Bleak House, Chap. 2. 

FASHION— In England. 

Whatsoever fashion is set in England is cer- 
tain to descend. This is the text for a perpetual 
sermon on care in setting fashions. When you 
find a fashion low down, look back for the time 
(it will never be far off) when it was the fashion 
high up. This is the text for a perpetual ser- 
mon on social justice. From imitations of Ethi- 
opian Serenaders, to imitations of Prince's coats 
and waistcoats, you will find the original model 
in St. James's Parish. W^hen the Serenaders be- 
come tiresome, trace them beyond the Black 
Country : when the coats and waistcoats become 
insupportable, refer them to their source in the 
Upper Toady Regions. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 23. 

FASHIONS— Like human beings. 

" Fashions are like human beings. They 
come in, nobody knows when, why, or how ; and 
they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. 
Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you 
look at it in that point of view." 

David Copperjield, Chap. 9. 

FASHIONS— Second-hand clothes. 

Probably there are not more second-hand 
clothes sold in London than in Paris, and yet 
the mass of the London population have a 
second-hand look which is not to be detected 
on the mass of the Parisian population. I 
think this is mainly because a Parisian work- 
man does not in the least trouble himself about 
what is worn by a Parisian idler, but dresses in 
the way of his own class and for his own com- 
fort. In London, on the contrary, the fashions 
descend ; and you never fully know how incon- 
venient or ridiculous a fashion is, until you see 
it in its last descent. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 23. 

FASHION-The world of. 

Both the world of fashion and the Court of 
Chancery are things of precedent and usage ; 
over-sleeping Rip Van Winkles, who have played 
at strange games through a deal of thundery 
weather ; sleeping beauties, whom the Knight 
will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in 
the kitchen shall begin to turn prodigiously ! 

It is not a large world. Relatively even to 
this world of ours, which has its limits too (as 
your Highness shall find when you have made 
the tour of it, and are come to the brink of the 
void beyond), it is a very little speck. There is 



FASHION 



190 



PAT BOY 



much good in it ; there are many good and true 
people in it ; it has its appointed place. But 
the evil of it is, that it is a world wrapped up in 
too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and 
cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, 
and cannot see them as they circle round the 
sun. It is a deadened world, and its growth is 
sometimes unhealthy for want of air. 

Bleak House, Chap, 2. 

FASHION— The enntii of. 

My Lady Dedlock has been bored to death. 
Concert, assembly, opera, theatre, drive, nothing 
is new to my Lady, under the worn-out heavens. 
Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay 
— within the walls, playing with children among 
the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace 
Garden ; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian 
Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs 
and wooden horses ; between whiles filtering 
(a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of our 
Lady, to say a word or two at the base of a 
pillar, within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full 
of gusty little tapers — without the walls, encom- 
passing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine- 
drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, bil- 
liard, card, and domino playing, quack-doctoring, 
and much murderous refuse, animate and inani- 
mate — only last Sunday, my Lady, in the deso- 
lation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant 
Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in 
spirits. 

She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. 
Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies be- 
hind — her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the 
whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped — but 
the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the 
last place where it has been experienced. Fling 
Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging 
it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of 
wintry trees ! And, when next beheld, let it be 
some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a 
white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a 
mere mound in a plain : two dark square towers 
rising out of it, and light and shadow descend- 
ing on it aslant, like the angels in. Jacob's 
dream \-^ Bleak House , Chap. 12. 

FAT BOY-Joe, the. 

" Joe, Joe ! " said the stout gentleman, when 
the citadel was taken, and the besiegers and be- 
sieged sat down to dinner. " Damn that boy, 
he's gone to sleep again. Be good enough to 
pinch him, sir — in the leg, if you please ; nothing 
else wakes him — thank you. Undo the hamper, 
Joe." 

The fat boy, who had been effectually roused 
by the compression of a portion of his leg be- 
tween the finger and thumb of Mr. Winkle, 
rolled off the box once again, and proceeded to 
unpack the hamper, with more expedition than 
could have been expected from his previous in- 
activity. 

H! He ♦ 4c « 

" Plates, Joe, plates." A similar process em- 
ployed in the distribution of the crockery. 

" Now, Joe, the fowls. Damn that boy, he's 
gone to sleep again. Joe ! Joe ! " (Sundry taps 
on the head with a stick, and the fat boy, with 
some difficulty, roused from his lethargy.) 
"Come, hand in the eatables." 

There was something in the sound of the last 
word which roused the unctuous boy. He 



jumped up ; and the leaden eyes which twinkled 

behmd his mountainous cheeks, leered horribly 

upon the food as he unpacked it from the basket. 

* * * * * 

Mr. Wardle unconsciously changed the sub- 
ject, by calling emphatically for Joe. 

" Damn that boy," said the old gentleman, 
" he's gone to sleep again." 

" Very extraordinary boy, that," said Mr. Pick- 
wick, "does he always sleep in this way?" 

" Sleep ! " said the old gentleman, " he's al- 
ways asleep. Goes on errands fast asleep, and 
snores as he waits at table." 

" How very odd ! " said Mr. Pickwick. 

"Ah! odd indeed," returned the old gentle- 
man ; " I'm proud of that boy — wouldn't part 
with him on any account — he's a natural curi- 
osity ! Here, Joe — Joe — take these things away, 
and open another bottle — d'ye hear?" 

The fat boy rose, opened his eyes, swallowed 
the huge piece of pie he had been in the act of 
masticating when he last fell asleep, and slowly 
obeyed his master's orders — gloating languidly 
over the remains of the feast, as he removed the 
plates and deposited them in the hamper. 

Pickwick, Chap. 4. 



The object that presented itself to the eyes 
of the astonished clerk, was a boy — a wonder- 
fully fat boy — habited as a serving lad, standing 
upright on the mat, with his eyes closed as if in 
sleep. He had never seen such a fat boy in or 
out of a travelling caravan ; and this, coupled 
with the calmness and repose of his appearance, 
so very different from what was reasonably to 
have been expected of the inflicter of such 
knocks, smote him with wonder. 

" What's the matter ? " inquired the clerk. 

The extraordinary boy replied not a word ; 
but he nodded once, and seemed, to the clerk's 
imagination, to snore feebly. 

"Where do you come from?" inquired the 
clerk. 

The boy made no sign. He breathed heavily, 
but in all other respects was motionless. 

The clerk repeated the question thrice, and 
receiving no answer, prepared to shut the door, 
when the boy suddenly opened his eyes, winked 
several times, sneezed once, and raised his hand 
as if to repeat the knocking. Finding the door 
open, he stared about him with astonishment, and 
at length fixed his eyes on Mr. Lowten's face. 

" What the devil do you knock in that way 
for?" inquired the clerk, angrily. 

" Which way ! " said the boy, in a slow and 
sleepy voice. 

" Why, like forty hackney-coachmen," replied 
the clerk. 

" Because master said I wasn't to leave off 
knocking till they opened the door, for fear I 
should go to sleep," said the boy. 

Pickwick, Chap. 54. 

FAT BOY— Joe as a spy. 

" Missus ! " shouted the fat boy. 

"Well, Joe," said the trembling old lady. 
" I'm sure I have been a good mistress to you. 
You have invariably been treated very kindly. 
You have never had too much to do ; and you 
have always had enough to eat." 

This last was an appeal to the fat boy's most 
sensitive feelings. He seemed touched, as he 
replied, emphatically — 







Joe," the Fat Boy. 



190 



PAT BOY 



191 



FEAR 



" I knows I has." 

" Then what can you want to do now ? " said 
the old lady, gaining courage. 

" I wants to make your flesh creep," replied 
the boy. 

This sounded like a very bloodthirsty mode 
of showing one's gratitude ; and as the old lady 
did not precisely understand the process by 
which such a result was to be attained, all her 
former horrors returned. 

" What do you think I see in this very arbor 
last night ? " inquired the boy. 

" Bless us ! What ? " exclaimed the old lady, 
alarmed at the solemn manner of the corpulent 
youth. 

** The strange gentleman — him as had his arm 
hurt — a kissin' and huggin' — " 

" Who, Joe ? None of the servants, I hope," 

"Worser than that," roared the fat boy, in 
the old lady's ear. 

" Not one of my grand-da'aters ? " 

" Worser than that." 

" Worse than that, Joe ! " said the old lady, 
who had thought this the extreme limit of hu- 
man atrocity. " Who was it, Joe ? I insist upon 
knowing." 

The fat boy looked cautiously round, and 
having concluded his survey, shouted in the old 
lady's ear : 

" Miss Rachael." 

" What ! " said the old lady, in a shrill tone. 
" Speak louder." 

" Miss Rachael," roared the fat boy. 

" My da'ater ! " 

The train of nods which the fat boy gave by 
way of assent, communicated a blanc-mange-YikQ 
motion to his fat cheeks. 

" And she suffered him ! " exclaimed the old 
lady. 

A grin stole over the fat boy's features as he 
said : 

" I see her a kissin' of him agin." 

Pickwick, Chap. 8. 

PAT BOY— Joe in love. 

" Will you have some of this ? " said the fat 
boy, plunging into the pie up to the very fer- 
ules of the knife and fork. 

" A little, if you please," replied Mary. 

The fat boy assisted Mary to a little, and 
himself to a great deal, and was just going to 
begin eating, when he suddenly laid down his 
knife and fork, leant forward in his chair, and 
letting his hands, with the knife and fork in 
them, fall on his knees, said, very slowly : 

" I say I how nice you look ! " 

This was said in an admiring manner, and 
was, so far, gratifying ; but still there was 
enough of the cannibal in the young gentle- 
man's eyes to render the compliment a double 
one. 

" Dear me, Joseph," said Mary, affecting to 
blush, *' what do you mean?" 

The fat boy, gradually recovering his former 
position, replied with a heavy sigh, and remain- 
ing thoughtful for a few moments, drank a long 
draught of the porter. Having achieved this 
feat he sighed again, and applied himself assid- 
uously to the pie. 

"What a nice young lady Miss Emily is!" 
said Mary, after a long silence. 

The fat boy had by this time finished the pie. 
He fixed his eyes on Mary, and replied : 



" I knows a nicerer." 

*' Indeed ! ' said Mary. 

" Yes, indeed ! " replied the fat boy, with un- 
wonted vivacity. 

" What's her name ? " inquired Mary. 

"What yours?" 

" Mary." 

" So's her's," said the fat boy. " You're her," 
The boy grinned to add point to the compli- 
ment, and put his eyes into something between 
a squint and a cast, which there is reason to be- 
lieve he intended for an ogle. 

" You musn't talk to me in that way," said 
Mary ; " you don't mean it." 

" Don't I though ? " replied the fat boy ; " I 
say ! " 

" Well." 

" Are you going to come here regular? " 

'* No," rejoined Mary, shaking her head, " I'm 
going away again to-night. Why?" 

" Oh ! " said the fat boy in a tone of strong 
feeling; "how we should have enjoyed our- 
selves at meals, if you had been ! " 

He 4( 4c * « 

" Don't go yet," urged the fat boy. 

" I must," replied Mary. " Good-bye, for 
the present." 

The fat boy, with elephantine playfulness, 
stretched out his arms to ravish a kiss ; but as 
it required no great agility to elude him, his 
fair enslaver had vanished before he closed 
them again ; upon which the apathetic youth 
ate a pound or so of steak with a sentimental 
countenance, and fell fast asleep. 

Pickwick, Chap. 54. 

PATHER-Child's idea of a. 

The child glanced keenly at the blue coat 
and stiff white cravat, which, with a pair of 
creaking boots and a very loud-ticking watch, 
embodied her idea of a father. — Donibey, Ch. i. 

PATHER— And children. 

Then they would climb and clamber up stairs 
with him, and romp about him on the sofa, or 
group themselves at his knee, a very nosegay 
of little faces, while he seemed to tell them 
some story. — Dombey (Sr* Son. 

PAVOR— The pleasure of a. 

" Dear Mr. Toots," said Florence, " you are 
so friendly to me, and so honest, that I am sure 
I may ask a favor of you." 

"Miss Dombey," returned Mr. Toots, "if 

you'll only name one, you'll — you'll give me 

an appetite. To which," said Mr. Toots, with 

some sentiment, " I have long been a stranger." 

Dombey &' Son, Chap. 61. 



" I have quite come into my property now, 
you know, and — and I don't know what to do 
with it. If I could be at all useful in a pecu- 
niary point of view, I should glide into the si- 
lent tomb with ease and smoothness.^' 

Dombey (Sr* Son, Chap. 50. 

PEAR— A means of obedience. 

" Repression is the only lasting philosophy. 
The dark deference of fear and slavery, my 
friend," observed the Marquis, " will keep the 
dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," 
looking up to it, " shuts out the sky." 

Talc of Two Cities, Chap. 9. 



PEATTJRES 



192 



FEELINGS 



PEATITRES— and manners— An excess of. 

Veneering here pulls up his oratorical Pegasus 
extremely short, and plumps down, clean over 
his head, with : " Lammle, God bless you ! " 

Then Lammle. Too much of him every 
way ; pervadingly too much nose of a coarse 
wrong shape, and his nose in his mind and his 
manners ; too much smile to be real ; too much 
frown to be false ; too many large teeth to be 
visible at once without suggesting a bite. 

Our Muhial Friend, Book II., Chap. l6. 

FEATURES— And personal characteristics. 

The lady thus specially presented, was a long 
lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she 
seemed not to have been made in what linen- 
drapers call " fast coloi's" originally, and to have, 
by little and little, washed out. But for this she 
might have been described as the very pink of 
general propitiation and politeness. From a long 
habit of listening admirably to everything that 
was said in her presence, and looking at the 
speakers as if she were mentally engaged in tak- 
ing off impressions of their images upon her 
soul^ never to part with the same but with life, 
her head had quite settled on one side. Her 
hands had contracted a spasmodic habit of rais- 
ing themselves of their own accord as in in- 
voluntary admiration. Her eyes were liable to 
a similar affection. She had the softest voice 
that ever was heard ; and her nose, stupendously 
aquiline, had a little knob in the very centre or 
key-stone of the bridge, whence it tended down- 
wards towards her face, as in an invincible deter- 
mir/ation never to turn up at anything. 

Dombey (5r» Son, Chap. i. 



He was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful old 
fellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small 
suns looking at you through a fog ; and a newly- 
awakened manner, such as he might have ac- 
quired by having stared for three or four days 
successively through every optical instrument in 
his shop, and suddenly came back to the world 
again, to find it green. 

Dombey <2r» Son, Chap. 4. 



And although it is not among the instincts, 
wild or domestic, of the cat tribe to play at cards, 
feline from sole to crown was Mr. Carker the 
Manager, as he basked in the strip of summer 
light and warmth that shone upon his table and 
the ground as if they were a crooked dial-plate, 
and himself the only figure on it. With hair 
and whiskers deficient in color at all times, but 
feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and 
more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat ; 
with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened ; 
with a natural antipathy to any speck of dirt, 
which made him pause sometimes and watch the 
falling motes of dust, and rub them off his 
smooth white hand or glossy linen : Mr. Carker 
the Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft 
of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue, cruel of 
heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfast- 
ness and patience at his work, as if he were 
waiting at a mouse's hole. 

Dombey &" Son, Chap. 22. 



* * * A struggle which it was not very 
difEcult to parade, his whole life being a strug- 
gle against all kinds of apopletic symptoms. 
Dombey <5r» Son, Chap. 20. 



She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims 
round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and 
chattered of itself when she was not speaking. 
She was miserably dressed, and carried some 
skins over her arm. She seemed to have fol- 
lowed Florence some little way at all events, for 
she had lost her breath ; and this made her uglier 
still, as she stood trying to regain it ; working 
her shrivelled yellow face and throat into all 
sorts of contortions. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 6. 



" Let me tell your fortune, my pretty lady," 
said the old woman, munching with her jaws, as 
if the Death's Head beneath her yellow skin were 
impatient to get out. — Dombey &> Son, Chap. 10. 

FEELINGS— Of public men. 

Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dread- 
ful lonely feelings on me arter this. I con- 
quered 'em at selling times, having a reputation 
to keep (not to mention keeping myself), but 
they got me down in private, and rolled upon 
me. That's often the way with us public char- 
acters. See us on the footboard, and you'd 
give pretty well anything you possess to be us. 
See us off the footboard, and you'd add a trifle 
to be off your bargain. It was under those 
circumstances that I come acquainted with a 
giant. I might have been too high to fall into 
conversation with him, had it not been for my 
lonely feelings. For the general rule is, going 
round the country, to draw the line at dressing 
up. When a man can't trust his getting a liv- 
ing to his undisguised abilities, you consider 
him below your sort. And this giant when on 
view figured as a Roman. 

He was a languid young man, which I at- 
tribute to the distance betwixt his extremities. 
He had a little head and less in it, he had weak 
eyes and weak knees, and altogether you 
couldn't look at him without feeling that there 
was greatly too much of him both for his joints 
and his mind. — Dr. Maiigold. 

FEELINGS— Sam Weller on the. 

" I have considered the matter well, for a 
long time, and I feel that my happiness is bound 
up in her." 

" That's wot we call tying it up in a small 
parcel, sir," interposed Mr. Weller, with an 
agreeable smile. 

Mr. Winkle looked somewhat stern at this 
interruption, and Mr. Picjcwick angrily re- 
quested his attendant not to jest with one of 
the best feelings of our nature ; to which Sara 
replied, " That he wouldn't, if he was aware on 
it ; but there were so many on 'em, that he 
hardly know'd which was the best ones wen he 
heerd *em mentioned." — Pickwick, Chap. 30. 

FEELINGS-Of Mr. Pecksniff. 

" My goodness ! " exclaimed that lady. " How 
low you are in your spirits, sir ! " 

•' I am a man, my dear madam," said Mr, 
Pecksniff, shedding tears, and speaking with 
an imperfect articulation, " but I am also a 
father. I am also a widower. My feelings, 
Mrs. Todgers, will not consent to be entirely 
smothered, like the young children in the Tow- 
er. They are grown up, and the more I press 
the bolster on them, the more they look round 
the corner of it." — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. g. 



FEELINGS 



193 



FIGHT 



FEELINQS-Of Toots. 

•* I feel," said Mr. Toots, in an impassioned 
tone, " as if I could express my feelirigs, at the 
present moment, in a most remarkable manner, 
if — if — I could only get a start." 

Dombey tf Son, Chap. 56. 

FEVER— Its hallucinations. 

That I had a fever and was avoided, that I 
suffered greatly, that I often lost my reason, 
that the time seemed interminable, that I con- 
founded impossible existences with my own 
identity ; that I was a brick in the house wall, 
and yet entreating to be released from the gid- 
dy place where the builders had set me ; that I 
was a steel beam of a vast engine clashing and 
whirling cr^er a gulf, and yet that I implored in 
my own person to have the engine stopped, and 
my part in it hammered off; that I passed 
through these phases of disease, I know of my 
own remembrance, and did in some sort know 
at the time. That I sometimes struggled with 
real people, in the belief that they were mur- 
derers, and that I would all at once compre- 
hend that they meant to do me good, and would 
then sink exhausted in their arms, and suffer 
them to lay me down, I also knew at the time. 
But, above all, I knew that there was a constant 
tendency in all these people — who, when I was 
very ill, would present all kinds of extraordinary 
transformations of the human face, and would be 
much dilated in size— above all, I say, I knew 
that there was an extraordinary tendency in all 
these people, sooner or later to settle down into 
the likeness of Joe. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 57. 



The sun rose and sunk, and rose and sunk 
again, and many times after that ; and still the 
boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling 
away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever. 
The worm does not his work more surely on the 
dead body, than does this slow creeping fire 
upon the living frame. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 12. 

FICTION— Characters in. 

It is remarkable that what we call the world, 
which is so very credulous in what professes to 
be true, is most incredulous in what professes 
to be imaginary ; and that, while, every day in 
real life, it will allow in one man no blemishes, 
and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit 
a very strongly-marked character, either good 
or bad, in a fictitious narrative, to be within the 
limits of probability. 

Preface to Nicholas Nickleby. 

FIDELITY AND ORDEB-Of Mr. Grew- 
g-ious. 

Many accounts and account-books, many files 
of correspondence, and several strong boxes, 
garnished Mr. Grewgious's room. They can 
scaroely be represented as having lumbered it, 
so conscientious and precise was their orderly 
arrangement. The apprehension of dying sud- 
denly, and leaving one fact or one figure with 
any incon\pleteness or obscurity attaching to it, 
would have stretched Mr. Grewgious stone dead 
any day. The largest fidelity to a trust was the 
life-blood of the man. There are sorts of life- 
blood that course more quickly, more gayly. 



more attractively ; but there is no better sort in 
circulation. — Edwin Drood, Chap, 11. 

FIGURE— Of Mrs. Kenwigs. 

" But such a woman as Mrs. Kenwigs was, 
afore she was married ! Good gracious, such a 
woman !" 

Mr. Lumbey shook his head with great solem- 
nity, as though to imply that he supposed she 
must have been rather a dazzler. 

" Talk of fairies ! " cried Mr. Kenwigs. " / 
never see anybody so light to be alive, never. 
Such manners too ; so playful, and yet so se- 
werely proper ! As for her figure ! It isn't 
generally known," said Mr. Kenwigs, dropping 
his voice ; " but her figure was such, at that 
time, that the sign of the Britannia over in the 
Holloway road was painted from it." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 36. 

FIGHT— A school-boy's. 

The shade of a young butcher rises, like the 
apparition of an armed head in Macbeth. Who 
is this young butcher? He is the terror of the 
youth of Canterbury. There is a vague belief 
abroad, that the beef suet with which he anoints 
his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that 
he is a match for a man. He is a broad-faced, 
bull-necked young butcher, with rough red 
cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an inju- 
rious tongue. His main use of this tongue is 
to disparage Dr. Strong's young gentlemen. He 
says, publicly, that if they want anything he'll 
give it 'em. He names individuals among them 
(myself included), whom he could undertake to 
settle M'ith one hand, and the other tied behind 
him. He waylays the smaller boys to punch 
their unprotected heads, and calls challenges 
after me in the open streets. For these suffi- 
cient reasons I resolve to fight the butcher. 

It is a summer evening. Down in a green hol- 
low, at the corner of a wall, I meet the butcher 
by appointment. I am attended by a select 
body of our boys ; the butcher, by two other 
butchers, a young publican, and a sweep. The 
preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and 
myself stand face to face. In a moment the 
butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my 
left eyebrow. In another moment, I don't 
know where the wall is, or where I am, or where 
anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and 
which the butcher, we are always in such a tan- 
gle and tussle, knockhig about the trodden grass. 
Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confi- 
dent ; sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping 
on my second's knee ; sometimes I go in at the 
butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against 
his face, without appearing to discompose him at 
all. At last I awake, very queer about the head, 
as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walk- 
ing off, congratulated by the two other butchers 
and the sweep and publican, and putting on his 
coat as he goes ; from which I augur, justly, 
that the victory is his. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 18. 

FIQHT^Between Q,uilp and Diok Swiveller. 
Daniel Quilp found himself, all flushed and 
dishevellied, in the middle of the street, with 
Mr. Richard Swiveller performing a kind of 
dance round him, and requiring to know 
"whttther he wanted any more?" 



FIGHT 



194 



FIRE AND MOB 



" There's plenty more of it at the same shop," 
said Mr. Swiveller, by turns advancing and re- 
treating in a threatening attitude, " a large and 
extensive assortment always on hand — country 
orders executed with promptitude and despatch 
— will you have a little more, sir ? — don't say no, 
if you'd rather not." 

Old Curiosity Shop^ Chap. 13. 

FIGHT-Pip's. 

" Come and fight," said the pale yoang gentle- 
man. 

What could I do but follow him? I have 
often asked myself the question since : bvit, what 
else could I do? His manner was so final and 
I was so astonished, that I followed where he 
led, as if I had been under a spell. 

" Stop a minute, though," he said, wheeling 
round before we had got many paces. " I ought 
to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it 
is ! " In a most irritating manner he instantly 
slapped his hands against one another, daintily 
flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my 
hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his head, 
and butted it into my stomach. 

The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, be- 
sides that it was unquestionably to be regarded 
in the light of a liberty, was particularly dis- 
agreeable just after bread and meat. I there- 
fore hit out at him and was going to hit out 
again, when he said, " Aha ! Would you? " and 
began dancing backward and forward in a man- 
ner quite unparalleled within my limited ex- 
perience. 

" Laws of the game ! " said he. Here he 
skipped from his left leg on to his right. " Re- 
gular rules ! " Here he skipped from his right 
leg on to his left. " Come to the ground, and 
go through the preliminaries ! " Here he dodg- 
ed backward and forwai'd, and did all sorts of 
things, while I looked helplessly at him. 

I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him 
so dexterous ; but I felt morally and physically 
convinced that his light head of hair could have 
had no business in the pit of my stomach, and 
that I had a right to consider it irrelevant when 
so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I fol- 
lowed him without a word to a retired nook of 
the garden, formed by the junction of two walls 
and screened by some rubbish. On his asking 
me if I was satisfied with the ground, and on 
my replying Yes, he begged my leave to absent 
himself for a moment, and quickly returned 
with a bottle of water and a sponge dipped in 
vinegar. " Available for both," he said, placing 
these against the wall. And then fell to pulling 
off, not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his 
shirt too, in a manner at once light-hearted, 
business-like, and blood-thirsty. 

Although he did not look very healthy — hav- 
ing pimples on his face, and a breaking-out at 
his mouth — these dreadful preparations quite ap- 
palled me. I judged him to be about my own 
age, but he was much taller, and he had a way 
of spinning himself about that was full of ap- 
pearance. For the rest, he was a young gentle- 
man in a gray suit (when not denuded for bat- 
tle), with his elbows, knees, wrists, and heels 
considerably in advance of the rest of him as 
to development. 

My heart failed me when I saw him squaring 
sX me with every demonstration of mechanical 
nicety, and eying my anatomy as if he were 



minutely choosing his bone. I never have been 
so surprised in my life as I was when I let out 
the first blow, and saw him lying on his back, 
looking up at me with a bloody nose and his 
face exceedingly fore-shortened. 

But he was on his feet directly, and after 
sponging himself with a great show of dexterity 
began squaring again. The second greatest sur- 
prise I have ever had in my life was seeing him 
on his back again, looking up at me out of a 
black eye. 

His spirit inspired me with great respect. He 
seemed to have no strength, and he never once 
hit me hard, and he was always knocked down ; 
but he would be up again in a moment, spong- 
ing himself or drinking out of the water-bottle, 
with the greatest satisfaction in seconding him- 
self according to form, and then came at me 
with an air and a show that made me believe he 
really was going to do for me at last. He got 
heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that the 
more I hit him, the harder I hit him ; but he 
came up again and again and again, until at last 
he got a bad fall with the back of his head 
against the wall. Even after that crisis in our 
affairs, he got up and turned round and round 
confusedly a few times, not knowing where I 
was ; but finally went on his knees to his sponge 
and threw it up : at the same time panting out, 
" That means you have won." 

He seemed so brave and innocent, that al- 
though I had not proposed the contest I felt but 
a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I 
go so far as to hope that I regarded myself, while 
dressing, as a species of savage young wolf, or 
other wild beast. However, I got dressed, 
darkly wiping my sanguinary face at intei'vals, 
and I said, "Can I help you?" and he said, 
" No, thankee," and I said, " Good afternoon," 
and he said, " Same to you." 

Great Expectations^ Chap. ii. 

FIRE. 

The fire bounded up as if each separate flame 
had had a tiger's life, and roared as though, in 
every one, there were a hungry voice. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 65. 

FIRE AND MOB. 

It was not an easy task to draw off such a 
throng. If Bedlam gates had been flung open 
wide, there would not have issued forth such 
maniacs as the frenzy of that night had made. 
There were men there who danced and trampled 
on the beds of flowers as though they trod down 
human enemies, and wrenched them from the 
stalks, like savages who twisted human necks. 
There were men Avho cast their lighted torches 
in the air, and suffered them to fall upon their 
heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep 
unseemly burns. There were men who rushed 
up to the fire, and paddled in it with their 
hands as if in water ; and others who were re- 
strained by force from plunging in, to gratify 
their deadly longing. On the skull of one 
drunken lad — not twenty, by his looks — who 
lay upon the ground with a bottle to his mouth, 
the lead from the roof came streaming down in 
a shower of liquid fire, white hot ; melting his 
head like wax. When the scattered parties 
were collected, men — living yet, but singed as 
with hot irons — were plucked out of the cellars, 
and carried off upon the shoulders of o*^hers, 



FIBE AND MOB 



195 



PIBE AND BBEEZE 



who strove to wake them as they went along, 
with ribald jokes, and left them, dead, in the 
passages of hospitals. But of all the howling 
throng not one learned mercy from, or sickened 
at, these sights ; nor was the fierce, besotted, 
senseless rage of one man glutted. 

Slowly, and in small clusters, with hoarse 
hurrahs and repetitions of their usual cry, the 
assembly dropped away. The last few red-eyed 
stragglers reeled after those who had gone be- 
fore ; the distant noise of men calling to each 
other, and whistling for others whom they 
missed, grew fainter and fainter ; at length even 
these sounds died away, and silence reigned 
alone. 

Silence indeed ! The glare of the flames had 
sunk into a fitful flashing light ; and the gentle 
stars, invisible till now, looked down upon the 
blackening heap. A dull smoke hung upon the 
ruin, as though to hide it from those eyes of 
Heaven ; and the wind forebore to move it. 
Bare walls, roof open to the sky — chambers, 
where the beloved dead had, many and many a 
fair day, risen to new life and energy ; where so 
many dear ones had been sad and merry ; which 
were connected with so many thoughts and 
hopes, regrets and changes — all gone. Nothing 
left but a dull and dreary blank — a smouldering 
heap of dust and ashes — the silence and solitude 
of utter desolation. 

***** 

The more the fire crackled and raged, the 
wilder and more cruel the men grew ; as though 
moving in that element they became fiends, and 
changed their earthly nature for the qualities 
that give delight in hell. 

The burning pile, revealing rooms and pas- 
sages red-hot, through gaps made in the crum- 
bling walls ; the tributaiy fires that licked the 
outer bricks and stones, with their long forked 
tongues, and ran up to meet the glowing mass 
within ; the shining of the flames upon the vil- 
lains who looked on and fed them ; the roaring 
of the angry blaze, so bright and high that it 
seemed in its rapacity to have swallowed up the 
very smoke ; the living flakes the wind bore 
rapidly away and hurried on with, like a storm 
of fiery snow ; the noiseless breaking of great 
beams of wood, which fell like feathers on the 
heap of ashes, and crumbled in the very act to 
sparks and powder; the lurid tinge that over- 
spread the sky, and the darkness, very deep by 
contrast, which prevailed around ; the exposure 
to the coarse, common gaze, of every little nook 
which usages of home had made a sacred place, 
and the destruction by rude hands of every little 
household favorite which old associations inade 
a dear and precious thing : all this taking place 
— not among pitying looks and friendly mur- 
murs of compassion, but brutal shouts and ex- 
ultations, which seemed to make the very rats 
who stood by the old house too long, creatures 
with some claim upon the pity and regard of 
those its roof had sheltered — combined to form 
a scene never to be forgotten by those who saw 
it and were not actors in the work, so long as 
life end\xred.—Barnady Rudge, Chap. 55. 



When all the keeper's goods were flung upon 
this costly pile, to the last fragment, they smear- 
ed it with the pitch, and tar, and rosin they had 
brought, and sprinkled it with turpentine. To 



all the woodwork round the prison-doors they 
did the like, leaving not a joist or beam un- 
touched. This infernal christening performed, 
they fired the pile with lighted matches and with 
blazing tow, and then stood by, awaiting the 
result. 

The furniture being very dry, and rendered 
more combustible by wax and oil, besides the 
arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames 
roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison 
wall, and twining up its lofty front like burning 
serpents. At first, they crowded round the blaze, 
and vented their exultation only in their looks ; 
but when it grew hotter and fiercer — when it 
crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great furnace 
— when it shone upon the opposite houses, and 
lighted up not only the pale and wondering faces 
at the windows, but the inmost corners of each 
habitation — when, through the deep red heat 
and glow, the fire was seen sporting and toying 
with the door, now clinging to its obdurate sur- 
face, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and 
soaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold 
it in its burning grasp and lure it to its ruin — 
when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the 
church clock of St. Sepulchre's, so often point- 
ing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad 
day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered 
in the unwonted light like something richly 
jewelled — when blackened stone and sombre 
brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and win- 
dows shone like burnished gold, dotting the 
longest distance in the fiery vista with their 
specks of brightness — when wall and tower, and 
roof and chimney-stack, seemed drunk, and in 
the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger 
— when scores of objects, never seen before, 
burst out upon the view, and things the most 
familiar put on some new aspect — then the mob 
began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and 
shouts, and clamor, such as happily is seldom 
heard, bestirred themselves to feed the fire, and 
keep it at its height. 

Although the heat was so intense that the 
paint on the houses over against the prison 
parched and crackled up, and swelling into boils, 
as it were, from excess of torture, broke and 
crumbled away ; although the glass fell from the 
window-sashes, and the lead and iron on the 
roofs blistered the incautious hand that touched 
them ; and the sparrows in the eaves took wing, 
and, rendered giddy by the smoke, fell fluttering 
down upon the blazing pile, still the fire was 
tended unceasingly by busy hands, and round it, 
men were going always. They never slackened 
in their zeal, or kept aloof, but pressed upon the 
flames so hard, that those in front had much ado 
to save themselves from being thrust in ; if one 
man swooned or dropped, a dozen struggled for 
his place, and that, although they knew the pain, 
and thirst, and pressure to be unendurable. 

Barnaby Rudge, CJuip. 64. 

FIBE— Its red eyes. 

The fire, which had left off roaring, winked 
its red eyes at us — as Richard said — like a 
drowsy old Chancery lion. 

Bleak House, Chap. 3. 

PIBE AND BBEEZE. 

Now, too, the fire took fresh courage, favored 
by the lively wind the dance awakened, and 
burnt clear and 1" igh. It was the Genius of the 



FIRE 



196 



FIBE-PLACE 



room, and present everywhere. It shone in peo- 
ple's eyes, it sparkled in the jewels on the snowy 
necks of girls, it twinkled at their ears, as if it 
whispered to them slyly, it flashed about their 
waists, it flickered on the ground and made it 
rosy for their feet, it bloomed upon the ceiling 
that its glow might set off" their bright faces, and 
it kindled up a general illumination in Mrs. 
Craggs's little belfry. 

Now, too, the lively air that fanned it, grew 
less gentle as the music quickened and the dance 
proceeded with new spirit ; and a breeze arose 
that made the leaves and berries dance upon the 
wall, as they had often done upon the trees ; and 
the breeze rustled in the room as if an invisible 
company of fairies, treading in the footsteps of 
the good substantial revellers, were whirling after 
them. Now, too, no feature of the Doctor's face 
could be distinguished as he spun and spun ; and 
now there seemed a dozen Birds of Paradise in 
fitful flight ; and now there were a thousand little 
bells at work ; and now a fleet of flying skirts 
was ruffled by a little tempest, when the music 
gave in, and the dance was over. 

Battle of Life, Chap. 2. 

FIRE— A brigrht. 

The music struck up, and the dance com- 
menced. The bright fire crackled and sparkled, 
rose and fell, as though it joined the dance itself, 
in right good fellowship. Sometimes it roared 
as if it would make music too. Sometimes it 
flashed and beamed as if it were the eye of the 
old room : it winked, too, sometimes, like a 
knowing Patriarch, upon the youthful whisperers 
in comers. Sometimes it sported with the 
holly-boughs ; and, shining on the leaves by fits 
and starts, made them look as if they were in 
the cold winter night again, and fluttering in the 
wind. Sometimes its genial humor grew 
obstreperous, and passed all bounds ; and then 
it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet, 
with a loud burst, a shower of harmless little 
sparks, and in its exultation, leaped and bounded 
like a mad thing, up the broad old chimney. 
Battle of Life,. Chap. 2. 

FIRE— Little Nell at the forge. 

" See yonder there — that's my friend." 

" The fire ? " said the child. 

" It has been alive as long as I have," the 
man made answer. " We talk and think to- 
gether all night long." 

The child glanced quickly at him in her sur- 
prise, but he had turned his eyes in their former 
direction and was musing as before. 

" It's like a book to me," he said ; " the only 
book I ever learned to read ; and many an old 
story it tells me. It's music, for I should know 
its voice among a thousand, and there are other 
voices in its roar. It has its pictures too^ You 
don't know how many strange faces and differ- 
ent scenes I trace in the red-hot coals. It's my 
memory, that fire, and shows me all my life." 

The child, bending down to listen to his 
words, could not help remarking with what 
brightened eyes he continued to speak and 
muse. 

•' Yes," he said, with a faint smile, " it was 
the same when I was quite a baby, and crawled 
about it, till I fell asleep. My father watched 
it then." 

" Had you no mother ? " asked the child. 



" No, she was dead. Women work hard in 
these parts. She worked herself to death, they 
told me, and, as they said so then, the fire has 
gone on saying the same thing ever since. I 
suppose it was true. I have always believed it." 

"Were you brought up here, then?" said the 
child. 

" Summer and winter," he replied. " Secretly 
at first, but when they found it out, thoy let him 
keep me here. So the fire nursed me — the same 
fire. It has never gone out." 

" You are fond of it ? " said the child. 

" Of course I am. He died before it. I saw 
him fall down — ^just there, where those ashes 
are burning now — and wondered, I remember, 
why it didn't help him." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 44. 

FIRE— Sykes, the murderer, at a. 

The broad sky seemed on fire. Rising into 
the air with showers of sparks, and rolling one 
above the other, were sheets of flame, lighting 
the atmosphere for miles round, and driving 
clouds of smoke in the direction where he stood. 
The shouts grew louder as new voices swelled 
the roar, and he could hear the cry of " Fire ! " 
mingled with the ringing of an alarm-bell, the 
fall of heavy bodies, and the crackling of flames 
as they twined round some new obstacle, and 
shot aloft as though refreshed by food. The 
noise increased as he looked. There were peo- 
ple there — men and women — light, bustle. It 
was like new life to him. He darted onward — 
straight, headlong — dashing through brier and 
brake, and leaping gate and fence as madly as 
the dog, who careered with loud and sounding 
bark before him. 

He came upon the spot. There were half- 
dressed figures tearing to and fro, some endeav- 
oring to drag the frightened horses from the 
stables, others driving the cattle from the yard 
and out-houses, and others coming laden from 
the burning pile, amidst a shower of falling 
sparks, and the tumbling down of red-hot beams. 
The apertures, where doors and windows stood 
an hour ago, disclosed a mass of raging fire ; 
walls rocked and crumbled into the burning 
well ; the molten lead and iron poured down, 
white hot, upon the ground. Women and chil- 
dren shrieked, and men encouraged each other 
with noisy shouts and cheers. The clanking 
of the engine-pumps, and the spirting and hiss 
ing of the water as it fell upon the blazing 
wood, added to the tremendous roar. He 
shouted, too, till he was hoarse ; and, flying 
from memory and himself, plunged into the 
thickest of the throng. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 48. 

FIRE-PIiACE— An ancient. 

The fire-place was an old one, built by some 
Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round 
with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate 
the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, 
Pharaoh's daughters. Queens of Sheba, Angelic 
messengers descending through the air on 
clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshaz- 
zars, Apostles putting off" to sea in butter-boats, 
hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts ; and 
yet that face of Marley's, seven years dead, 
came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swal- 
lowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had 
been a blank at first, with power to shape some 






vixiNa' 



197 



FLTTTE MUSIC 



picture on its surface from the disjointed frag- 
ments of his thoughts, there would have been a 
copy of old Marley's head on every one. 

Christmas Carols Stave I. 

" FIXING "—A provincialism of America. 

" Will you try," said my opposite neighbor, 
handing me a dish of potatoes, broken up in 
milk and butter, — " will you try some of these 
fixings? " 

There are few words which perform such va- 
rious duties as this word ** fix." It is the Caleb 
Quoteni of the American vocabulary. You call 
upon a gentleman in a country town, and his 
help informs you that he is " fixing himself" 
just now, but will be down directly ; by 
which you are to understand that he is dress- 
ing. You inquire on board a steamboat, of a 
fellow-passenger, whether breakfast will be 
ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, 
for when he was last below they were " fixing 
the tables," in other words, laying the cloth. 
You beg a porter to collect your luggage, and 
he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he'll " fix 
it presently ;" and if you complain of indispo- 
sition, you are advised to have recourse to Doc- 
tor so-and so, who will " fix you " in no time. 

One night I ordered a bottle of mulled wine 
at a hotel where I was staying, and waited a 
long time for it ; at length it was put upon the 
table with an apology from the landlord that 
he feared it wasn't " fixed properly." And I 
recollect once, at a stage-coach dinner, over- 
hearing a very stern gentleman demand of a 
waiter who presented him with a plate of under- 
done roast beef, " whether he called that fixing 
God A'mighty's vittles." 

American Notes, Chap. lo. 

PliAQ— The American. 

" Tut ! " said Martin. " You're a gay flag in 
the distance. But let a man be near enough to 
get the light upon the other side, and see through 
you, and you are but sorry fustian ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 21. 

FLATTERER. 

For, although a skillful flatterer is a most de- 
lightful companion if you can keep him all to 
yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when 
he takes to complimenting other people. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 28. 

FLOWERS, BIRDS, AND ANQELS-The 
vision of Jenny Wren. 

" I wonder how it happens that when I am 
work, work, working here, all alone in the sum- 
mer-time, I smell flowers?" 

" As a commonplace individual, I should say," 
Eugene suggested languidly — for he was grow- 
ing weary of the person of the house — *' that you 
smell flowers because you do smell flowers." 

" No I don't," said the little creature, resting 
one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her 
chir. upon that hand, and looking vacantly be- 
fore her ; " this is not a flowery neighborhood. 
It's anything but that. And yet, as I sit at work, 
I smell miles of flowers. 1 smell roses, till I 
think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bush- 
els, on the floor. I smell fallen leaves, till I put 
down my hand — so — and expect to make them 
rustle. I smell the white and the pink May in 



the hedges, and all sorts of flowers that I never 
was among. For I have seen very few flowers 
indeed, in my life." 

" Pleasant fancies to have, Jenny dear ! " said 
her friend : with a glance towards Eugene as if 
she would have asked him whether they were 
given the child in compensation for her losses. 

" So I think, Lizzie, when they come to me. 
And the birds I hear ! Oh ! " cried the little 
creature, holding out her hand and looking up- 
ward, " how they sing ! " 

There was something in the face and action 
for the moment quite inspired and beautiful. 
Then the chin dropped musingly upon the hand 
again. 

" I dare say my birds sing better than other 
birds, and my flowers smell better than other 
flowers. For when I was a little child," in a tone 
as though it were ages ago, " the children that I 
used to see early in the morning were very dif- 
ferent from any others that I ever saw. They 
were not like me ; they were not chilled, anxious, 
ragged, or beaten ; they were never in pain. 
They were not like the children of the neigh- 
bors ; they never made me tremble all over, by 
setting up shrill noises, and they never mocked 
me. Such numbers of them too ! All in white 
dresses, and with something shining on the bor- 
ders, and on their heads, that I have never been 
able to imitate with my work, though I know it 
so well. They used to come down in long, 
bright, slanting rows, and say all together, 
' Who is this in pain ! Who is this in pain ! ' 
When I told them who it was, they answered, 
' Come and play with us ! ' When I said ' I 
never play ! I can't play ! ' they swept about 
me and took me up, and made me light. Then 
it was all delicious ease and rest till they laid 
me down, and said, all together, ' Have patience, 
and we will come again.* Whenever they came 
back, I used to know they were coming before 
I saw the long bright rows, by hearing them 
ask, all together, a long way off", ' Who is this in 
pain ! who is this in pain ! ' And I used to cry 
out, ' O my blessed children, it's poor me. Have 
pity on me. Take me up and make me light !"* 

By degrees, as she progressed in this remem- 
brance, the hand was raised, the last ecstatic 
look returned, and she became quite beautiful. 
Having so paused for a moment, silent, with a 
listening smile upon her face, she looked round 
and recalled herself. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 2. 

FLXTTE-PLAYER-Mr. MeU.the. 

When he had put up his things for the night, 
he took out his flute, and blew at it, until I al- 
most thought he would gradually blow his whole 
being into the large hole at the top, and ooze 
away at the keys. — David Coppcrjicld, Chap. 5. 

FLUTE MUSIC-Dick SwiveUer's solace in 
love. 

Some men in his blighted position would have 
taken to drinking; but as Mr. Swiveller had 
taken to that before, he only took, on receiving 
the news that Sophy Wackles was lost to him 
forever, to playing the flute ; thinking, after ma- 
ture consideration, that it was a good, sound, 
dismal occupation, not only in unison with his 
own sad thoughts, but calculated to awaken a 
fellow-feeling in the bosoms of his neighbors. 
In pursuance of this resolution, he now drew a 



Foa 



198 



FOBTUirE-HUKTEBS 



little table to his bedside, and arranging the 
light and a small oblong music-book to the best 
advantage, took his flute from its box, and began 
to play most mournfully. 

The air was "Away, with Melancholy" — a 
composition, which, when it is played very slow- 
ly on the flute, in bed, with the further disadvan- 
tage of being performed by a gentleman but im- 
perfectly acquainted with the instrument, who 
repeats one note a great many times before he 
can find the next, has not a lively eff"ect. Yet, 
for half the night, or more, Mr. Swiveller, lying 
sometimes on his back with his eyes upon the 
ceiling, and sometimes half out of bed, to cor- 
rect himself by the book, played this unhappy 
tune over and over again ; never leaving off, 
save for a minute or two at a time to take breath 
and soliloquize about the Marchioness, and then 
beginning again with renewed vigor. It was 
not until he had quite exhausted his several sub- 
jects of meditation, and had breathed into the 
flute the whole sentiment of the purl down to its 
very dregs, and had nearly maddened the peo- 
ple of the house, and at both the next doors, 
and over the way, — that he shut up the music- 
book, extinguished the candle, and finding him- 
self greatly lightened and relieved in his mind, 
turned round and fell asleep. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 58. 

FOG— A sea of. 

It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was 
heavy and dark. Animate London, with smart- 
ing eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheez- 
ing, and choking ; inanimate London was a sooty 
spectre, divided in purpose between being visi- 
ble and invisible, and so being wholly neither. 
Gas-lights flared in the shops with a haggard and 
unblest air, as knowing themselves to be night- 
creatures that had no business abroad under the 
sun ; while the sun itself, when it was for a few 
moments dimly indicated through circling eddies 
of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were 
collapsing flat and cold. Even in the surround- 
ing country it was a foggy day, but there the fog 
was grey, whereas in London it was-, at about 
the boundary line, dark yellow, and a little with- 
in it brown, and then browner, and then brown- 
er, until, at the heart of the City — which call 
Saint Mary Axe — it was rusty black. From any 
point of the high ridge of land northward, it 
might have been discerned that the loftiest build- 
ings made an occasional struggle to get their 
heads above the foggy sea, and especially that 
the great dome of Saint Paul's seemed to die 
hard ; but this was not perceivable in the streets 
at their feet, where the whole metropolis was a 
heap of vapor charged with mufllled sound of 
wheels, and enfolding a gigantic catarrh. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. i. 



The mist, though sluggish and slow to move, 
was of a keenly searching kind. No muffling up 
in furs and broadcloth kept it out. It seemed 
to penetrate into the very bones of the shrinking 
wayfarers, and to rack them with cold and pains. 
Everything was wet and clammy to the touch. 
The warm blaze alone defied it, and leaped and 
sparkled merrily. It was a day to be at home, 
crowding about the fire, telling stories of travel- 
lers who had lost their way in such weather on 
heaths and moors : and to love a warm hearth 
more than ever. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 67. 



FORGIVENESS. 

" One always begins to forgive a place as soon 
as it's left behind ; I dare say a prisoner begins 
to relent towards his prison, after he is let out." 
Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 2 

FORGIVENESS— Pecksniffian. 

" You will shake hands, sir." 

" No, John," said Mr. Pecksniff, with a calm- 
ness quite ethereal ; " no, I will not shake hands, 
John. I have forgiven you. I had already for- 
given you, even before you ceased to reproach 
and taunt me. I have embraced you in the 
spirit, John, which is better than shaking hands." 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

FORMAL PEOPLE. 

The formal couple are the most prim, cold, 
immovable, and unsatisfactory people on the face 
of the earth. Their faces, voices, dress, house, 
furniture, walk, and manner are all the essence 
of formality, unrelieved by one redeeming touch 
of frankness, heartiness, or nature. 

Everything with the formal couple resolves 
itself into a matter of form. They don't call 
upon you on your account, but their own ; not 
to see how you are, but to show how they are : 
it is not a ceremony to do honor to you, but to 
themselves — not due to your position, but to 
theirs. If one of a friend's children dies, the 
formal couple are as sure and punctual in send- 
ing to the house as the undertaker ; if a friend's 
family be increased, the monthly nurse is not 
more attentive than they. The formal couple, 
in fact, joyfully seize all occasions of testifying 
their good-breeding and precise observance of 
the little usages of society ; and for you, who 
are the means to this end, they care as much as 
a man does for the tailor who has enabled him 
to cut a figure, or a woman for the milliner who 
has assisted her to a conquest. 

Having an extensive connection among that 
kind of people who make acquaintances and 
eschew friends, the formal gentleman attends, 
from time to time, a great many funerals, to 
which he is formally invited, and to which he 
formally goes, as returning a call for the last 
time. Here his deportment is of the most fault- 
less description ; he knows the exact pitch of 
voice it is proper to assume, the sombre look he 
ought to wear, the melancholy tread which 
should be his gait for the day. He is perfectly 
acquainted with all the dreary courtesies to be 
observed in a mourning-coach ; knows when to 
sigh, and when to hide his nose in the white 
handkerchief; and looks into the grave and 
shakes his head when the ceremony is concluded, 
with the sad formality of a mute. 

The Formal Couple. 

FORTUNE-HUNTERS. 

" A mere fortune-hunter 1 " cried the son, in- 
dignantly. 

" What in the devil's name, Ned, would you 
be ? " returned the father. " All men are for- 
tune-hunters, are they not ? The law, the church, 
the court, the camp — see how they are all crowd- 
ed .with fortune-hunters, jostling each other in 
the pursuit. The Stock-exchange, the pulpit, 
the counting-house, the royal drawing-room, the 
Senate — what but fortune-hunters are they filled 
with ? A fortune-hunter ! Yes. You are one ; 
and you would be nothing else, my dear Ned, 



FOUNDRY 



199 



PRENCH LANQTJAQB 



if you were the greatest courtier, lawyer, legisla- 
tor, prelate, or merchant, in existence. If you 
are squeamish and moral, Ned, console yourself 
with the reflection that at the worst your fortune- 
hunting can make but one person miserable or 
unhappy. How many people do you suppose 
these other kinds of huntsmen crush in follow- 
ing their sport? Hundreds at a step — or thou- 
sands?" — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 15. 

FOUNDRY— Description of a. 

"This is the place," he said, pausing at a 
door to put Nell down and take her hand. 
" Don't be afraid. There's nobody here will 
harm you." 

It needed a strong confidence in this assurance 
to induce them to enter, and what they saw in- 
side did not diminish their apprehension and 
alarm. In a large and lofty building, supported 
by pillars of iron, with great black apertures in 
the upper walls, open to the external air ; echo- 
ing to the roof with the beating of hammers and 
roar of furnaces, mingled with the hissing of red- 
hot metal plunged in water, and a hundred 
strange, un'earthly noises never heard elsewhere ; 
in this gloomy place, moving like demons among 
the flame and smoke, dimly and fitfully seen, 
flushed and tormented by the burning fires, and 
wielding great weapons, a faulty blow from any 
one of which must have crushed some work- 
man's skull, a number of men labored like 
giants. Others, reposing upon heaps of coals 
or ashes, with their faces turned to the black 
vault above, slept or rested from their toil. 
Others again, opening the white-hot furnace- 
doors, cast fuel on the flames, which came rush- 
ing and roaring forth to meet it, and licked it up 
like oil. Others drew forth, with clashing noise, 
upon the ground, great sheets of glowing steel, 
emitting an insupportable heat, and a dull deep 
light like that which reddens in the eyes of sav- 
age beasts. 

Through these bewildering sights and deaf- 
ening sounds, their conductor led them to 
where, in a dark portion of the building, one 
furnace burnt by night and day — so, at least, 
they gathered from the motion of his lips, for 
as yet they could only see him speak — not hear 
him. The man who had been watching this 
fire, and whose task was ended for the present, 
gladly withdrew, and left them with their friend, 
who, spreading Nell's little cloak upon a heap of 
ashes, and showing her where she could hang 
her outer-clothes to dry, signed to her and the 
old man to lie down and sleep. For himself, 
he took his station on a rugged mat before the 
furnace-door, and resting his chin upon his 
hands, watched the flame as it shone through 
the iron chinks, and the white ashes as they 
fell into their bright, hot grave below. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 44. 

FOTTNTAIN-The waters of the. 

Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and 
merrily the smiling dimples twinkled and ex- 
panded more and more, until they broke into a 
laugh against the basin's rim, and vanished. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 45. 

FOWLS— Their peculiarities. 

* * * An aged personage, afflicted with a 
paucity of feather and visibil-'.y of quill, that 
gives her the appearance of a bundle of office - 



pens. When a railway goods-van that woulu 
crush an elephant comes round the corner, tear- 
ing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed 
from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that 
the whole rush was a passing property in the 
air, which may have left something to eat be- 
hind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of 
kettles and saucepans, and fragments of bon- 
nets, as a kind of meteoric discharge for fowls 
to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account 
I think, as a sort of hail ; shuttlecocks, as rain 
or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to 
them as any other light ; and I have more than 
a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, 
the early public-house at the corner has super- 
seded the sun. I have established it as a cer- 
tain fact, that they always begin to crow when 
the public-house shutters begin to be taken 
down, and that they salute the pot-boy, the in- 
stant he appears to perform that duty, as if he 
were Phoebus in person. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 10. 

FRANCE— Scenes in Flemish. 

Wonderful poultry of the French-Flemish 
country, why take the trouble to be poultry ? 
Why not stop short at eggs in the rising genera- 
tion, and die out, and have done with it ? Pa- 
rents of chickens have I seen this day, followed 
by their wretched young families, scratching 
nothing out of the mud with an air — tottering 
about on legs so scraggy and weak that the valiant 
word " drumsticks " becomes a mockery when 
applied to them, and the crow of the lord and 
master has been a mere dejected case of croup. 
Carts have I seen, and other agricultural instru- 
ments, unwieldy, dislocated, monstrous. Pop- 
lar-trees by the thousand fringe the fields, and 
fringe the end of the flat landscape, so that I 
feel, looking straight on before me, as if, when 
I pass the extremest fringe on. the low horizon, 
I shall tumble over into space. Little white- 
washed black holes of chapels, with barred 
doors and Flemish inscriptions, abound at road- 
side corners, and often they are garnished 
with a sheaf of wooden crosses, like children's 
swords ; or, in their default, some hollow old 
tree with a saint roosting in it, is similarly deco- 
rated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint en- 
shrined aloft in a sort of sacred pigeon house. 
Not that we are deficient in such decoration in 
the town here, for, over at the church yonder, 
outside the building, is a scenic representation 
of the Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and 
stones, and made out with painted canvas and 
wooden figures ; the whole surmounting the 
dusty skull of some holy personage (perhaps), 
shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it 
were originally put there to be cooked, and the 
fire had long gone out. A windmilly country 
this, though the windmills are so damp and 
rickety that they nearly knock themselves off 
their legs at every turn of their sails, and creak 
in loud complaint. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 25. 

FRENCH LANaUAQE-The. 

" What sort of language do you consider 
French, sir?" 

" How do you mean?" asked Nicholas. 

" Do you consider it a good language, sir ? " 
said the collector ; " a pretty language, a sensi- 
ble language ? " 



FBIENDS 



200 



PBIENDLY SERVICE 



" A pretty language, certainly," replied Nich- 
olas ; "and as it has a name for everything, and 
admits of elegant conversation about everything, 
I presume it is a sensible one." 

" I don't know," said Mr. Lillyvick, doubt- 
fully. " Do you call it a cheerful language, 
now?" 

" Yes," replied Nicholas, " I should say it 
was, certainly." 

" It's very much changed since my time, 
then," said the collector, " very much." 

" Was it a dismal one in your time ? " asked 
Nicholas, scarcely able to repress a smile. 

"Very," replied Mr. Lillyvick, with some ve- 
hemence of'manner. " It's the war time that I 
speak of; the last war. It may be a cheerful 
language. I should be sorry to contradict any- 
body ; but I can only say that I've heard the 
French prisoners, who were natives, and ought 
to know how to speak it, talking in such a dis- 
mal manner, that it made one miserable to hear 
them. Ay, that I have, fifty times, sir — fifty 
times ! " — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap, i6. 

FRIENDS— The escort of a crowd. 

" Of the two, and after experience of both, I 
think I'd rather be taken out of my house by a 
crowd of enemies, than escorted home by a mob 
of friends ! " — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 79. 

FRIENDS— Not too many. 

" I have not so many friends that I shall grow 
confused among the number, and forget my best 
one," — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22. 

FRIENDSHIP— liowten's opinion of. 

" Friendship's a very good thing in its way ; 
we are all very friendly and comfortable at the 
Stump, for instance, over our grog, where every 
man pays for himself ; but damn hurting your- 
self for anybody else, you know ! No man 
should have more than two attachments — the 
first, to number one, and the second to the 
ladies." — Pickwick, Chap. 53. 

FRIENDSHIP— Between opposite charac- 
ters. 

It may be observed of this friendship, such as 
it was, that it had within it more likely materials 
of endurance than many a sworn brotherhood 
that has been rich in promise ; for so long as the 
one party found a pleasure in patronising, and 
the other in being patronised (which was in the 
very essence of their respective characters), it 
was of all possible events among the least pro- 
bable, that the twin demons, Envy and Pride, 
would ever arise between them. So, in very 
many cases of friendship, or what passes for it, 
the old axiom is reversed, and like clings to un- 
like more than to like. 

Martin Chuzzkwit, Chap. 7. 

FRIENDSHIP-A Pecksniffian. 

" Did you hear him say that he could have 
shed his blood for me ? " 

" Do you want any blood shed for you ? " re- 
turned his friend, with considerable irritation. 
" Does he shed anything for you that you do 
want ? Does he shed employment for you, in- 
struction for you, pocket-money for you ? Does 
he shed even legs of mutton for you in any de- 
cent proportion to potatoes and garden stuff?" 
Martin Chuzzkwit, Chap. 2. 



FRIENDSHIP— The Damons and Py thiasea 
of modem life. 

Damon and Pythias were undoubtedly very 
good fellows in their way : the former for his ex- 
treme readiness to put in special bail for a 
friend : and the latter for a certain trump-like 
punctuality in turning up just in the very nick 
of time, scarcely less remarkable. Many points 
in their character have, however, grown obsolete. 
Damons are rather hard to find, in these days 
of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones, 
and they cost half-a-crown) ; and, as to the 
Pythiases, the few that have existed in these 
degenerate times, have had an unfortunate knack 
of making themselves scarce at the very moment 
when their appearance would have been strictly 
classical. If the actions of these heroes, how- 
ever, can find no parallel in modern times, their 
friendship can. We have Damon and Pythias 
on the one hand. We have Potter and Smithers 
on the other. — Characters (Sketches), Chap. 11. 

FRIENDLY SERVICE— "Wemmick's opin- 
ion of a. 

" Mr. Wemmick," said I, " I want to ask your 
opinion, I am very desirous to serve a friend." 

Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook 
his head, as if his opinion were dead against any 
fatal weakness of that sort. 

" This friend," I pursued, " is trying to get on 
in commercial life, but has no money, and finds 
it difficult and disheartening to make a begin- 
ning. Now, I want somehow to help him to a 
beginning." 

" With money down ? " said Wemmick, in a 
tone drier than any sawdust. 

" With some money down," I replied, for an 
uneasy remembrance shot across me of that sym- 
metrical bundle of papers at home ; " with some 
money down, and perhaps some anticipation of 
my expectations." 

" Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, " I should like 
just to run over with you on my fingers, if you 
please, the names of the various bridges up as 
high as Chelsea Reach. Let's see : there's Lon- 
don, one ; Southwark, two ; Blackfriars, three ; 
Waterloo, four ; W^estminster, five ; Vauxhall, 
six." He had checked off each bridge in its 
turn, with the handle of his safe-key on the palm 
of his hand, " There's as many as six, you see, 
to choose from." 

" I don't understand you," said I. 

" Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip," returned 
Wemmick, " and take a walk upon your bridge, 
and pitch your money into the Thames over the 
centre arch of your bridge, and you know the 
end of it. Serve a friend with it, and you may 
know the end of it too — but it's a less pleasant 
and profitable end." 

I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, 
he made it so wide after saying this. 

" This is very discouraging," said I. 

" Meant to be so," said Wemmick. 

" Then is it your opinion," I inquired, with 
some little indignation, " that a man should 
never — " 

" — Invest portable property in a friend ? " 
said Wemmick. " Certainly he should not. 
Unless he wants to get rid of the friend — and 
then it becomes a question how much portable 
property it may be worth to get rid of him." 

" And that," said I, " is your deliberate opin- 
ion, Mr. Wemmick?" 



FBIENDIiESS 3IEN 



SOI 



PTTNERAI* 



" That," he returned, " is my deliberate opin- 
ion in this office." — Great Expectations^ Chap. 36. 

FRIENDLESS MEN. 

It is strange with how little notice, good, bad, 
or indifferent, a man may live and die in Lon- 
don. He awakens no sympathy in the breast of 
any single person ; his existence is a matter of 
interest to no one save himself; he cannot 
be said to be forgotten when he dies, for 
no one remembered him when he was alive. 
There is a numerous class of people in this great 
metropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, 
and whom nobody appears to care for. Urged 
by imperative necessity in the first instance, they 
have resorted to London in search of employ- 
ment, and the means of subsistence. It is hard, 
we know, to break the ties which bind us to our 
homes and friends, and harder still to efface the 
thousand recollections of happy days and old 
times, which have been slumbering in our bosoms 
for years, and only rush upon the mind, to bring 
before it associations connected with the friends 
we have left, the scenes we have beheld too 
probably for the last time, and the hopes we 
once cherished, but may entertain no more. 
These men, however, happily for themselves, 
have long forgotten such thoughts. Old country 
friends have died or emigrated ; former cor- 
respondents have become lost, like themselves, 
in the crowd and turmoil of some busy city ; and 
they have gradually settled down into mere pas- 
sive creatures of habit and endurance. 

Sketches (Characters), Chap, I. 

FROGS— The music of. 

The croaking of the frogs (whose noise in 
these parts is almost incredible) sounded as 
though a million of fairy teams with bells were 
travelling through the air, and keeping pace 
with us. — American Notes, Chap. 10. 

FROST-The. 

The frost was binding up the earth in its iron 
fetters, and weaving its beautiful net-work upon 
the trees and hedges. — Pickwick, Chap. 28. 

FUNERAL— The request of Charles Dick- 
ens. 

" I emphatically direct that I be buried in an 
inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private 
manner, that no public announcement be made 
of the time or place of my burial, that, at the 
utmost, not more than three plain mourning- 
coaches be employed, and that those who attend 
my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow, 
long hat-band, or other such revolting absurdity. 
I direct that my name be inscribed in plain 
English letters on my tomb, without the addi- 
tion of ' Mr.' or ' Esquire.' I conjure my friends 
on no account to make me the subject of any 
monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever. 
I rest my claims to the remembrance of my 
country upon my published works, and to the 
remembrance of my friends upon their expe- 
rience of me ; in addition thereto I commit my 
soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear chil- 
dren humbly to try to guide themselves by the 
teachings of the New Testament in its broad 
spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow 
construction of its letter here or there. In wit- 
ness whereof, I, the said Charles Dickens, the 



testator, have to this my last will and testament 
set my hand this twelfth day of May, in the yeaf 
of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
sixty-nine. Charles Dickens." 

Will of Charles Dickens. 

FUNERAL— Mr. Motdd's philosophy of a. 

At length the day of the funeral, pious and 
truthful ceremony that it was, arrived. Mr. 
Mould, with a glass of generous port between 
his eye and the light, leaned against the desk in 
the little glass office, with his gold watch in his 
unoccupied hand, and conversed with Mrs. 
Gamp ; two mutes were at the house-door, look- 
ing as mournful as could be reasonably expected 
of men with such a thriving job in hand ; the 
whole of Mr. Mould's establishment were on 
duty within the house or without ; feathers 
waved, horses snorted, silks and velvets flut- 
tered : in a word, as Mr. Mould emphatically 
said, " everything that money could do was done," 

" And what can do more, Mrs. Gamp .?" ex- 
claimed the undertaker, as he emptied his glass, 
and smacked his lips. 

" Nothing in the world, sir." 

" Nothing in the world," repeated Mr. Mould. 
" You are right, Mrs. Gamp. Why do people 
spend more mo^gy : " here he filled his glass 
again : " upon a death, Mrs. Gamp, than upon a 
birth ? Come, that's in your way ; you ought to 
know. How do you account for that now ? " 

" Perhaps it is because an undertaker's charges 
comes dearer than a nurse's charges, sir," said 
Mrs. Gamp, tittering, and smoothing down her 
new black dress with her hands. 

" Ha, ha ! " laughed Mr. Mould. *' You have 
been breakfasting at somebody's expense this 
morning, Mrs. Gamp." But seeing, by the aid 
of a little shaving-glass which hung opposite, 
that he looked meny, he composed his features 
and became sorrowful. 

" Many's the time that I've not breakfasted at 
my own expense along of your kind recommend- 
ing, sir : and many's the time I hope to do the 
same in time to come," said Mrs. Gamp, with an 
apologetic curtsey. 

" So be it," replied Mr. Mould, " please Pro- 
vidence. No, Mrs. Gamp ; I'll tell you why it 
is. It's because the laying out of money with a 
well-conducted establishment, where the thing 
is performed upon the very best scale, binds the 
broken heart, and sheds balm upon the wounded 
spirit. Hearts want binding and spirits want 
balming when people die — not when people are 
born. Look at this gentleman to-day ; look at 
him." 

" An open-handed gentleman ? " cried Mrs. 
Gamp, with enthusiasm. 

*' No, no," said the undertaker ; " not an open- 
handed gentleman in general, by any means. 
There you mistake him : but an afflicted gen- 
tleman, an affectionate gentleman, who knows 
what it is in the power of money to do, in giving 
him relief, and in testifying his love and ven- 
eration for the departed. It can give him," said 
Mr. Mould, waving his watch-chain slowly round 
and round, so that he described one circle after 
every item ; " it can give him four horses to each 
vehicle ; it can give him velvet trappings ; it 
can give him drivers in cloth cloaks and top- 
boots ; it can give him the phnnage of the os- 
trich, dyed black ; it can give him any number 
of walking attendants, dressed in the first style 



FUNERAIi 



202 



FTJNERA.L 



of funeral fashion, and carrying batons tipped 
with brass ; it can give him a handsome tomb ; 
it can give him a place in Westminster Abbey 
itself, if he choose to invest it in such a pur- 
chase. Oh ! do not let us say that gold is dross, 
when it can buy such things as these, Mrs. Gamp." 

" But what a blessing, sir," said Mrs. Gamp, 
•' that there are such as you, to sell or let 'em out 
on hire ! " 

" Ay, Mrs. Gamp, you are right," rejoined the 
undertaker. " We should be an honored call- 
ing. We do good by stealth, and blush to have 
it mentioned in our little bills. How much 
consolation may I, even I," cried Mr. Mould, 
" have diffused among my fellow-creatures by 
means of my four long-tailed prancers, never 
harnessed under ten pound ten." 

Mrs. Gamp had begun to make a suitable re- 
ply, when she was interrupted by the appear- 
ance of one of Mr. Mould's assistants — his chief 
mourner, in fact — an obese person, with his 
waistcoat in closer connection with his legs 
than is quite reconcilable with the established 
ideas of grace ; with that cast of feature which 
is figuratively called a bottle-nose ; and with a 
face covered all over with pimples. He had 
been a tender plant once upon a time, but from 
constant blowing in the fat atmosphere of funer- 
als, had run to seed. 

"Well, Tacker," said Mr. Mould, "is all 
ready below ? " 

" A beautiful show, sir," rejoined Tacker. 
" The horses are prouder and fresher than ever 
I see 'em ; and toss their heads, they do, as if 
they knowed how much their plumes cost." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19. 

FXJNERAIi— Of Anthony Chuzzlewit. 

Mr. Mould and his men had not exaggerated 
the grandeur of the arrangements. They were 
splendid. The four hearse-horses, especially, 
reared and pranced, and showed their highest 
action, as if they knew a man was dead, and 
triumphed in it. " They break us, drive us, ride 
us ; ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their pleas- 
ure — But they die ; Hurrah, they die ! " _ 

So through the narrow streets and winding 
city ways, went Anthony Chuzzlewit's funeral : 
Mr. Jonas glancing stealthily out of the coach- 
windows now and then, to observe its effect 
upon the crowd ; Mr. Mould, as he walked 
along, listening with a sober pride to the ex- 
clamations of the bystanders ; the doctor whis- 
pering his story to Mr. Pecksniff, without ap- 
pearing to come any nearer the end of it ; and 
poor old Chuffey sobbing unregarded in a corner. 
But he had greatly scandalised Mr. Mould at an 
early stage of the ceremony by carrying his 
handkerchief in his hat in a perfectly informal 
manner, and wiping his eyes with his knuckles. 
And as Mr. Mould himself had said already, his 
behavior was indecent, and quite unworthy of 
such an occasion ; and he never ought to have 
been there. 

There he was, however ; and in the church- 
yard there he was, also, conducting himself in a 
no less unbecoming manner, and leaning for 
support on Tacker, who plainly told him that 
he was fit for nothing better than a walking 
funeral. But Chuffey, Heaven help him ! heard 
no sound but the echoes, lingering in his own 
heart, of a voice forever silent. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19. 



FUNER AX — The pretentious solemnities 
of a. 

Other funerals have I seen with grown-up 
eyes, since that day, of which the burden has 
been the same childish burden — making game. 
Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have 
been outraged, and the funeral has been " per- 
formed." The waste for which the funeral cus- 
toms of many tribes of savages are conspicuous 
has attended these civilized obsequies ; and 
once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that, 
if the waste must be, they would let the under- 
taker bury the money, and let me bury the friend. 

In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies 
are more sensibly regulated, because they are 
upon the whole less expensively regulated. I 
cannot say that I have ever been much edified 
by the custom of tying a bib and apron on the 
front of the house of mourning, or that I would 
myself particularly care to be driven to my 
grave in a nodding and bobbing car, like an in- 
firm four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow-crea- 
ture in a cocked hat. But it may be that I am 
constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a 
cocked hat. In provincial France the solemni- 
ties are sufficiently hideous, but are few and 
cheap. The friends and townsmen of the de- 
parted, in their own dresses, and not masquerad- 
ing under the auspices of the African Conjuror, 
surround the hand-bier, and often carry it. It 
is not considered indispensable to stifle the 
bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their 
shoulders ; consequently it is easily taken up, 
and easily set down, and is carried through the 
streets without the distressing floundering and 
shuffling that we see at home. 

« Hi 4: 4: H( 

Once I lost a friend by death, who had been 
troubled in his time by the Medicine-Man and 
the Conjuror, and upon whose limited resources 
there were abundant claims. The Conjuror as- 
sured me that I must positively " follow," and 
both he and the Medicine-Man entertained no 
doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and 
must wear " fittings." I objected to fittings as 
having nothing to do with my friendship, and I 
objected to the black carriage as being in more 
senses than one a job. So it came into my 
mind to try what would happen if I quietly 
walked in my own way from my own house to 
my friend's burial-place, and stood beside his 
open grave in my own dress and person, rever- 
ently listening to the best of Services. It satis- 
fied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I had 
been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf, 
both trailing to my very heels, and as if I had 
cost the orphan children, in their greatest need, 
ten guineas. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 26. 

EUNERAIi- After the. 

The pageant of a few short hours ago was 
written nowhere half so legibly as in the under 
taker's books. 

Not in the churchyard? Not even there. 
The gates were closed ; the night was dark and 
wet ; the rain fell silently among the stagnant 
weeds and nettles. One new mound was there 
which had not been there last night. Time, 
burrowing like a mole below the ground, had 
marked his track by throwing up another heap 
of earth. And that was all. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19. 



PTTNERAIi 



208 



PXTNERAIi 



FUNERAL— A fashionable. 

A great crowd assembles in Lincoln's Inn 
Fields on the day of the funeral. Sir Leicester 
Dedlock attends the ceremony in person ; strict- 
ly speaking, there are only three other human 
followers, that is to say. Lord Doodle, William 
Buffy, and the debilitated cousin (thrown in as a 
make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable 
carriages is immense. The Peerage contributes 
more four-wheeled affliction than has ever been 
seen in that neighborhood. Such is the assem- 
blage of armorial bearings on coach panels, that 
the Herald's College might be supposed to have 
lost its father and mother at a blow. The Duke 
of Foodie sends a splendid pile of dust and 
ashes, with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all 
the last improvements, and three bereaved 
worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a 
bunch of woe. All the state coachmen in Lon- 
don seem plunged into mourning ; and if that 
dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond 
a taste in horseflesh (which appears impossible), 
it must be highly gratified this day. 

Quiet among the undertakers, and the equipa- 
ges, and the calves of so many legs all steeped 
in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of 
the inconsolable carriages, and at his ease sur- 
veys the crowd through the lattice blinds. 

Bleak House, Chap. 53. 

FUNEBAL— An unostentatious. 

The simple arrangements were of her own 
making, and were stated to Riah thus : 

" I mean to go alone, godmother, in my usual 
carriage, and you'll be so kind as keep house 
while I am gone. It's not far off. And when 
I return, we'll have a cup of tea, and a chat over 
future arrangements. It's a very plain last 
house that I have been able to give my poor 
unfortunate boy ; but he'll accept the will for 
the deed, if he knows anything about it ; and 
if he doesn't know anything about it," with a 
sob, and wiping her eyes, " why, it won't mat- 
ter to him. I see the service in the Prayer- 
book says, that we brought nothing into this 
world, and it is certain we can take nothing out. 
It comforts me for not being able to hire a lot 
of stupid undertaker's things for my poor child, 
and seeming as if I was trying to smuggle 'em 
out of this world with him, when of course I 
must break down in the attempt, and bring 'em 
all back again. As it is, there'll be nothing to 
bring back but me, and that's quite consistent, 
for / shan't be brought back some day ! " 

After that previous carrying of him in the 
streets, the wretched old fellow seemed to be 
twice buried. He was taken on the shoulders 
of half a dozen blossom-faced men, who shuf- 
fled with him to the churchyard, and who were 
preceded by another blossom-faced man, affect- 
ing a stately stalk, as if he were a Policeman of 
the D(eath) Division, and ceremoniously pre- 
tending not to know his intimate acquaintances, 
as he led the pageant. Yet, the specta:cle of only 
one little mourner hobbling after, caused many 
people to turn their heads with a look of interest. 

At last the troublesome deceased was got into 
the ground, to be buried no more, and the stately 
stalker stalked back before the solitary dress- 
maker, as if she were bound in honor to have 
no notion of the way home. Those furies, the 
conventionalities, being thus appeased, he left 
her. — Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 9. 



FUNERAL— Of Iffirs. Joe Garg-ery. 

It was the first time that a grave had opened 
in my road of life, and the gap it made in the 
smooth ground was wonderful. The figure of 
my sister, in her chair by the kitchen fire, 
haunted me night and day. That the place 
could possibly be, without her, was something 
my mind seemed unable to compass ; and where- 
as she had seldom or never been in my thoughts 
of late, I had now the strangest ideas that she 
was coming toward me in the street, or that she 
would presently knock at the door. In my 
rooms too, with which she had never been at all 
associated, there was at once the blankness of 
death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound 
of her voice or the turn of her face or figure, as 
if she were still alive and had been often there. 

Whatever my fortunes might have been, I 
could scarcely have recalled my sister with much 
tenderness. But I suppose there is a shock of 
regret which may exist without much tenderness. 

* * * -X- * 

It was fine summer weather again, and, as I 
walked along, the times when I was a little help- 
less creature, and my sister did not spare me, 
vividly returned. But they returned with a gen- 
tle tone upon them that softened even the edge 
of Tickler. For now the very breath of the 
beans and clover whispered to my heart that the 
day must come when it would be well for my 
memory that others, walking in the sunshine, 
should be softened as they thought of me. 

At last I came within sight of the house, and 
saw that Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal 
execution and taken possession. Two dismally 
absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a 
crutch done up in a black bandage — as if that 
instrument could possibly communicate any 
comfort to anybody — were posted at the front 
door ; and in one of them I recognised a post- 
boy discharged from the Boar for turning a young 
couple into a saw-pit on their bridal morning, in 
consequence of intoxication rendering it neces- 
sary for him to ride his horse clasped round the 
neck with both arms. 

•jC *^ •!• ^ TT 

Another sable warder (a carpenter, who had 
once eaten two geese for a wager) opened the 
door, and showed me into the best parlor. Here, 
Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best 
table, and had got all the leaves up, and was 
holding a kind of black Bazaar, with the aid of 
a quantity of black pins. At the moment of my 
arrival, he had just finished putting somebody's 
hat into black long-clothes, like an African baby ; 
so he held out his hand for mine. But I, misled 
by the action, and confused by the occasion, 
shook hands with him with every testimony oi 
warm affection. 

* J)C * « * 

Poor, dear Joe, entangled in a little black 
cloak tied in a large bow under his chin, was 
seated apart at the upper end of the room ; 
where, as chief mourner, he had evidently been 
stationed by Trabb. When I bent down and 
said to him, " Dear Joe, how are you ? " he said, 
'• Pip, old chap, you knowed her when she were 
a fine figure of a — " and clasped my hand and 
said no moie. 

***** 

Standing at this table, I became conscious of 
the servile Pumblechook, in a black cloak and 
several yards of hat-band, who was alternately 



FUNEBAI. 



204 



FURNITURE 



stuffing himself, and making obsequious move- 
ments to catch my attention. The moment he 
succeeded he came over to me (breathing sherry 
and crumbs), and said in a subdued voice, " May 
I, dear sir?" and did. I then descried Mr. and 
Mrs. Hubble ; the last-named in a decent speech- 
less paroxysm in a corner. We were all going 
to " follow," and were all in course of being tied 
up separately (by Trabb) into ridiculous bundles. 

"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe whispered 
me, as we were being what Mr. Trabb called 
" formed " in the parlor, two and two — and it 
was dreadfully like a preparation for some grim 
kind of dance ; " which I meantersay, sir, as I 
would in preference have carried her to the 
church myself, along with three or four friendly 
ones wot come to it with willing harts and arms, 
but it were considered wot the neighbors would 
look down on such and would be of opinions as 
it were wanting in respect." 

" Pocket-handkerchiefs out, all ! " cried Mr. 
Trabb at this point, in a depressed business-like 
voice. " Pocket-handkerchiefs out ! We are 
ready ! " 

So we all put our pocket-handkerchiefs to our 
faces, as if our noses were bleeding, and filed 
out two and two ; Joe and I ; Biddy and Pumble- 
chook ; Mr. and Mrs. Hubble. The remains of 
my poor sister had been brought round by the 
kitchen door, and, it being a point of undertak- 
ing ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled 
and blinded under a horrible black velvet hous- 
ing with a white border, the whole looked like 
a blind monster with twelve human legs, shuf- 
fling and blundering along, under the guidance oi 
two keepers — the postboy and his comrade. 
Great Expectations^ Chap. 35. 

FUNERAL-Of Little Nell. 

[Mr. R. H. Home pointed out twenty-five 
years ago, that a great portion of the scenes de- 
scribing the death of Little Nell in the " Old 
Curiosity Shop," will be found to be written — 
whether by design or harmonious accident, of 
which the author was not even subsequently 
fully conscious — in blank verse, of irregular 
metre and rhythms, which Southey, Shelley, and 
some other poets have occasionally adopted. 
The following passage, properly divided into 
lines, will stand thus :] 

nbllt's funeral. 

"And now the bell— the bell 
She had so often heard by night and day. 

And listened to with solemn pleasure, 
Almost as a living voice— 
Rung its remorseless toll for her, 
So young, so beautiful, so good. 

" Decrepit age, and vigorous life. 
And blooming youth, and helpless infancy, 
Pour'd forth— on crutches, in the pride of strength 
And health, in the full blush 
Of promise, the mere dawn of life— 
To gather round her tomb. Old men were there, 
Whose eyes were dim 
And senses failing- 
Grandames, who might have died ten years ago, 
And still been old— the deaf, the blind, the lame, 

The palsied. 
The living dead in many shapes and forms, 

To see the closing of that early grave. 
What was the death it would shut in 
To that which still 
Could crawl and creep above it ? 

" Along the crowaea path they bore her now ; 
Pure as the uew-fall'n enow 



That cover'd it ; whose day on earth 

Had been as fleeting. 
Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven 
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot, 
She pass'd again, and the old church 
Received her in its quiet shade." 

Old Cuiiosity Shop, Chap. 72, 

FURNITURE— Old-fashioned. 

It came on darker and darker. The old-fash- 
ioned furniture of the chamber, which was a 
kind of hospital for all the invalided movables 
in the house, grew indistinct and shadowy in its 
many shapes ; chairs and tables, which by day 
were as honest cripples as need be, assumed a 
doubtful and mysterious character ; and one old 
leprous screen of faded India leather and gold 
binding, which had kept out many a cold breath 
of air in days of yore and shut in many a jolly 
face, frowned on him with a spectral aspect, and 
stood at full height in its allotted corner, like 
some gaunt ghost who waited to be questioned. 
A portrait opposite the window — a queer, old 
gray-eyed general, in an oval frame — seemed to 
wink and doze as the light decayed, and at 
length, when the last faint glimmering speck of 
day went out, to shut its eyes in good earnest, 
and fall sound asleep. There was such a hush 
and mystery about everything, that Joe could 
not help following its example ; and so went off 
into a slumber likewise, and dreamed of Dolly, 
till the clock of Chigwell church struck two. 
Barnaby jRtidge, Chap. 31. 

FURNITURE-Covered. 

Within a few hours the cottage furniture be- 
gan to be wrapped up for preservation in the 
family absence — or, as Mr. Meagles expressed 
it, the house began to put its hair in papers. 
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 9. 

FURNITURE— The home of a usurer. 

In an old house, dismal, dark, and dusty, which 
seemed to have withered, like himself, and to 
have grown yellow and shrivelled in hoarding 
him from the light of day, as he had in hoarding 
his money, lived Arthur Gride. Meagre old 
chairs and tables, of spare and bony make, and 
hard and cold as misers' hearts, were ranged in 
grim array against the gloomy walls ; attenuated 
presses, grown lank and lantern-jawed in guard- 
ing the treasures they inclosed, and tottering, as 
though from constant fear and dread of thieves, 
shrunk up in dark corners, whence they cast no 
shadows on the ground, and seemed to hide and 
cower from observation. A tall grim clock upon 
the stairs, with long lean hands and famished 
face, ticked in cautious whispers ; and when it 
struck the time, in thin and piping sounds like 
an old man's voice, it rattled, as if it were 
pinched with hunger. 

No fireside couch was there, to invite repose 
and comfort. Elbow-chairs there were, but 
they looked uneasy in their minds, cocked their 
arms suspiciously and timidly, and kept on their 
guard. Others were fantastically grim and 
gaunt, as having drawn themselves up to their 
utmost height, and put on their fiercest looks to 
stare all comers out of countenance. Others, 
again, knocked up against their neighbors, or 
leaned for support against the wall — somewhat 
ostentatiously, as if to call all men to witness 
that they were not worth the taking. The dark, 
square, lumbering bedsteads seemed built for 



FTTTtTRB 



206 



GARDENS 



restless dreams. The musty hangings seemed 
to creep in scanty folds together, whispering 
among themselves, when rustled by the wind, 
their trembling knowledge of the tempting 
wares that lurked within the dark and tight- 
locked closets. — Nicholas Nickleby^ Chap. 51. 

FUTURE— The river a type of. 

He dipped his hand in the water over the 
boai s gunwale, and said, smiling with that soft- 
ened air upon him which was not new to me : 

" Ay, I suppose 1 think so, dear boy. We'd 
be puzzled to be more quiet and easy-going than 
we are at present. But — it's a flowing so soft 
and pleasant through the water, p'raps, as makes 
me think it — I was a thinking through my smoke 
just then, that we can no more see the bottom 
of the next few hours, than we can see to the 
bottom of this river, what I catches hold of. 
Nor yet we can't no more hold their tide than 
I can hold this. And it's run through my fin- 
gers and gone, you see ! " holding up his drip- 
ping hand. 

" But for your face, I should think you were 
a little despondent," said I. 

" Not a bit on it, dear boy ! It comes of flow- 
ing on so quiet, and of that there rippling at the 
boat's head making a sort of a Sunday tune. 
Maybe I'm growing a trifle old, besides." 

Great Expectations ^ Chap, 54. 



G 

GAYETY— Forced. 

When the morning — the morning — came, and 
we met at breakfast, it was curious to see how 
eager we all were to prevent a moment's pause 
in the conversation, and how astoundingly gay 
everybody was, the forced spirits of each mem- 
ber of the little party having as much likeness 
to his natural mirth as hot-house peas at five 
guineas the quart resemble in flavor the growth 
of the dews and air and rain of Heaven. 

American Notes ^ Chap, i. 

GAIiLANTRY-Pecksniffian. 

They were now so near it that he stopped, 
and holding up her little finger, said in playful 
accents, as a parting fancy : 

"Shall I bite it?" 

Receiving no reply he kissed it instead ; and 
then, stooping down, inclined his flabby face to 
hers (he had a flabby face, although he was a 
good man), and with a blessing, which from 
such a source was quite enough to set her up in 
life, and prosper her from that time forth, per- 
mitted her to leave him. 

Gallantry in its true sense is supposed to 
ennoble and dignify a man ; and love has shed 
refinements on innumerable Cymons. But Mr. 
Pecksniff — perhaps because to one of his exalted 
nature these were mere grossnesses — certainly 
did not appear to any unusual advantage, now 
that he was left alone. On the contrary, he 
seemed to be shrunk and reduced ; to be trying 
to hide himself within himself; and to be 
wretched at not having the power to do it. His 



shoes looked too large ; his sleeve looked too 
long ; his hair looked too limp ; his features 
looked too mean ; his exposed throat looked as 
if a halter would have done it good. For a 
minute or two, in fact, he was hot, and pale, 
and mean, and shy, and slinking, and conse- 
quently not at all Pecksniffian. But after that, 
he recovered himself, and went home with as 
beneficent an air as if he had been the High 
Priest of the summer weather. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap, 30. 

GAMBLERS— The frenzied. 

The excitement of play, hot rooms, and glar- 
ing lights, was not calculated to allay the fever 
of the time. In that giddy whirl of noise and 
confusion, the men were delirious. Who thought 
of money, ruin, or the morrow, in the savage 
intoxication of the moment? More wine was 
called for, glass after glass was drained, their 
parched and scalding mouths were cracked with 
thirst. Down poured the wine like oil on blaz- 
ing fire. And still the riot went on. The de- 
bauchery gained its height ; glasses were dashed 
upon the floor by hands that could not carry 
them to lips ; oaths were shouted out by lips 
which could scarcely form the words to vent 
them in ; drunken losers cursed and roared ; 
some mounted on the tables, waving bottles 
above their heads, and bidding defiance to the 
rest ; some danced, some sang, some tore the 
cards and raved. Tumult and frenzy reigned 
supreme ; when a noise arose that drowned all 
others, and two men, seizing each other by the 
throat, struggled into the middle of the room. 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 50. 

GARDEN. 

A little slip of front garden abutting on the 
thirsty high road, where a few of the dustiest of 
leaves hung their dismal heads and led a life of 
choking. — Little Dorrit^ Book /., Chap. 25. 

GARDEN- An old. 

It was quite a wilderness, and there were old 
melon -frames and cucumber- frames in it, which 
seemed in their decline to have produced a 
spontaneous growth of weak attempts at pieces 
of old hats and boots, with now and then a 
weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered 
saucepan, — Great Expectations, Chap, il. 

GARDENS— In London. 

Some London houses have a melancholy little 
plot of ground behind them — usually fenced in 
by four high whitewashed walls, and frowned 
upon by stacks of chimneys — in which there 
withers on, from year to year, a crippled tree, 
that makes a show of putting forth a few leaves 
late in autumn when other trees shed theirs, 
and, drooping in the effort, lingers on, all 
crackled and smoke-dried, till the following 
season, when it repeats the same process ; and 
perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, 
even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup 
in its branches. People sometimes call these 
dark yards " gardens ;" it is not sujiposed that 
they were ever planted, but rather that they are 
pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered 
vegetation of the original brick-field. No man 
thinks of walking in this desolate place, or of 
turning it to any account. A few hampers, half 
a-dozen broken bottles, and such-like rubbish, 



GENIUS 



206 



GENOA 



may be thrown there, when the tenant first 
moves in, but nothing more ; and there they 
remain until he goes away again : the damp 
straw taking just as long to moulder as it thinks 
proper : and mingling with the scanty box, and 
stunted everbrowns, and broken flower-pots, 
that are scattered mournfully about — a prey to 
" blacks" and dirt. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 2. 

GENITJS-In debt. 

" Then I tell you what it is, gents both. 
There is at this present moment in this very 
place, a perfect constellation of talent and ge- 
nius, who is involved, through what I cannot but 
designate as the culpable negligence of my friend 
Pecksniff, in a situation as tremendous, perhaps, 
as the social intercourse of the nineteenth cen- 
tury will readily admit of. There is actually at 
this instant, at the Blue Dragon in this village — 
an ale-house, observe : a common, paltry, low- 
minded, clodhopping, pipe-smoking ale-house — 
an individual, of whom it may be said, in the 
language of the Poet, that nobody but himself 
can in any way come up to him ; who is detained 
there for his bill. Ha ! ha ! For his bill. I 
repeat it. For his bill. Now," said Mr. Tigg, 
" we have heard of Fox's Book of Martyrs, I 
believe, and we have heard of the Court of Re- 
quests, and the Star Chamber ; but I fear the 
contradiction of no man alive or dead, when I 
assert that my friend Chevy Slyme being held 
in pawn for a bill, beats any amount of cock- 
fighting with which I am acquainted." 

"Don't mistake me, gents both," he said, 
stretching forth his right hand. " If it had been 
for anything but a bill, I could have borne it, 
and could still have looked upon mankind with 
some feeling of respect : but when such a man 
as my friend Slyme is detained for a score — a 
thing in itself essentially mean ; a low perform- 
ance on a slate, or possibly chalked upon the 
back of a door — I do feel that there is a screw 
of such magnitude loose somewhere, that the 
whole framework of society is shaken, and the 
very first principles of things can no longer be 
trusted. In short, gents both," said Mr. Tigg, 
with a passionate flourish of his hands and head, 
" when a man like Slyme is detained for such a 
thing as a bill, I reject the superstitions of ages, 
and believe nothing. I don't even believe that 
I don't believe, curse me if I do ! " 

***** 

" I swear," cried Mr. Slyme, giving the table 
an imbecile blow with his fist, and then feebly 
leaning his head upon his hand, while some 
drunken drops oozed from his eyes, " that I am 
the wretchedest creature on record. Society is 
in a conspiracy against me, I'm the most lit- 
erary man alive. I'm full of scholarship ; I'm 
full of genius ; I'm full of information ; I'm full 
of novel views on every subject ;,yet look at my 
condition ! I'm at this moment obliged to two 
strangers for a tavern bill ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7. 

GENIUS— The weaknesses of. 

All men whom mighty genius has raised to a 
proud eminence in the world, have usually some 
little weakness which appears the more con- 
spicuous from the contrast it presents to their 
general character. If Mr. Pott had a weakness, 
it was, perhaps, that he was rather too submis- 



sive to the somewhat contemptuous control and 
sway of his wife. — Pickwick, Chap. 13. 

GENOA. 

The endless details of these rich Palaces : the 
walls of some of them, within, alive with master- 
pieces by Vandyke ! The great, heavy, stone 
balconies, one above another, and tier over tier : 
with here and there one larger than the rest, 
towering high up — a huge marble platform — the 
doorless vestibules, massively barred lower win- 
dows, immense public staircases, thick marble 
pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, 
dreaming, echoing, vaulted chambers ; among 
which the eye wanders again, and again, and 
again, as every palace is succeeded by another — 
the terrace gardens between house and house, 
with green arches of the vine, and groves of 
orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, 
twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street — the 
painted halls, mouldering, and blotting, and rot- 
ting in the damp corners, and still shining out 
in beautiful colors and voluptuous designs, where 
the walls are dry — the faded figures on the out- 
sides of the houses, holding wreaths and crowns, 
and flying upward, and downward, and standing 
in niches, and here and there looking fainter and 
more feeble than elsewhere, by contrasts with 
some fresh little Cupids, who, on a more recently 
decorated portion of the front, are stretching out 
what seems to be the semblance of a blanket, but 
is, indeed, a sun-dial — the steep, steep, up-hill 
streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for 
all that), with marble terraces looking down into 
close by-ways — the magnificent and innumerable 
Churches ; and the rapid passage from a street 
of stately edifices into a maze of the vilest squa- 
lor, steaming with unwholesome stenches, and 
swarming with half-naked children and whole 
worlds of dirty people — make up, altogether, such 
a scene of wonder ; so lively, and yet so dead ; 
so noisy, and yet so quiet ; so obtrusive, and yet 
so shy and lowering ; so wide awake, and yet so 
fast asleep ; that it is a sort of intoxication to a 
stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look 
about him. A bewildering phantasmagoria, with 
all the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain 
and all the pleasure of an extravagant reality ! 



It is a place that " grows upon you" every day. 
There seems to be always something to find out 
in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys 
and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose 
your way (what a comfort that is, when you are 
idle !) twenty times a day, if you like ; and turn 
up again, under the most unexpected and sur- 
prising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest 
contrasts ; things that are picturesque, ugly, 
mean, magnificent, delightful, and off"ensive, 
break upon the view at eveiy turn. 



In the streets of shops, the houses are much 
smaller, but of great size notwithstanding, and 
extremely high. They are very dirty : quite un- 
drained, if my nose be at all reliable ; and emit 
a peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad 
cheese, kept in very hot blankets. Notwithstand- 
ing the height of the houses, there would seem 
to have been a lack of room in the city, for new 
houses are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it 
has been possible to cram a tumble-down tene- 
ment into a crack or corner, in it has gone. If 
there be a nook or angle in the wall of a church, 




■//// 



QENTILITY 



207 



GENTLEMAN 



or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort, 
there you are sure to find some kind of habita- 
tion — looking as if it had grown there, like a 
fungus. Against the Government house, against 
the old Senate house, round about any large 
building, little shops stick close, like parasite 
vermin to the great carcass. And for all this, 
look where you may — up steps, down steps, any- 
where, everywhere , there are irregular houses, 
receding, starting forward, tumbling down, lean- 
ing against their neighbors, crippling themselves 
or their friends by some means or other, until 
one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the 
way, and you can't see any further. 

Pictures from Italy. 

GENTIIilTY-The distinctions of. 

" I don't know why it should be a crack 
thing to be a brewer ; but it is indisputable that 
while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, 
you may be as genteel as never was and brew. 
You see it every day." 

" Yet a gentleman may not keep a public- 
house ; may he ? " said I. 

" Not on any account," returned Herbert ; 
" but a public-house may keep a gentleman." 
Great Expectations, Chap. 22. 

QENTILITY-Shabby. 

There are certain descriptions of people who, 
oddly enough, appear to appertain exclusively 
to the metropolis. You meet them, every day, 
in the streets of London, but no one ever en- 
counters them elsewhere ; they seem indigenous 
to the soil, and to belong as exclusively to Lon- 
don as its own smoke, or the dingy bricks and 
mortar. We could illustrate the remark by a 
variety of examples, but, in our present sketch, 
we will only advert to one class as a specimen — 
that class which is so aptly and expressively 
designated as " shabby-genteel." 

Now, shabby people, God knows, may be 
found anywhere, and genteel people are not 
articles of greater scarcity out of London than 
in it ; but this compound of the two — this shab- 
by-gentility — is as purely local as the statue 
at Charing Cross, or the pump at Aldgate. It is 
worthy of remark, too, that only men are shab- 
by-genteel ; a woman is always either dirty and 
slovenly in the extreme, or neat and respectable, 
however poverty-stricken in appearance. A 
very poor man " who has seen better days," as 
the phrase goes, is a strange compound of dirty 
slovenliness and wretched attempts at faded 
smartness. 

We will endeavor to explain our conception 
of the term which forms the title of this paper. 
If you meet a man, lounging up Drury Lane, or 
leaning with his back against a post in Long 
Acre, with his hands in the pockets of a pair of 
drab trousers plentifully besprinkled with 
grease spots ; the trousers made very full over 
the boots, and ornamented with two cords down 
the outside of each leg — wearing, also, what has 
been a brown coat with bright buttons, and a 
hat very much pinched up at the sides, cocked 
over his right eye — don't pity him. He is not 
shabby-genteel. The " harmonic meetings " at 
some fourth-rate public-house, or the purlieus 
of a private theatre, are his chosen haunts ; he 
entertains a rooted antipathy to any kind of 
work, and is on familiar terms with several 
pantomime men at the large houses. But, if 



you see hurrying along a by-street, keeping as 
close as he can to the area railings, a man of 
about forty or fifty, clad in an old rusty suit of 
threadbare black cloth, which shines with con- 
stant wear as if it had been bees-waxed — the 
trousers tightly strapped down, partly for the 
look of the thing and partly to keep his old 
shoes from slipping off at the heels — if you 
observe, too, that his yellowish-white neck- 
erchief is carefully pinned up, to conceal the 
tattered garment underneath, and that his 
hands are encased in the remains of an old 
pair of beaver gloves, you may set him down as 
a shabby-genteel man. A glance at that de- 
pressed face, and timorous air of conscious pov- 
erty, will make your heart ache — always sup- 
posing that you are neither a philosopher nor a 
political economist. 

Characters {Sketches), Chap. lo. 

GENTIiEMAN— " A wery good imitation o* 
one " (Sam Weller). 
" Person's a waitin'," said Sam, epigrammati- 
cally. 



" Does the person want me, Sam 



iquired 



Mr. Pickwick. 

" He wants you particklar ; and no one else'U 
do, as the Devil's private secretary said ven he 
fetched away Doctor Faustus," replied Mr. 
Weller. 

"He. Is it a gentleman?" said Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

" A wery good imitation o' one, if it ain't," 
replied Mr. Weller. — Pickwick, Chap. 15. 

GENTLEMAN— An Engrlisli (Sir Leicester 
Dedlock). 

Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but 
there is no mightier baronet than he. His fam- 
ily is as old as the hills, and infinitely more re- 
spectable. He has a general opinion that the 
world might get on without hills, but would be 
done up without Dedlocks. He would, on the 
whole, admit Nature to be a good idea (a little 
low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a park- 
fence), but an idea dependent for its execution 
on your great county families. He is a gentle- 
man of strict conscience, disdainful of all little- 
ness and meanness, and ready, on the shortest 
notice, to die any death you may please to 
mention, rather than give occasion for the least 
impeachment of his integrity. He is an honor- 
able, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely- 
prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man. 

Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, 
older than my Lady. He will never see sixty- 
five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet sixty- 
seven. He has a twist of the gout now and 
then, and walks a little stiffly. He is of a 
worthy presence, with his light gray hair and 
whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure white 
waistcoat, and his blue coat with bright but- 
tons, always buttoned. He is ceremonious, 
stately, most polite on every occasion to my 
Lady, and holds her personal attractions in the 
highest estimation. Ilis gallantry to my Lady, 
which has never changed since he courted her, 
is the one little touch of romantic fancy in him. 

Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper 
still goes about, that she had not even family ; 
howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that 
perhaps he had enough, and could dispense 
with any more. But she had beauty, pride, am- 



GENTLEMAN 



208 



GHOST 



bition, insfdent resolve, and sense enough to 
portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and 
station, added to these, soon floated her up- 
ward ; and for years, now, my Lady Dedlock 
has been at the centre of the fashionable in- 
telligence, and at the top of the fashionable 
tree. — Bleak House^ Chap. 2. 

GENTIiEMAN-A Erencli. 

Monsieur Mutuel — a gentleman in every 
thread of his cloudy linen, under whose wrinkled 
hand every grain in the quarter of an ounce of 
poor snuff in his poor little tin box became a 
gentleman's property — Monsieur Mutuel passed 
on, with his cap in his hand. 

Somebody's Luggage^ Chap. 2. 

GENTLEMAN— The &race of a true. 

He went into Mr. Barkis's room like light 
and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he 
were healthy weather. There was no noise, no 
effort, no consciousness, in anything he did ; but 
in everything an indescribable lightness, a seem- 
ing impossibility of doing anything else, or do- 
ing anything better, which was so graceful, so 
natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, 
even now, in the remembrance. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 21. 

GENTLEMAN-The true. 

But that he was not to be, without ignorance 
or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my fa- 
ther most strongly asseverates ; because it is a 
principle of his that no man who was not a true 
gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world 
began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, 
no varnish can hide the grain of the wood ; and 
that the more varnish you put on, the more the 
grain will express itself. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 22. 

aHOSTS— And the senses. 

"You don't believe in me," observed the 
Ghost. 

" I don't," said Scrooge. 

" What evidence would you have of my real- 
ity beyond that of your own senses ? " 

" I don't know," said Scrooge. 

*• Why do you doubt your senses ? " 

" Because," said Scrooge, " a little thing affects 
them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes 
them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of 
beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a 
fragment of an underdone potato. There's more 
of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you 
are ! " 

Scrooge was not much in the habit of crack- 
ing jokes, nor did he feel in his heart, by any 
means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried 
to be smart, as a means of distracting his own 
attention, and keeping down his terror ; for the 
spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his 
bones. — Christmas Carol, Stave I. 

GHOST— An argument with a. 

" ' This apartment is mine : leave it to me.' 
'If you insist upon making your appearance 
here,* said the tenant, who had had time to col- 
lect his presence of mind during this prosy state- 
ment of the ghost's, ' I shall give up possession 
with the greatest pleasure ; but I should like to 
ask you one question, if you will allow me.' 
Say on,' said the apparition, sternly. * Well,' 



said the tenant, * I don't apply the observation 
personally to you, because it is equally ap- 
plicable to most of the ghosts I ever heard of; 
but it does appear to me somewhat inconsistent, 
that when you have an opportunity of visiting 
the fairest spots of earth — for I suppose space is 
nothing to you — you should always return ex- 
actly to the very piaces where you have been 
most miserable.' Egad, that's very true ; I 
never thought of tr.at before,' said the ghost. 
' You see, sir,* pursued the tenant, ' this is a very 
uncomfortable room. From the appearance of 
that press, I should be disposed to say that it is 
not wholly free from bugs ; and I really think 
you might find much more comfortable quarters ; 
to say nothing of the climate of London, which 
is extremely disagreeable.' ' You are very right, 
sir,* said the ghost, politely, ' it never struck me 
till now ; I'll try change of air directly.' In 
fact, he began to vanish as he spoke ; his legs, 
indeed, had quite disappeared. 'And if, sir,' 
said the tenant, calling after him, ' if you would 
have the goodness to suggest to the other ladies 
and gentlemen who are now engaged in haunt- 
ing old empty houses, that they might be much 
more comfortable elsewhere, you will confer a 
great benefit on society.' ' I will,' replied the 
ghost ; ' we must be dull fellows, very dull 
fellows, indeed ; I can't imagine how we can 
have been so stupid.' With these words the 
spirit disappeared ; and what is rather remark- 
able," added the old man, with a shrewd look 
round the table, *' he never came back again." 
Pickwick, Chap. 21. 

GHOSTS-Of clothes. 

" Look down there," he said softly ; '* do you 
mark how they whisper in each other's ears ; then 
dance and leap, to make believe they are in sport ? 
Do you see how they stop for a moment, when 
they think there is no one looking, and mutter 
among themselves again ; and then how they roll 
and gambol, delighted with the mischief they've 
been plotting ? Look at 'em now. See how they 
whirl and plunge. And now they stop again, 
and whisper cautiously together — little thinking, 
mind, how often I have lain upon the grass and 
watched them. I say — what is it that they plot 
and hatch ? — Do you know ? " 

" They are only clothes," returned the guest, 
" such as we wear ; hanging on those lines to dry, 
and fluttering in the wind." 

" Clothes ! " echoed Barnaby, looking close into 
his face, and falling quickly back. " Ha ha ! 
Why, how much better to be silly, than as wise 
as you ! You don't see shadowy people there, 
like those that live in sleep — not you. Nor eyes 
in the knotted panes of glass, nor swift ghosts 
when i^ blows hard, nor do you hear voices in 
the air, nor see men stalking in the sky — not 
you ! I lead a merrier life than you, with all 
your cleverness. You're the dull men. We're 
the bright ones. Ha ! ha ! I'll not change with 
you, clever as you are — not I ! " 

With that, he waved his hat above his head, 
and darted off. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. lo. 

GHOST-Of Marley. 

His body was transparent ; so that Scrooge, 
observing him, and looking through his waist- 
coat, could see the two buttons on his coat be- 
hind. 

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley 




Marley's Ghost. 



208 



GHOSTS 



209 



GOOD-NIGHT 



had no bowels, but he had never believed it until 
now. 

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though 
he looked the phantom through and through, 
and saw it standing before him ; though he felt 
the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes ; and 
marked the very texture of the folded kerchief 
bound about its head and chin, which wrapper 
he had not observed before ; he was still incred- 
ulous, and fought against his senses. 

" How now ! " said Scrooge, caustic and cold 
as ever. " What do you want with me ? " 

" Much ! " — Marley's voice, no doubt about it. 

" Who are you ? " 

" Ask me who I was." 

" Who wei-e you then ? " said Scrooge, raising 
his voice. " You're particular, for a shade." 
He was going to say " to a shade," but substitut- 
ed this, as more appropriate. 

" In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley." 

" Can you — can you sit down ? " asked Scrooge, 
looking doubtfully at him. 

" I can." 

" Do it then." 

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't 
know whether a ghost so transparent might find 
himself in a condition to take a chair ; and felt 
that in the event of its being impossible, it might 
involve the necessity of an embarrassing expla- 
nation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite 
side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to 
it. — Christmas Carol, Stave I. 

GHOSTS— A privilege of the upper classes. 

"Sir Morbury Dedlock was the owner of 
Chesney Wold. Whether there was any ac- 
count of a ghost in the family before those days, 
I can't say. I should think it very likely, in- 
deed." 

Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion, because 
she considers that a family of such antiquity and 
importance has a right to a ghost. She regards 
a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper 
classes ; a genteel distinction to which the com- 
mon people have no claim. 

Bleak House, Chap. 7. 

GHOSTS— Their anniversaries. 

" I have heard it said that as we keep our 
birthdays when we are alive, so the ghosts of 
dead people, who are not easy in their graves, 
keep the day they died upon." 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33. 

GIANTS-Used up. 

" Once get a giant shaky on his legs, and the 
public care no more about him than they do for 
a dead cabVjage-stalk." 

"What becomes of the old giants?" said 
Short, turning to him again after a little reflec- 
tion. 

" They're usually kept in carawans to wait 
upon the dwarfs," said Mr. Vuffin. 

" The maintaining of 'em must come expen- 
sive, when they can't be shown, eh?" remarked 
Short, eyeing him doubtfully. 

" It's better that, than letting 'em go upon the 
parish or about the streets," said Mr. Vuffin. 
" Once make a giant common, and giants will 
never draw again. Look at wooden legs. If 
there was only one man with a wooden leg 
what a property he'd, be ! " . 



" So he would ! " observed the landlord and 
Short both together. " That's very true." 

•' Instead of which," pursued Mr. Vuffin, " if 
you was to advertise Shakspeare played entirely 
by wooden legs, it's my belief you wouldn't draw 
a sixpence." 

*' I don't suppose you would," said Short. 
And the landlord said so too. 

" This shows, you see," said Mr. Vuffin, wav- 
ing his pipe with -an argumentative air, " this 
shows the policy of keeping the used-up giants 
still in the carawans, where they get food and 
lodging for nothing, all their lives, and in gen- 
eral very glad they are to stop there." 

" What about the dwarfs when they get old ? " 
inquired the landlord. 

" The older a dwarf is, the better worth he 
is," returned Mr, Vuffin : " a grey-headed dwarf, 
well wrinkled, is beyond all suspicion. But a 
giant weak in the legs and not standing up- 
right ! — keep him in the carawan, but never 
show him, never show him, for any persuasion 
that can be offered." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap, 19. ' 

GIRLS— Traddles' idea of. 

" The society of girls is a very delightful 
thing, Copperfield. It's not professional, but it's 
very delightful." — David Copperfield, Chap. 59. 

GIRLHOOD— Of Florence. 

There had been a girl some six years before, 
and the child, who had stolen into the chambei 
unobserved, was now crouching timidly, in a 
corner whence she could see her mother's face. 
But what was a girl to Dombey and Son ! In 
the capital of the House's name and dignity, 
such a child was merely a piece of a base coin 
that couldn't be invested — a bad Boy — nothing 
more. — Dombey dr" Son, Chap. i. 

Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflow- 
ing love of her young heart expended itself on 
airy forms, and in a real world where she had 
experienced little but the rolling back of that 
strong tide upon itself, Florence grew to be 
seventeen. Timid and retiring as her solitary 
life had made her, it had not embittered her 
sweet temper, or her earnest nature. A child 
in innocent simplicity ; a woman in her modest 
self-reliance, and her deep intensity of feeling ; 
both child and woman seemed at once expressed 
in her fair face and fragile delicacy of shape, and 
gracefully to mingle there ; — as if the spring 
should be unwilling to depart when summer 
came, and sought to blend the earlier beauties 
of the flowers with their bloom. But in her 
thrilling voice, in her calm eyes, sometimes in 
a strange ethereal light that seemed to rest upon 
her head, and always in a certain pensive air 
upon her beauty, there was an expression, such 
as had been seen in the dead boy ; and the 
council in the Servants' Hall whispered so 
among themselves, and shook their heads, and 
ate and drank the more, in a closer bond of 
goodfellowship.— Z)i?w<J67 <Sr» Son, Chap. 57. 

GOOD-NIGHT— An interrupted blessing:. 

"Good-night — a — a — God bless you." 
The blessing seemed to stick in Mr. Ralph 
Nickleby's throat, as if it were not used to the 
thoroughfare, and didn't know the way out. 
Nicholas NiikUby, Chap. 19. 



GOLD 



210 



GOTTRMAND 



GOLD -The influence of riches. 

Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more 
destructive of all his old senses and lulling to 
his feelings than the fumes of charcoal. 

Nicholas Nickleby^ Chap. I. 

GOOD AND EVIL-In men. 

It appeared, before the breakfast was over, 
that everybody whom this Gowan knew was 
either more or less of an ass, or more or less of 
a knave ; but was, notwithstanding, the most 
lovable, the most engaging, the simplest, tru- 
est, kindest, dearest, best fellow that ever lived. 

The process by which this unvarying result 
was attained, whatever the premises, might 
have been stated by Mr. Henry Gowan thus : 
" I claim to be always bookkeeping, with a pe- 
culiar nicety, in every man's case, and posting 
up a careful little account of Good and Evil 
with him. I do this so conscientiously, that I 
am happy to tell you I find the most worthless 
of men to be the dearest old fellow too ; and 
am in a condition to make the gratifying re- 
port, that there is much less difference than you 
are inclined to suppose between an honest man 
and a scoundrel." The effect of this cheering 
discovery happened to be, that while he seemed 
to be scrupulously finding good in most men, 
he did in reality lower it where it was, and set 
it up where it was not ; but that was its only 
disagreeable or dangerous feature. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 17. 

GOOD PTJRPOSES-Perverted. 

" All good things perverted to evil purposes, 
are worse than those which are naturally bad. 
A thoroughly wicked woman is wicked indeed. 
When religion goes wrong, she is very wrong, 
for the same reason." 

Bamaby Rudge^ Chap. 51. 

GOODNESS— Its propagation. 

Any propagation of goodness and benevo- 
lence is no small addition to the aristocracy of 
nature, and no small subject of rejoicing for 
mankind at large. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 73. 

GOSSIP. 

It concentrated itself on the acknowledged 
Beauty of the party, every stitch in whose dress 
was verbally unripped by the old ladies then 
and there, and whose " goings on " with another 
and a thinner personage in a white hat might 
have suifused the pump (where they were prin- 
cipally discussed) with blushes for months af- 
terwards. — Uncofnmercial Traveller, Chap. 27. 

GOTJT— A patrician disorder. 

Sir Leicester receives the -gout as a trouble- 
some demon, but still a demon of the patrician 
order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male 
line, through a course of time during and be- 
yond which the memory of man goeth not to 
the contrary, have had the gout. It can be 
proved, sir. Other men's fathers may have died 
of the rheumatism, or may have taken base con- 
tagion from the tainted blood of the sick vul- 
gar, but the Dedlock family have communicated 
something exclusive, even to the levelling pro- 
cess of dying, by dying of their own family gout. 
It has come down, through the illustrious line, 
like the plate, or the pictures, or the place in 
Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities. Sir 



Leicester is, perhaps, not wholly without an im- 
pression, though he has never resolved it into 
words, that the angel of death, in the discharge 
of his necessary duties, may observe to the shades 
of the aristocracy, " My lords and gentlemen, 
I have the honor to present to you another Ded 
lock, certified to have arrived per the family 
gout." 

Hence, Sir Leicester yields up his family legs 
to the family disorder, as if he held his name 
and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels, 
that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back, and 
spasmodically twitched and stabbed in his ex- 
tremities, is a liberty taken somewhere ; but, 
he thinks, " We have all yielded to this ; it 
belongs to us ; it has, for some hundreds of years, 
been understood that we are not to make the 
vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble 
terms ; and I submit myself to the compromise." 
Bleak House, Chap. 16. 

GOUT— Mr. Weller's remedy for. 

" Take care, old fellow, or you'll have a touch 
of your old complaint, the gout." 

" I've found a sov'rin cui'e for that, Sammy," 
said Mr. "W'eller, setting down the glass. 

" A sovereign cure for the gout," said Mr. 
Pickwick, hastily producing his note-book ; 
" what is it ? " 

" The gout, sir," replied Mr. Weller, " the 
gout is a complaint as arises from too much 
ease and comfort. If ever you're attacked with 
the gout, sir, jist you marry a widder as has got a 
good loud woice, with a decent notion of usin' it, 
and you'll never have the gout agin. It's a cap- 
ital prescription, sir. I takes it reg'lar, and I 
can warrant it to drive away any illness as is 
caused by too much jollity." Having imparted 
this valuable secret, Mr. Weller drained his 
glass once more, produced a labored wink, 
sighed deeply, and slowly retired. 

" Well, what do you think of what your father 
says, Sam?" inquired Mr. Pickwick, with a 
smile. 

" Think, sir ! " replied Mr. Weller ; " why, I 
think he's the wictim o' connubiality, as Blue 
Beard's domestic chaplain said, with a tear of 
pity, ven he buried him." — Pickwick, Chap, 20. 

GOTJT— An aristocratic privileg-e. 

" The door will be opened immediately," he 
said. " There is nobody but a very dilapidated 
female to perform such offices. You will excuse 
her infirmities ? If she were in a more elevated 
station in society, she would be gouty. Being 
but a hewer of wood and drawer of water, she 
is rheumatic. My dear Haredale, these are nat- 
ural class distinctions, depend upon it." 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 26. 

GOTTRMAND-A. 

If he really be eating his supper now, at 
what hour can he possibly have dined ! A sec- 
ond solid mass of rump- steak has disappear- 
ed, and he ate the first in four minutes and 
three-quarters, by the clock over the window. 
Was there ever such a personification of Fal- 
staflf ! Mark the air with which he gloats over 
that Stilton as he removes the napkin which has 
been placed beneath his chin to catch the super- 
fluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto 
he imbibes the porter which has been fetched, 
expressly for him, in the pewter pot. Listen t 



LtoA 



QRACE 



211 



GRAVE 



the hoarse sovnd of that voice, kept down as it 
is by layers of solids, and deep draughts of rich 
wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect 
picture of a regula.Y gourmand ; and whether he 
is not exactly the man whom you would pitch 
upon as having been the partner of Sheridan's 
parliamentary carouses, the volunteer driver of 
the hackney coach that took him home, and the 
involuntary upsetter of the whole party. 

What an amusing contrast between his voice 
and appearance, and that of the spare, squeak- 
ing old man, who sits at the same table, and 
who, elevating a little, cracked, bantam sort of 
voice to its highest pitch, invokes damnation 
upon his own eyes or somebody else's at the 
commencement of every sentence he utters. 
" The Captain," as they call him, is a very old 
frequenter of Bellamy's ; much addicted to 
stopping " after the House is up " (an inexpiable 
crime in Jane's eyes, and a complete walking 
reservoir of spirits and water. 

Scenes, Chap. i8. 

GRACE— Before meat. 

Mr. Cruncher's temper was not at all im- 
proved when he came to his breakfast. He 
resented Mrs. Cruncher's saying Grace with 
particular animosity. 

" Now, Aggerawayter ! "What are you up to ? 
At it agin ? " 

His wife explained that she had merely " asked 
a blessing." 

" Don't do it I ** said Mr. Cruncher, looking 
about, as if he rather expected to see the loaf 
disappear under the efScacy of his wife's peti- 
tions. " I ain't a going to be blest out of house 
and home. I won't have my wittles blest off my 
table. Keep still ! " 

Tale of T%vo Cities, Book II., Chap. i. 

GRAMMAR-For the laity. 

" Mr. Jasper was that, Tope ? " 

'Yes, Mr. Dean." 

" He has stayed late." 

"Yes, Mr. Dean. I have stayed for him, 
your Reverence. He has been took a little 
poorly." 

"Say 'taken,' Tope— to the Dean," the 
younger rook interposes in a low tone with 
this touch of correction, as who should say, 
"You may offer bad grammar to the laity, or 
the humbler clergy, not to the Dean." 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 2. 

GRAMMAR-Of Mrs. Merdle. 

In the grammar of Mrs. Merdle's verbs on 
this momentous subject, there was only one 
Mood, the Imperative ; and that Mood had 
only one tense, the Present. Mrs. Merdle's 
verbs were so pressingly presented to Mr. Mer- 
dle to conjugate, that his sluggish blood and 
long coat-cuffs became quite agitated. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12. 

GRANDFATHER-The. 

Buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira 
did, in its time ; and dust and cobwebs thicken 
on the bottles. 

Autumn days are shining, and on the sea- 
beach there are often a young lady, and a white- 
haired gentleman. With them, or near them, 
are two children : boy and girl. And an old 
dog is generally in their company. 



The white-haired gentleman walks with the 
little boy, talks with him, helps him in his play, 
attends upon him, watches him, as if he were 
the object of his life. If he be thoughtful, the 
white-haired gentleman is thoughtful too ; and 
sometimes, when the child is sitting by his side, 
and looks up in his face, asking him questions, 
he takes the tiny hand in his, and holding it, 
forgets to answer. Then the child says : 

" What, grandpapa ! Am I so like my poor 
little uncle again ! " 

" Yes, Paul. But he was weak, and you are 
very strong." 

" Oh yes, I am very strong." 

" And he lay on a little bed beside ,the sea, 
and you can run about." 

And so they range away again, busily, for the 
white-haired gentleman likes best to see the 
child free and stirring ; and as they go about 
together, the story of the bond between them 
goes about, and follows them. 

But no one, except Florence, knows the meas- 
ure of the white-haired gentleman's affection for 
the girl. That story never goes about. The 
child herself almost wonders at a certain secrecy 
he keeps in it. He hoards her in his heart. 
He cannot bear to see a cloud upon her face. 
He cannot bear to see her sit apart. He fancies 
that she feels a slight, when there is none. He 
steals away to look at her, in her sleep. It 
pleases him to have her come, and wake him in 
the morning. He is fondest of her and most 
loving to her, when there is no creature by. 
The child says then, sometimes : 

" Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you 
kiss me?" 

He only answers " Little Florence ! Little 
Florence ! " and smooths away the curls that 
shade her earnest eyes. 

Dombey dx' Son, Chap. 42. 

GRATITUDE-A mother's. 

Polly, who had passed Heaven knows how 
many sleepless nights on account of this her 
dissipated firstborn, and had not seen him for 
weeks and weeks, could have almost kneeled to 
Mr. Carker the Manager, as to a Good Spirit — 
in spite of his teeth. But Mr. Carker rising to 
depart, she only thanked him with her mother's 
prayers and blessings : thanks so rich when 
paid out of the heart's mint, especially for any 
service Mr. Carker had rendered, that he might 
have given back a large amount of change, and 
yet been overpaid. — Dombey (Sr» Son, Chap. 22. 

GRAVE— The. 

Brave lodgings for one, brave lodgings forone, 
A few feet of cold earth, when life is done ; 
A stone at the head, a stone at the feet, 
A rich, juicy meal for the worniB to eat. 
Rank grass over head, and damp clay around, 
Brave lodgings for one, these, iu holy ground. 
Pickwick, Chap. 29. 

GRAVE— Of the dead pauper. 

Then the active and intelligent, who has got 
into the morning papers as such, comes with his 
pauper company to Mr. Krook's, and bears off 
the body of our dear brother here departed, to a 
hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, 
whence malignant diseases are communicated to 
the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who 
have not departed ; while our dear brothers and 
sisters who hang about official back-stairs — 



GRAVE 



212 



GRAVE-DIGGER 



would to Heaven they had departed ! — are very 
complacent and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap 
of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage 
abomination, and a Cafifre would shudder at, 
they bring our dear brother here departed, to 
receive Christian burial. 

With houses looking on, on every side, save 
where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives 
access to the iron gate — with every v-illainy of 
life in action close on death, and every poison- 
ous element of death in action close on life — 
here, they lower our dear brother down a foot 
or two ; here, sow him in corruption, to be 
raised in corruption : an avenging ghost at 
many ae sick-bedside : a shameful testimony to 
future ages, how civilization and barbarism 
walked this boastful island together. 

Come night, come darkness, for you cannot 
come too soon, or stay too long, by such a place 
as this ! Come, straggling lights, into the win- 
dows of the ugly houses ; and you who do ini- 
quity therein, do it at least with this dread scene 
shut out ! Come, flame of gas, burning so sul- 
lenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned 
air deposits its witch-ointment, slimy to the 
touch ! It is well that you should call to every 
passer-by, " Look here ! " 

With the niglit, comes a slouching figure 
through the tunnel-court, to the outside of the 
iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and 
looks in between the bars ; stands looking in, 
for a little while. 

It then, with an old broom it carries, softly 
sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean. 
It does so, very busily and trimly ; looks in 
again, a little while ; and so departs. 

Jo, is it thou ? Well, well ! Though a re- 
jected witness, who "can't exactly say" what 
will be done to him in greater hands than men's, 
thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is 
something like a distant ray of light in thy mut- 
tered reason for this ; 

"He wos wery good to me, he wos ! " 

Bleak Hotise, Chap. ii. 

GRAVE-A child's. 

Some young children sported among the 
tombs, and hid from each other, with laughing 
faces. They had an infant with them, and had 
laid it down asleep upon a child's grave, in a 
little bed of leaves. It was a new grave — the 
resting-place, perhaps, of some little creature, 
who, meek and patient in its illness, had often 
sat and watched them, and now seemed, to their 
minds, scarcely changed. 

She drew near and asked one of them whose 
grave it was. The child answered that that was 
not its name ; it was a garden — his brother's. 
It was greener, he said, than all the other gar- 
dens, and the birds loved it better because he 
had been used to feed them. When he had 
done speaking, he looked at her with a smile, 
and kneeling down and nestling for a moment 
with his cheek against the turf, bounded merrily 
away. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53. 

GRAVE— Of the- ^rringr. 

Within the altar of the old village church 
there stands a white marble tablet, which bears 
as yet but one word — " Agnes ! " There is no 
coffin in that tomb ; and may it be many, many 
years, before another name is placed above it ! 
But if the spirits of the Dead ever come back to 



earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love — the 
love beyond the grave — of those whom they 
knew in life, I believe that the shade of Agnes 
sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I 
believe it none the less because that nook is in 
a church, and she was weak and erring. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 53. 

GRAVE-Of Smike. 

The grass was green above the dead boy's 
grave, and trodden by feet so small and light, 
that not a daisy drooped its head beneath theii 
pressure. Through all the spring and summer- 
time, garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by in- 
fant hands, rested on the stone ; and when the 
children came here to change them lest they 
should wither and be pleasant to him no longer, 
their eyes filled with tears, and they spoke low 
and softly of their poor dead cousin. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 65. 

GR AVE-DIGGER-The. 

'* That's the sexton's spade, and it's a well- 
used one, as you see. We're healthy people 
here, but it has done a power of work. If it 
could speak now, that spade, it would tell you 
of many an unexpected job that it and I have 
done together ; but I forget 'em, for my memory's 
a poor one. — That's nothing new," he added 
hastily. " It always was." 

" There are flowers and shrubs to speak to 
your other work," said the child. 

" Oh yes. And tall trees. But they are not 
so separate from the sexton's labors as you 
think." 

"No!" 

'* Not in my mind and recollection — such as 
it is," said the old man. " Indeed, they often help 
it. For say that I planted such a tree for such 
a man. There it stands, to remind me that he 
died. When I look at its broad shadow, and 
remember what it was in his time, it helps me to 
the age of my other work, and I can tell you 
pretty nearly when I made his grave." 

" But it may remind you of one who is still 
alive," said the child. 

" Of twenty that are dead, in connection with 
that one who lives, then," rejoined the old man ; 
" wife, husband, parents, brothers, sisters, chil- 
dren, friends — a score at least. So it happens 
that the sexton's spade gets worn and battered. 
I shall need a new one — next summer." 

The child looked quickly towards him, think- 
ing that he jested with his age and infirmity ; h^t 
the unconscious sexton was quite in earnest. 

" Ah ! " he said, after a brief silence. " Pe> 
pie never learn. They never learn. It's onlj 
we who turn up the ground, where nothing growi 
and everything decays, who think of such things 
as these — who think of them properly, I meau. 
You have been into the church ? " 

" I am going there now," the child replied. 

" There's an old well there," said the sexton, 
" right underneath the belfry ; a deep, dark, echo- 
ing well. Forty year ago, you had only to let 
down the bucket till the first knot in the rope 
was free of the windlass, and you heard it splash- 
ing in the cold dull water. By little and little 
the water fell away, so that in ten year after that 
a second knot was made, and you must Uxiwind 
so much rope, or the bucket swung tight and 
empty at the end. In ten years' time, the water 
fell again, and a third knot was made. In ten 



GRAVESTONES 



213 



GRIDIRON 



years more, the well dried up ; and now, if you 
lower the bucket till your arms are tired, and let 
out nearly all the cord, you'll hear it, of a sud- 
den, clanking and rattling on the ground below ; 
with a sound of being so deep and so far down, 
that your heart leaps into your mouth, and you 
start away as if you were falling in." 

"A dreadful place to come on in the dark! " 
exclaimed the child, who had followed the old 
man's looks and words until she seemed to stand 
upon its brink. 

" What is it but a grave ! " said the sexton. 
" What else ! And which of our old folks, know- 
ing all this, thought, as the spring subsided, of 
their own failing strength, and lessening life ? 
Not one ! " — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53. 

GRAVESTONES— Pip's reading: of the. 

At the time when I stood in the churchyard, 
reading the family tombstones, I had just enough 
learning to be able to spell them out. My con- 
struction even of their simple meaning was not 
very correct, for I read " wife of the above " as 
a complimentary reference to my father's exalta- 
tion to a better world ; and if any one of my de- 
ceased relations had been referred to as " below," 
I have no doubt I should have formed the worst 
opinions of that member of the family. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 7. 

GRAVESTONES-Pip's family. 

My father's family name being Pirrip, and 
ray Christian name Philip, my infant tongue 
could make of both names nothing longer or 
more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself 
Pip, and came to be called Pip. 

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on 
the authority of his tombstone and my sister — 
Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. 
As I never saw my father or my mother, and 
never saw any likeness of either of them (for 
their days M'ere long before the days of photo- 
graphs), my first fancies regarding what they 
were like, were unreasonably derived from their 
tombstones. The shape of the letters on my 
father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a 
square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. 
From the character and turn of the inscription, 
^^ Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above" I drew a 
childish conclusion that my mother was freckled 
and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each 
about a foot and a half long, which were ar- 
ranged in a neat row beside their graves, and 
were sacred to the memory of five little brothers 
of mine — who gave up trying to get a living 
exceedingly early in that universal struggle — I 
am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained 
that they had all been born on their backs with 
their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had 
never taken them out in this state of existence. 
Great Expectations, C/tap. i. 

GRAVE-YARD. 

A poor, mean burial-ground — a dismal place, 
raised a few feet above the level of the street, 
and parted from it by a low parapet-wall and 
an iron railing ; a rank, unwholesome, rotten 
spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in 
their frowsy growth, to tell that they had sprung 
from paupers' bodies, and had struck their roots 
in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in 
steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. 
And here, in truth, they lay, parted from the 



living by a little earth and a board or two — lay 
thick and close — corrupting in body as they had 
in mind — a dense and squalid crowd. Here they 
lay, cheek by jowl with life : no deeper down 
than the feet of the throng that passed there 
every day, and piled high as their throats. Here 
they lay, a grisly family, all these dear departed 
brothers and sisters of the ruddy clergyman who 
did his task so speedily when they were hidden 
in the ground ! — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 62. 

GRAVE- YARD-A City. 

" He was put there," says Jo, holding to the 
bars and looking in. 

" Where ? O, what a scene of horror ! " 

" There ! " says Jo, pointing. " Over yinder. 
Among them piles of bones, and close to that 
there kitchin winder ! They put him wery nigh 
the top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to 
get it in. I could unkiver it for you with my 
broom, if the gate was open. That's why they 
locks it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. " It's al- 
ways locked : Look at the rat ! " cries Jo, excited. 
" Hi ! look ! There he goes ! Ho ! into the 
ground ! " 

The servant shrinks into a corner — into a 
corner of that hideous archway, with its deadly 
stains contaminating her dress ; and putting out 
her two hands, and passionately telling him to 
keep away from her, for he is loathsome to her, so 
remains for some moments. Jo stands staring, 
and is still staring when she recovers herself. 

" Is this place of abomination consecrated 
ground ? " 

" I don't know nothink of consequential 
ground," says Jo, still staring. 

" Is it blessed ? " 

"Which?" says Jo, in the last degree 
amazed. 

" Is it blessed ? " 

" I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more 
than ever ; " but I shouldn't think it warn't. 
Blest ? " repeats Jo, something troubled in his 
mind. " It ain't done it much good if it is. 
Blest ? I should think it was t'oSiered myself. 
But I dont know nothink ! " 

Bleak House, Chap. 16. 

GRAVY— The human passion for. 

" Presiding over an establishment like this, 
makes sad havoc with the features, my dear Miss 
^Pecksniffs," said Mrs. Todgers. " The gravy 
alone is enough to add twenty years to one's 
age, I do assure you." 

" Lor ! " cried the two Miss Pecksniffs. 

"The anxiety of that one item, my dears,' 
said Mrs. Todgers, " keeps the mind continually 
upon the stretch. There is no such passion in 
human nature, as the passion for gravy among 
commercial gentlemen. It's nothing to say a 
joint won't yield — a whole animal wouldn't yield 
— the amount of gravy they expect each day at 
dinner. And what I have undergone in conse- 
quence," cried Mrs. Todgers, raising her eyes, 
and shaking her head, " no one would believe ! " 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9. 

GRIDIRON-A Gridiron is a. 

" The oncommonest workman can't show him- 
self oncommon in a gridiron — for a gridiron IS 
a gridiron," said Joe, steadfastly impressing it 
upon me, as if he were endeavoring to rouse 
me from a fixed delusion, "and you may haiin 



GRIEF 



214 



GUILLOTINE 



at what you like, but a gridiron it will come out, 
either by your leave, or again your leave, and 
you can't help yourself — " 

Great Expectations, Chap. 15. 

GHIEP— A bTirden. 

As a man upon a field of battle will receive 
a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is 
struck, so I, when I was left alone with my un- 
disciplined heart, had no conception of the 
wound with which it had to strive. 

« 4: H< 4: « 

It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, 
all the weary phases of distress of mind through 
which I passed. There are some dreams that 
can only be imperfectly and vaguely described ; 
and when I oblige myself to look back on this 
time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a 
dream. I see myself passing on among the 
novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, 
temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets 
— the old abiding places of History and Fancy 
— as a dreamer might ; bearing my painful load 
through all, a,nd hardly conscious of the objects 
as they fade before me. Listlessness to everything 
but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell 
on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up 
from it — as at last I did, thank Heaven ! — and 
from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn. 
David Copperfield, Chap. 58. 

GUILLOTINE. 

The sharp female newly-born and called La 
Guillotine. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. i. 

GUILLOTINE— Execution by the. 

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rum- 
ble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the 
day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring 
and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagina- 
tion could record itself, are fused in the one reali- 
zation. Guillotine. And yet there is not in 
France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, 
a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, 
which will grow to maturity under conditions 
more certain than those that have produced this 
horror. Crush humanity out of shape once 
more, under similar hammers, and it will twist 
itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the 
same seed of rapacious license and oppression 
ever again, and it will surely yield the same 
fruit according to its kind. 

Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change 
these back again to what they were, thou power- 
ful enchanter. Time, and they shall be seen to 
be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equi- 
pages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring 
Jezebels, churches that are not My Father's house 
but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of 
starving peasants ! No ; the great magician who 
majestically works out the appointed order of 
the Creator, never reverses his transformations. 
" If thou be changed into this shape by the will 
of God," say the seers to the enchanted, in the 
wise Arabian stories, " then remain so ! But, if 
thou wear this form through mere passing con- 
juration, then resume thy former aspect ! " 
Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along. 

As the sombre wheels of the six carts go 
round, they seem to plough up a long crooked 
furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges 
of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and 



the ploughs go steadily onward. So used are 
the regular inhabitants of the houses to the 
spectacle, that in many windows there are no 
people, and in some the occupation of the hands 
is not so much as suspended, while the eyes sur- 
vey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, 
the inmate has visitors to see the sight ; then he 
points his finger, with something of the compla- 
cency of a curator or authorized exponent, to 
this cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat 
here yesterday, and who there the day before. 

Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe 
these things, and all things on their last roadside, 
with an impassive stare ; others, with a lingering 
interest in the ways of life and men. Some, 
seated with drooping heads, are sunk in silent 
despair ; again, there are some so heedful of 
their looks that they cast upon the multitude 
such glances as they have seen in theatres and 
in pictures. Several close their eyes, and think, 
or try to get their straying thoughts together. 
Only one, and he a miserable creature of a 
crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk 
by hon'or that he sings, and tries to dance. Not 
one of the whole number appeals, by look or 
gesture, to the pity of the people. 

***** 

The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the 
furrow ploughed among the populace is turning 
round, to come on into the place of execution, 
and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to 
that, aow crumble in and close behind the last 
plough as it passes on, for all are following to 
the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs 
as in a garden of public diversion, are a number 
of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore- 
most chairs stands The Vengeance, looking 
about for her friend. 

***** 

The tumbrils began to discharge their loads. 
The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed 
and ready. Crash ! — A head is held up, and the 
knitting-women, who scarcely lifted their eyes 
to look at it a moment ago when it could think 
and speak, count*One. 

The second tumbril empties and moves on ; 
the third comes up. Crash ! — And the knitting- 
women, never faltering or pausing in their work, 
count Two. 

The supposed Evremonde descends, and the 
seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has 
not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, 
but still holds it as he promised. He gently 
places her with her back to the crashing engine 
that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks 
into his face and thanks him. 

***** 

The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of 
victims, but they speak as if they were alone. 
Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart 
to heart, these two children of the Universal 
Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have 
come together on the dark highway to repair 
home together, and to rest in her bosom. 

She kisses his lips ; he kisses hers ; they sol- 
emnly bless each other. The spare hand does 
not tremble as he releases it ; nothing worse 
than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient 
face. She goes next before him — is gone ! the 
knitting-women count Twenty-Two. 

" I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith 
the Lord : he that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live: and whoso- 



GUIIiLOTINE 



215 



HABIT 



ever liveth and believeth in me, shall never 
die." 

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning 
of many faces, the pressing on of many foot- 
steps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it 
swells forward in a mass, like one great heave 
of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three. 
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 15. 

GUELLOTINE-The reign of the. 

The new Era began ; the king was tried, 
doomed, and beheaded ; the Republic of Lib- 
erty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for 
victory or death against the world in arms ; the 
black flag waved night and day from the great 
towers of Notre Dame ; three hundred thousand 
men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of 
the earth, rose from all the vaiying soils of 
France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown 
broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill 
and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, 
under the bright sky of the South and under 
the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the 
vineyards and the olive-grounds, and among the 
cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along 
the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in 
the sand of the sea-shore. What private solici- 
tude could rear itself against the deluge of the 
Year One of Liberty — the deluge rising from 
below, not falling from above, and with the 
windows of Heaven shut, not opened ! 

There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no 
interval of relenting rest, no measurement of 
time. Though days and nights circled as regu- 
larly as when time was young, and the evening 
and the morning were the first day, other count 
of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in 
the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever 
of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural 
silence of a whole city, the executioner showed 
the people the head of the king — and now, it 
seemed almost in the same breath, the head of 
his fair wife, which had had eight weary months 
of imprisoned widowhood and misery to turn it 
gray. 

And yet, observing the strange law of con- 
tradiction which obtains in all such cases, the 
time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A 
revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty 
or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all 
over the land ; a law of the Suspected, which 
struck away all security for liberty or life, and 
delivered over any good and innocent person to 
any bad and guilty one ; prisons gorged with 
people who had committed no offence, and 
could obtain no hearing ; these things became 
the established order and nature of appointed 
things, and seemed to be ancient usage before 
they were many weeks old. Above all, one 
hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been 
before the general gaze from the foundation of 
the world — the figure of the sharp female called 
La Guillotine. 

It was the popular theme for jests ; it was the 
best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented 
the hair from turning gray, it imparted a pecu- 
liar delicacy to the complexion, it was the Na- 
tional Razor which shaved close: who kissed 
La Guillotine, looked through the little window 
and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of 
the regeneration of the human race. It super- 
seded the Cross. Models of it were worn on 
breasts from which the Cross was discarded, 



and it was bowed down to and believed in 
where the Cross was denied. 

It sheared off" heads so many, that it, and the 
ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It 
was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a 
young Devil, and was put together again when 
occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, 
struck down the powerful, abolished the beauti- 
ful and good. Twenty-two friends of high pub- 
lic mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it 
had lopped the heads off", in one morning, in as 
many minutes. The name of the strong man 
of Old Scripture had descended to the chief 
functionary who worked it ; but, so armed, he 
was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, 
and tore away the gates of God's own Temple 
every day. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 4. 

One year and three months. During all that 
time Lucie was never sure, from hour to hour, 
but that the Guillotine would strike off" her hus- 
band's head next day. Every day, through the 
stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, 
filled with Condemned. Lovely girls , bright 
women, brown-haired, black-haired, and gray ; 
youths ; stalwart men and old ; gentle born 
and peasant born ; all red wine for La Guillo- 
tine, all daily brought into light from the dark 
cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to 
her through the streets to slake her devouring 
thirst. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death ; 
— the last, much the easiest to bestow, O GuiJ- 
lotine !— Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 5. 

aUILT— The pain of. 

Although at the bottom of his every thought 
there was an uneasy sense of guilt, and dread 
of death, he felt no more than that vague con- 
sciousness of it, which a sleeper has of pain. 
It pursues him through his dreams, gnaws at 
the heart of all his fancied pleasures, robs the 
banquet of its taste, music of its sweetness, 
makes happiness itself unhappy, and yet is no 
bodily sensation, but a phantom without shape, 
or form, or visible presence ; pervading every- 
thing, but having no existence ; recognizable 
everyv^^here, but nowhere seen, or touched, or 
met with face to face, until the sleep is past, 
and waking agony returns. 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 62. 



H 



HABIT— Of reflection. 

Instead of putting on his coat and waistcoat 
with anything like the impetuosity that could 
alone have kept pace with Walter's mood, he 
declined to invest himself with those garments 
at all at present ; and informed Walter, that on 
such a serious matter, he must be allowed to 
"bite his nails a bit." 

" It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r," said the 
Captain, " any time these fifty year. When you 
see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you 
may know that Ned Cuttle's agnnind." 

Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook 



HABIT AND DUTY 



216 



HAIB 






between his teeth, as if it were a hand ; and with 
an air of wisdom and profundity that was the 
very concentration and sublimation of all philo- 
sophical reflection and grave inquiry, applied 
himself to the consideration of the subject in 
its various branches. — Dombey df Son, Chap. 15. 

HABIT AND DUTY. 

" We go on in our clock-work routine, from 
day to day, and can't make out, or follow, these 
changes. They — they're a metaphysical sort of 
thing. We — we haven't leisure for it. We — we 
haven't courage. They're not taught at schools 
or colleges, and we don't know how to set about 

it. In short, we are so d d business-like," 

said the gentleman, walking to the window, and 
back, and sitting down again, in a state of ex- 
treme dissatisfaction and vexation. 

" I am sure," said the gentleman, rubbing his 
forehead again ; and drumming on the table as 
before, " I have good reason to believe that a 
jog-trot life, the same from day to day, would 
reconcile one to anything. One don't see any- 
thing, one don't hear anything, one don't know 
anything ; that's the fact. We go on taking every- 
thing for granted, and so we go on, until what- 
ever we do, good, bad, or indifferent, we do from 
habit. Habit is all I shall have to report, when 
I am called upon to plead to my conscience, on 
my death-bed. ' Habit,' says I ; ' I was deaf, 
dumb, blind, and paralytic, to a million things, 
from habit.' ' Very business-like indeed, Mr. 
What's-your-name,' says Conscience, ' but it 
won't do here ! ' " — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 33. 

HABIT— Its influence. 

It's this same habit that confirms some of 
us, who are capable of better things, in Lucifer's 
own pride and stubbornness — that confirms and 
deepens others of us in villainy — more of us in 
indifference — that hardens us from day to day, 
according to the temper of our clay, like images, 
and leaves us as susceptible as images to new 
impressions and convictions, 

Do77ibey cSr" Son, Chap. 53. 



He handed her down to a coach she had in 
waiting at the door ; and if his landlady had not 
been deaf, she would have heard him muttering 
as he went back up stairs, when the coach had 
driven off, that we were creatures of habit, and 
it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor. 
Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 58. 

HABITS— Of work and life— Dickens, his. 

I feel as if it were not for me to record, even 
though this manuscript is intended for no eyes 
but mine, how hard I worked at that tremen- 
dous shorthand, and all improvement appertain- 
ing to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora 
and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have 
already written of my perseverance at this time 
of my life, and of a patient and continuous 
energy which then began to be matured within 
me, and which I know to be the strong part of 
my character, if it have any strength at all, that 
there, on looking back, I find the source of my 
success. I have been very fortunate in worldly 
matters ; many men have worked much harder, 
and not succeeded half so well ; but I never 
could have done what I have done, without 
the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, 
without the determination to concentrate my- 



self on one object at a time, no matter how 
quickly its successor should come upon its heels, 
which I then formed. Heaven knows I write 
this in no spirit of self-laudation. The man 
who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going 
on here from page to page, had need to have 
been a good man indeed if he would be spared 
the sharp consciousness of many talents neglect- 
ed, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and 
perverted feelings constantly at war within his 
breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one 
natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. 
My meaning simply is, that whatever I have 
tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart 
to do well ; that whatever I have devoted my • 
self to, I have devoted myself to completely ; 
that in great aims and in small, I have always 
been thoroughly in earnest. I have never be- 
lieved it possible that any natural or improved 
ability can claim immunity from the companion- 
ship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, 
and hope to gain its end. There is no such 
thing as such fulfillment on this earth. Some 
happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, 
may form the two sides of the ladder on which 
some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder 
must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear ; 
and there is no substitute for thorough-going, 
ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put 
one hand to anything, on which I could throw 
my whole self ; and never to affect depreciation 
of my work, whatever it was ; I find, now, to 
have been my golden rules. 

David Copper field, Chap. 42. 

HACKMAN-A labeUed. 

" Here you are, sir," shouted a strange speci- 
men of the human race, in a sackcloth coat, and 
apron of the same, who, with a brass label and 
number round his neck, looked as if he were 
catalogued in some collection of rarities. 

Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

HAIR— Ahead of. 

His message perplexed his mind to that de- 
gree that he was fain, several times, to take off 
his hat to scratch his head. Except on the 
crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, 
black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and 
growing down-hill almost to his broad, blunt 
nose. It was so like smith's work, so much 
more like the top of a strongly-spiked wall than 
a head of hair, that the best of players at leap- 
frog might have declined him, as the most dan- 
gerous man in the world to go over. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 3. 

HAIR— Unruly. 

Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, 
and warmly attached to him as I was, I could 
not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that 
he had never contracted the habit of brushing 
his hair so very upright. It gave him a surprised 
look — not to say a hearth-broomy kind of ex- 
pression — which, my apprehensions whispered, 
might be fatal to us. 

I took the liberty of mentioning it to Trad- 
dles, as we were walking to Putney : and saying 
that if he w^?//^ smooth it down a little — 

" My dear Copperfield," said Traddles, lifting 
off his hat, and rubbing his hair all kinds of 
ways, " nothing would give me greater pleasure. 
But it won't." 



HAND 



217 



HAPPINESS 



•' Won't be smoothed down ? " said I. 

" No," said Traddles. " Nothing will induce 
it. If I was to carry a half-hundredweight upon 
it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again 
the moment the weight was taken off. You 
have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Cop- 
perfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine." 

«fC •{( ^ •!• "Tr 

" They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in 
her desk, and is obliged to shut it in a clasped 
book, to keep it down. We laugh about it." 
David Copper field. Chap. 41. 

HAND— Merdle's style of shaking:. 

Mr. Merdle was slinking about the hearth-rug, 
waiting to welcome Mrs. Sparkler. His hand 
seemed to retreat up his sleeve as he advanced 
to do so, and he gave her such a superfluity of 
coat cuff that it was like being received by the 
popular conception of Guy Fawkes. When he 
put his lips to hers, besides, he took himself 
into custody by the wrists, and backed himself 
among the ottomans and chairs and tables as if 
he were his own Police officer, saying to himself, 
" Now, none of that ! Come ! I've got you, you 
know, and you go quietly along with me ! " 
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16. 

HAND— Its g-entleness. 

Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the 
touch of a woman. I have often thought him 
since like the steam-hammer, that can crush a man 
or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength 
with gentleness. " Pip is that hearty welcome," 
said Joe, " to go free with his services, to honor 
and fortun', as no words can tell him. But if you 
think as money can make compensation to me for 
the loss of the little child — what come to the forge 
— and ever the best of friends ! — " 

O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to 
leave and so unthankful to, I see you again, with 
your muscular blacksmith's arm before your 
eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your 
voice dying away. O dear good faithful tender 
Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon 
my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been 
the rustle of an angel's wing ! 

Great Expectations, Chap. 18. 

HAND— Its character. 

As he stood, looking at his cap for a little 
while before beginning to speak, I could not 
help observing what power and force of charac- 
ter his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good 
and trusty companion it was to his honest brow 
and iron-grey hair. — David Copperfield, Chap. 51. 

HAND— A resolute. 

His hand upon the table rested there in per- 
fect repose, with a resolution in it that might 
have conquered lions. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 51. 

HAND- Dr. Chillip's style of shaking:. 

He quite shook hands with me — which was a 
violent proceeding for him, his usual course 
being to slide a tepid little fish-sIice an inch or 
two in advance of his hip, and evince the greatest 
discomposure when anybody grappled with it. 
Even now, he put his hand in his coat pocket 
as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed 
relieved when he had got it safe back. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 59. 



HAND— A ghostly. 

As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting 
up the office ; and, feeling friendly towards every- 
body, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, 
gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy 
hand his was ! as ghostly to the touch as to the 
sight ! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, 
and to rub his off. 

It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when 
I went to my room, it was still cold and wet 
upon my memory. Leaning out of window, 
and seeing one of the faces on the beam-ends 
looking at me sideways, I fancied it was Uriah 
Heep got up there somehow, and shut him out 
in a hurry. — David Copperfield, Chap. 15. 

HAND— Of sympathy. 

Long may it remain in this mixed world a 
point not easy of decision, which is the more 
beautiful evidence of the Almighty's goodness — 
the delicate fingers that are formed for sensitive- 
ness and sympathy of touch, and made to min- 
ister to pain and grief, or the rough, hard. Cap- 
tain Cuttle hand, that the heart teaches, guides, 
and softens in a moment. 

Dombey and Son, Chap. 48. 

HAPPINESS-Of the unfortunate. 

It is something to look upon enjoyment, so 
that it be free and wild and in the face of na- 
ture, though it is but the enjoyment of an idiot. 
It is something to know that Heaven has left 
the capacity of gladness in such a creature's 
breast ; it is something to be assured that, how- 
ever lightly men may crush that faculty in their 
fellows, the Great Creator of mankind imparts 
it even to his despised and slighted work. Who 
would not rather see a poor idiot happy in the 
sunlight, than a wise man pining in a darkened 
jail ! 

Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the 
face of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal 
frown ; read in the Everlasting Book, wide open 
to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pic- 
tures are not in black and sombre hues, but 
bright and glowing tints ; its music — save when 
ye drown it — is not in sighs and groans, but 
songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the mil- 
lion voices in the summer air, and find one dis- 
mal as your own. Remember, if ye can, the 
sense of hope and pleasure which every glad 
return of day awakens in the breast of all your 
kind who have not changed their nature ; and 
learn some wisdom even from the witless, when 
their hearts are lifted up they know not why, by 
all the mirth and happiness it brings. 

Bamaby Kiidge, Chap. 25. 

HAPPINESS— The power of trifles. 

" A small matter," said the Ghost, " to make 
these silly folks so full of gratitude." 

" Small ! " echoed Scrooge, 

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two 
apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts 
in praise of Fezziwig ; and when he had done 
so said, 

"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few 
pounds of your mortal money : three or four, 
perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this 
praise ? " 

" It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the 
remark, and speaking unconsciously like his 
former, not his latter self. " It isn't that. Spirit. 



HAPPINESS 



218 



HEABT 



He has the power to render us happy or un- 
happy ; to make our service light or burden- 
some ; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power 
lies in words and looks ; in things so slight and 
insignificant that it is impossible to add and 
count 'em up : what then ? The happiness he 
gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune." 
Christmas Carol, Stave 2. 

HAPPINESS-Tme. 

* * * A strain of rational good-will and 
cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympa- 
thies of every member of the party in behalf of 
his neighbor, and to perpetuate their good feel- 
ing during the ensuing year, than half the homi- 
lies that have ever been written, by half the 
Divines that have ever lived. 

Sketches f Characters J, Chap. 2. 

HASTE— The advantages of seeming-. 

More is done, or considered to be done — 
which does as well — by taking cabs, and " going 
about," than the fair Tippins knew of. Many 
vast vague reputations have been made, solely 
by taking cabs and going about. This par- 
ticularly obtains in all Parliamentary affairs. 
Whether the business in hand be to get a man 
in, or get a man out, or get a man over, or pro- 
mote a railway, or jockey a railway, or what 
else, nothing is understood to be so effectual as 
scouring nowhere in a violent hurry — in short, 
as taking cabs and going about. 

Our Mutual Frieiid, Book II,, Chap. 3. 

HAT— Sam Weller's apology for liis. 

" Sit down." 

" Thank'ee, sir," said Sam. And down he 
sat, without further bidding, having previously 
deposited his old white hat on the landing out- 
side the door. " 'Ta'nt a werry good 'un to look 
at," said Sam, "but it's an astonishin* 'un to 
wear ; and afore the brim went, it was a werry 
handsome tile. Hows'ever its lighter without 
it, that's one thing, and every hole lets in some 
air, that's another — wentilation gossamer I calls 
it." On the delivery of this sentiment, Mr. 
Weller smiled agreeably upon the assembled 
Pickwickians. — Pickwick, Chap. 12. 

HAT— The pursuit of a. 

There are very few moments in a man's ex- 
istence when he experiences so much ludicrous 
distress, or meets with so little charitable com- 
miseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own 
hat. A vast deal of coolness, and a peculiar de- 
gree of judgment, are requisite in catching a hat. 
A man must not be precipitate, or he runs over 
it ; he must not rush into the opposite extreme, 
or he loses it altogether. The best way is, to 
keep gently up with the object of pursuit, to be 
wary and cautious, to watch your opportunity 
well, get gradually before it, then make a rapid 
dive, seize it by the crown, and stick it firmly on 
your head : smiling pleasantly all the time, as if 
you thought it as good a joke as anybody else. 
Pickwick, Chap. 4. 

HEART— In the right place. 

" Thank you, sir," said Mr. Chivery, without 
advancing ; " it's no odds me coming in. Mr. 
Clennam, don't you take no notice of my son (if 
you'll be so good) in case you find him cut up 
any ways difficult. My son has a 'art, and my 



son's 'art is in the right place. Me and his 
mother knows where to find it, and we find it 
sitiwated correct." 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 27. 

HEARTS— Innocent. 

" If we all had hearts like those which beat so 
lightly in the bosoms of the young and beautiful, 
what a heaven this earth would be ! If, while 
our bodies grow old and withered, our hearts 
could but retain their early youth and freshness, 
of what avail would be our sorrows and suffer- 
ings ! But, the faint image of Eden which is 
stamped upon them in childhood, chafes and 
rubs in our rough struggles with the world, and 
soon wears away : too often to leave nothing but 
a mournful blank remaining." 

Nicholas Nicklehy, Chap. 6. 

HEARTS— Open. 

Among men who have any sound and sterling 
qualities, there is nothing so contagious as pure 
openness of heart. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35. 

HE ART— A loving. 

If the little Haymaker had been armed with 
the sharpest of scythes, and had cut at every 
stroke into the Can-ier's heart, he never could 
have gashed and wounded it as Dot had done. 

It was a heart so full of love for her ; so 
bound up and held together by innumerable 
threads of winning remembrance, spun from the 
daily working of her many qualities of endear- 
ment ; it was a heart in which she had enshrined 
herself so gently and so closely ; a heart so sin- 
gle and so earnest in its Truth, so strong in 
right, so weak in wrong, that it could cherish 
neither passion nor revenge at first, and had 
only room to hold the broken image of its Idol. 
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 3. 

HEART— a pnre ; Tom Pinch. 

Tom, Tom ! The man in all this world 
most confident in his sagacity and shrewdness ; 
the man in all this world most proud of the dis- 
trust of other men, and having most to show in 
gold and silver as the gains belonging to his 
creed ; the meekest favorer of that wise doc- 
trine, Every man for himself, and God for us all 
(there being high wisdom in the thought that 
the Eternal Majesty of Heaven ever was, or 
can be, on the side of selfish lust and love!) ; 
shall never find, oh, never find, be sure of that, 
the time come home to him, when all his wis- 
dom is an idiot's folly, weighed against a sim- 
ple heart ! — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39. 

HEART— The chance revelations of the. 

There are chords in the human heart — 
strange, varying strings — which are only struck 
by accident ; which will remain mute and sense- 
less to appeals the most passionate and earnest, 
and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. 
In the most insensible or childish minds, there 
is some train of reflection which art can seldom 
lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, 
as great truths have done, by chance, and when 
the discoverer has the plainest end in view. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 55. 

HEART— Afflictions. 

" You may file a strong man's heart away for 



HEABTS 



219 



HOliAaE 



a good many years, but it will tell all of a sud- 
den at last." — Bleak House, Chap. 23. 

HEARTS— The necessity of shutters. 

"I speak as I find, Mr. Sweedlepipes," said 
Mrs. Gamp. " Forbid it should be otherways ! 
But we never knows wot's hidden in each 
other's hearts ; and if we had glass winders 
there, we'd need keep the shetters up, some on 
us, I do assure you ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 29. 

HEARTS-Li&ht. 

Light hearts, light hearts, that float so gaily 
on a smooth stream, that are so sparkling and 
buoyant in the sunshine — down upon fruit, 
bloom upon flowers, blush in summer air, life 
of the winged insect, whose whole existence is a 
day — how soon ye sink in troubled water ! 

Bajtiaby Rtidge, Chap. 71. 

HEART— The coin of the. 

The heart is not always a royal mint, with 
patent machinery, to work its metal into cur- 
rent coin. Sometimes it throws it out in strange 
forms, not easily recognized as coin at all. But 
it is sterling gold. It has at least that merit. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 20. 

HEART— An empty. 

He was touched in the cavity where his heart 
should have been — in that nest of addled eggs, 
where the birds of heaven would have lived, if 
they had not been whistled away. 

Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 2. 

HEART— Like a bird-cagre (Sampson Brass). 

" I respect you, Kit," said Brass, with emo- 
tion. " I saw enough of your conduct at that 
time, to respect you, though your station is hum- 
ble, and your fortune lowly. It isn't the waist- 
coat that I look at. It is the heart. The checks 
in the waistcoat are but the wires of the cage. 
But the heart is the bird. Ah ! How many sich 
birds are perpetually moulting, and putting their 
beaks through the wires to peck at all man- 
kind ! " 

This poetic figure, which Kit took to be in 
special allusion to his own checked waistcoat, 
quite overcame him ; Mr. Brass's voice and 
manner added not a little to its effect, for he 
discoursed with all the mild austerity of a her- 
mit, and wanted but a cord round the waist of 
his rusty surtout, and a skull on the chimney- 
piece, to be completely set up in that line of 
business. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56. 

HEART— The silent influence of the. 

There was heart in the room ; and who that 
has a heart, ever fails to recognise the silent 
presence of another ! 

Bamaby Rudge^ Chap. 20. 

HEARTS— Mere mechanisms. 

" I was about to speak to you from my heart, 
sir," returned Edward, " in the confidence which 
should subsist between us ; and you check me in 
the outset." 

" Now do, Ned, do not," said Mr. Chester, 
raising his delicate hand imploringly, " talk in 
that monstrous manner. About to speak from 
your heart. Don't you know that the heart is 
an ingenious part of our formation — the centre 



of the blood-vessels and all that sort of thing — 
which has no more to do with what you say or 
think, than your knees have ? How can you be 
so very vulgar and absurd ? These anatomical 
allusions ihould be left to gentlemen of the 
medical profession. They are really not agree- 
able in society. You quite surprise me, Ned." 

" Well ! there are no such things to wound, 
or heal, or to have regard for. I know your 
creed, sir, and will say no more," returned his 
son. 

" There again," said Mr. Chester, sipping his 
wine, " you are wrong. I distinctly say there 
are such things. We know there are. The 
hearts of animals — of bullocks, sheep, and so 
forth — are cooked and devoured, as I am told, 
by the lower classes, with a vast deal of relish. 
Men are sometimes stabbed to the heart, shot 
to the heart ; but as to speaking from the heart, 
or to the heart, or being warm-hearted, or cold- 
hearted, or broken-hearted, or being all heart, 
or having no heart — pah I these things are non- 
sense, Ned." — Barjiaby Rudge, Chap. 32. 

HEARTS AND HEADS. 

" Do you know how pinched and destitute I 
am ? " she retorted. " I do not think you do, or 
can. If you had eyes, and could look around 
you on this poor place, you would have pity on 
me. Oh ! let your heart be softened by your 
own affliction, friend, and have some sympathy 
with mine." 

The blind man snapped his fingers as he an- 
swered : 

" — Beside the question, ma'am, beside the 
question. I have the softest heart in the world, 
but I can't live upon it. Many a gentleman 
lives well upon a soft head, who would find a 
heart of the same quality a very great draw- 
back." — Ba7-naby Rudge, Chap. 45. 

HEARTIiESSNESS. 

He'd no more heart than a iron file, he was as 
cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil 
afore mentioned. 

Great Expectations, C/uip. 42. 

HEAVEN— The real. 

The real Heaven is some paces removed from 
the mock one in the great chandelier of the 
Theatre. — Somebody s Luggage, Chap. 2. 

HOLIDAYS— The happy associations of. 

Oh, these holidays ! why will they leave us 
some regret ? why cannot we push them back, 
only a week or two, in our memories, so as to 
put them at once at that convenient distance 
whence they may be regarded either with a calm 
indifference or a pleasant efl"ort of recollection ! 
why will they hang about us, like the flavor of 
yesterday's wine, suggestive of headaches and 
lassitude, and those good intentions for the 
future, which, under the earth, form the ever- 
lasting pavement of a large estate, and, upon it, 
usually endure until dinner-time or thereabouts? 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 40. 

HOMAGE— To woman. 

They did homage to Bella as if she were a 
compound of fine girl, thorough-bred horse, 
well-built drag, and remarkable pipe. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chiip. 5. 



HOME OF DICKENS 



HOME 



HOME OF DICKENS-GadsMU. 

So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh 
were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was 
midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and 
the widening river was bearing the ships, white- 
sailed or black-smoked, out to sea, when I 
noticed by the way-side a very' queer small boy. 

"Halloa!" said I, to the very queer small 
boy, "where do you live ?" 

" At Chatham," says he. 

" What do you do there ? " says I. 

" I go to school," says he. 

I took him up in a moment, and we went on. 
Presently, the very queer small boy says, " This 
is Gadshill we are coming to, where FalstafT 
went out to rob those travellers, and ran away." 

"You know something about FalstafF, eh?" 
said I. 

" All about him," said the very queer small 
boy, " I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts 
of books. But do let us stop at the top of the 
hill, and look at the house there, if you please ! " 

" You admire that house ? " said I. 

" Bless you, sir," said the very queer small 
boy, " when I was not more than half as old as 
nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought 
to look at it. And now I am nine I come by 
myself to look at it. And ever since I can re- 
collect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has 
often said to me, ' If you were to be very per- 
severing, and were to work hard, you might 
some day come to live in it.' Though that's 
impossible ! " said the very queer small boy, 
drawing a low breath, and now staring at the 
house out of window with all his might. 

I was rather amazed to be told this by the 
very queer small boy ; for that house happens 
to be my house, and I have reason to believe 
that what he said was true. 

"^ell ! I made no halt there, and I soon drop- 
ped the very queer small boy and went on. 
Over the road where the old Romans used to 
march, over the road where the old Canterbury 
pilgrims used to go, over the road where the 
travelling trains of the old imperious priests and 
princes used to jingle on horseback between the 
continent and this Island, through the mud and 
water, over the road where Shakespeare hum- 
med to himself, " Blow, blow, thou winter wind," 
as he sat in the saddle at the gate of the inn- 
yard noticing the carriers ; all among the cherry 
orchards, apple orchards, cornfields, and hop- 
gardens ; so went I, by Canterbury to Dover. 
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 7. 

HOME— Of Mr. Dombey. 

Mr. Dombey's house was a large one, on the 
shady side of a tall, dark, dreadfully genteel 
street in the region between Portland Place and 
Bryanstone Square. It was a corner house, with 
great wide areas containing cellars frowned upon 
by barred windows, and leered at by crooked- 
eyed doors leading to dust-bins. It was a house 
of dismal state, with a circular back to it, con- 
taining a whole suit of drawing-rooms looking 
upon a gravelled yard, where two gaunt trees, 
with blackened trunks and branches, rattled 
rather than rustled, their leaves were so smoke- 
dried. The summer sun was never oji the 
street, but in the morning about breakfast-time, 
when it came with the water-carts and the old 
clothes-men, and the people with geraniums, 
and the umbrella-mender, and the man who 



trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he 
went along. It was soon gone again to return 
no more that day ; and the bands of music and 
the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left 
it a prey to the most dismal of organs, and 
white mice ; and now and then a porcupine, to 
vary the entertainments ; until the butlers whose 
families were dining out, began to stand at the 
house-doors in the twilight, and the lamp-lighter 
made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten 
up the street with gas. — Dombey &^ Son, Chap. 3. 

HOME— After a funeral. 

When the funeral was over, Mr. Dombey 
ordered the furniture to be covered up — perhaps 
to preserve it for the son with whom his plans 
were all associated — and the rooms to be un- 
garnished, saving such as he retained for himseli 
on the ground floor. Accordingly, mysterious 
shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped 
together in the middle of rooms, and covered 
over with great winding-sheets. Bell-handles, 
window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being paper- 
ed up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded 
fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful 
murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled in 
holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending 
from the ceiling's eye. Odors, as from vaults 
and damp places, came out of the chimneys. 
The dead and buried lady was awful in a picture- 
frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind 
that rose, brought eddying round the corner 
from the neighboring mews, some fragments of 
the straw that had been strewn before the house 
when she was ill, mildewed remains of which 
were still cleaving to the neighborhood ; and 
these, being always drawn by some invisible at- 
traction to the threshold of the dirty house to 
let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal 
eloquence to Mr. Dombey's windows. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 3. 

HOME— Of a tourist. 

It was just large enough, and no more ; was 
as pretty within as it was without, and was per- 
fectly well-arranged and comfortable. Some 
traces of the migratory habits of the family were 
to be observed in the covered frames and furni- 
ture, and wrapped-up hangings ; but it was easy 
to see that it was one of Mr. Meagles's whims to 
have the cottage always kept, in their absence, 
as if they were always coming back the day after 
to-morrow. Of articles collected on his various 
expeditions, there was such a vast miscellany 
that it was like the dwelling of an amiable Cor- 
sair. There were antiquities from Central Italy, 
made by the best modem houses in that depart- 
ment of industry ; bits of mummy from Egypt 
(and perhaps Birmingham) ; model gondolas 
from Venice ; model villages from Switzerland : 
morsels of tesselated pavement from Hercula- 
neum and Pompeii, like petrified minced veal ; 
ashes out of tombs, and lava out of Vesuvius ; 
Spanish fans, Spezzian straw hats, Moorish slip- 
pers, Tuscan hair-pins, Carrara sculpture, Tras- 
taverini scarfs, Genoese velvets and filagree, 
Neapolitan coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jew- 
elry, Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round by 
the Pope himself, and an infinite variety of lum- 
ber. There were views, like and unlike, of a 
multitude of places ; and there was one little 
picture-room devoted to a few of the regular 
sticky old Saints, with sinews like whip-cord» 



HOME 



221 



HOME 



hair like Neptune's, wrinkles like tattooing, and 
such coats of varnish that every holy personage 
served for a fly-trap, and became what is now 
called in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O. 
Of these pictorial acquisitions Mr. Meagles spoke 
in the usual manner. He was no judge, he said, 
except of what pleased himself ; he had picked 
them up, dirt-cheap, and people had considered 
them rather fine. One man, who at any rate 
ought to know something of the subject, had de- 
clared that " Sage, Reading " (a specially oily 
old gentleman in a blanket, with a swan's-down 
tippet for a beard, and a web of cracks all over 
him like rich pie-crust), to be a fine Guercino. 
As for Sebastian del Piombo there, you would 
judge for yourself; if it were not his later man- 
ner, the question was. Who was it? Titian, 
that might or might not be — perhaps he had 
only touched it. Daniel Doyce said perhaps he 
hadn't touched it, but Mr. Meagles rather de- 
clined to overhear the remark. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. l6. 

HOME— The music of crickets at. 

" This has been a happy home, John ; and I 
love the Cricket for its sake ! " 

" Why, so do I then," said the Carrier. " So 
do I, Dot." 

" I love it for the many times I have heard it, 
and the many thoughts its harmless music has 
given me. Sometimes, in the twilight, when I 
have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John 
— before baby was here, to keep me company 
and make the house gay — when I have thought 
how lonely you would be if I should die ; how 
lonely I should be, if I could know that you had 
lost me, dear ; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, upon the 
hearth, has seemed to tell me of another little 
voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before whose 
coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream. 
And when I used to fear — I did fear once, John, 
I was very young, you know — that ours might 
prove to be an ill-assorted marriage, I being 
such a child, and you more like my guardian 
than my husband ; and that you might not, 
however hard you tried, be able to learn to love 
me, as you hoped and prayed you might ; its 
Chirp, Chirp, Chirp, has cheered me up again, 
and filled me with new trust and confidence. I 
was thinking of these things to-night, dear, when 
I sat expecting you ; and I love the Cricket for 
their sake ! " — Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 

HOME-Of Mrs. Chickenstalker. 

Fat company, rosy-cheeked company, com- 
fortable company. They were but two, but they 
were red enough for ten. They sat before a 
bright fire, with a small low table between 
them ; and unless the fragrance of hot tea and 
muffins lingered longer in that room than in 
most others, the table had seen service very 
lately. But all the cups and saucers being 
clean, and in their proper places in the corner 
cupboard ; and the brass toasting-fork hanging 
in its usual nook, and spreading its four idle 
fingers out, as if it wanted to be measured for a 
glove, there remained no other visible tokens 
of the meal just finished, than such as purred 
and washed their whiskers in the person of the 
basking cat, and glistened in the gracious, not 
to say the greasy, faces of her patrons. 

Chimes, ^th quarter. 



HOME. 

" ' O Home, our comforter and friend when 
others fall away, to part with whom, at any 
step between the cradle and the grave ' — " 

" ' O Home, so true to us, so often slighted in 
return, be lenient to them that turn away from 
thee, and do not haunt their erring footsteps too 
reproachfully ! Let no kind looks, no well- 
remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom 
face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentle- 
ness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy 
white head. Let no old loving word or tone 
rise up in judgment against thy deserter ; but 
if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in 
mercy to the Penitent ! ' " 

Battle of Life, Chap, 1. 

HOME— Of a female philanthropist. 

We expressed our acknowledgments, and sat 
down behind the door, where there was a lame 
invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good 
hair, but was too much occupied with her African 
duties to brush it. The shawl in which she had 
been loosely muffled, dropped on to her chair 
when she advanced to us ; and as she turned to 
resume her seat, we could not help noticing that 
her dress didn't nearly meet up the back, and 
that the open space was railed across with a 
lattice-work of stay-lace— like a summer-house. 

The room, which was strewn with papers, and 
nearly filled by a great writing-table covered 
with similar litter, was, I must say, not only 
very untidy, but very dirty. We were obliged 
to take notice of that with our sense of sight, 
even while, with our sense of hearing, we fol- 
lowed the poor child who had tumbled down- 
stairs : T think into the back-kitchen, where 
somebody seemed to stifle him. 

But what principally struck us was a jaded, 
and unhealthy-looking, though by no means 
plain girl, at the writing-table, who sat biting 
the feather of her pen, and staring at us. I 
suppose nobody ever was in such a state of ink. 
And, from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet, 
which were disfigured with frayed and broken 
satin slippers trodden down at heel, she really 
seemed to have no article of dress upon her, 
from a pin upwards, that was in its proper con- 
dition or its right place. 

" You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby, 
snuffing the two great office candles in tin can- 
dlesticks, which made the room taste strongly of 
hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was 
nothing in the grate but ashes, a bundle of 
wood, and a poker), " you find me, my dears, as 
usual, very busy ; but that you will excuse. 
The African project at present employs my whole 
time. It involves me in correspondence with 
public bodies, and with private individuals anx- 
ious for the welfare of their species all over the 
country. I am happy to say it is advancing. 
We hope by this time next year to have from a 
hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy fami- 
lies cultivating coffee and educating the natives 
of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the 
Niger." — Bleak House, Chap. 4. 

HOME-A solitary. 

His dwelling was so solitary and vault-like— 
an old, retired part of an ancient endowment 
for students, once a brave edifice planted ia an 



HOME 2J 

open place, but now the obsolete whim of for- 
gotten architects ; smoke-age-and-weather-dark- 
ened, squeezed on every side by the overgrowing 
of the great city, and choked, like an old well, 
with stones and bricks ; its small quadrangles, 
lying down in very pits formed by the streets 
and buildings, which, in course of time, had 
been constructed above its heavy chimney 
stacks ; its old trees, insulted by the neighbor- 
ing smoke, which deigned to droop so low when 
it was very feeble and the weather very moody ; 
its grass-plots, struggling with the mildewed 
earth to be grass, or to win any show of com- 
promise ; its silent pavement, unaccustomed to 
the tread of feet, and even to the observation 
of eyes, except when a stray face looked down 
from the upper world, wondering what nook it 
was ; its sun-dial in a little bricked-up corner, 
where no sun had straggled for a hundred years, 
but where, in compensation for the sun's ne- 
glect, the snow would lie for weeks when it lay 
nowhere else, and the black east wind would 
spin like a huge humming-top, when in all 
other places it was silent and still. 

His dwellinjj, at its heart and core— within 
doors — at hi:s fireside — was so lowering and 
old, so crazy, yet so strong, with its worm-eaten 
beams of wood in the ceiling and its sturdy 
floor shelving downward to the great oak chim- 
ney-piece ; so environed and hemmed in by the 
pressure of the town, yet so remote in fashion, 
age, iind custom ; so quiet, yet so thundering 
with echoes when a distant voice was raised or a 
door was shut — echoes not confined to the many 
low passages and empty rooms, but rumbling 
and grumbling till they were stifled in the heavy 
air of the forgotten Crypt where the Norman 
arches were half buried in the earth. 

Haunted Man^ Chap, i. 

HOME-Of Miss Tox. 

Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that 
had been squeezed, at some remote period of 
English History, into a fashionable neighbor- 
hood at the west end of the town, where it stood 
in the shade like a poor relation of the great 
street round the corner, coldly looked down up- 
on by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a 
court, and it was not exactly in a yard ; but it was 
in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered 
anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. 

***** 

The greater part of the furniture was of the 
powdered head and pig-tail period ; comprising 
a plate-warmer, always languishing and sprawl- 
ing its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's 
way ; and an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated 
round the maker's name with a painted garland 
of sweet peas. 

Miss Tox's bedroom (which was at the back) 
commanded a vista of Mews, where hostlers, at 
whatever sort of work engaged, were continual- 
ly accompanying themselves with effervescent 
noises ; and wheie the most domestic and con- 
fidential garments of coachmen and their wives 
and families, usually hung, like Macbeth's ban- 
ners, on the outward walls. 

Dombey (5r» Son^ Chap. 7. 

HOME-Of Mrs. Pipchin. 

The Castle of this ogress and child-queller 
was in a steep by-street at Brighton, where the 



3 HOME 

soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and 
sterile, and the houses were more than usually 
brittle and thin ; where the small front-gardens 
had the unaccountable property of producing 
nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in 
them ; and where snails were constantly dis- 
covered holding on to the street doors, and 
other public places they were not expected to 
ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. 
In the winter-time the air couldn't be got out 
of the Castle, and in the summer-time it couldn't 
be got in. There was such a continual rever- 
beration of wind in it, that it sounded like a 
great shell, which the inhabitants were obliged 
to hold to their ears night and day, whether 
they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a 
fresh-smelling house ; and in the window of 
the front parlor, which was never opened, Mrs. 
Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, 
which imparted an earthy flavor of their own 
to the establishment. However choice exam- 
ples of their kind, too, these plants were of a 
kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of 
Mrs. Pipchin. There were half-a-dozen speci- 
mens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, 
like hairy serpents ; another specimen shooting 
out broad claws, like a green lobster ; several 
creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and ad- 
hesive leaves ; and one uncomfortable flower-pot 
hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have 
boiled over, and tickling people underneath 
with its long green ends, reminded them of 
spiders — in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was 
uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challen- 
ged competition still more proudly, in the season, 
in point of earwigs. — Dombey &• Son, Chap. 8 

HOME— The love of. 

And let me linger in this place for an instant, ' 
to remark, if ever household affections and loves 
are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. 
The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to 
home may be forged on earth, but those which 
link the poor man to his humble hearth are of 
the truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven. 
The man of high descent may love the halls 
and lands of his inheritance as a part of him- 
self ; as trophies of his birth and power : his 
associations with them are associations of pride, 
and wealth, and triumph : the poor man's attach- 
ment to the tenement he holds, which strangers 
have held before, and may to-morrow occupy 
again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a 
purer soil. His household gods are of flesh 
and blood, with no alloy of silver, gold, or pre- 
cious stones ; he has no property but in the af- 
fections of his own heart ; and when they en- 
dear bare floors and walls, despite of rags and 
toil and scanty fare, that man has his love of 
home from God, and his rude hut becomes a 
solemn place. 

Oh ! if those who rule the destinies of nations 
would but remember this — if they would but 
think how hard it is for the very poor to have 
engendered in their hearts that love of home 
from which all domestic virtues spring, when 
they live in dense and squalid masses where 
social decency is lost, or rather never found, — 
if they would but turn aside from the _ wide 
thoroughfares and great houses, and strive to 
improve the wretched dwellings in by-ways, 
where only Poverty may walk, — many low roofs 
would point more truly to the sky, than the 



HOXE 



223 



HOME 



loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from 
the midst of guilt, and crime, and horrible dis- 
ease, to mock them by its contrast. In hollow 
voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and Jail, this 
truth is preached from day to day, and has been 
proclaimed for years. It is no light matter — no 
outcry from the working vulgar — no mere ques- 
tion of the people's health and comforts that 
may be whistled down on Wednesday nights. 
In love of'home, the love of country has its 
rise ; and who are the truer patriots or the bet- 
ter in time of need — those who venerate the 
land, owning its wood, and stream, and earth, 
and all that they produce — or those who love 
their country, boasting not a foot of ground in 
all its wide domain ? 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 38. 

HOME— The comforts of (G-abriel Varden). 

That afternoon, when he had slept off his 
fatigue ; had shaved, and washed, and dressed, 
and freshened himself from top to toe ; when 
he had dined, comforted himself with aj)ipe, an 
extra Toby, a nap in the great arm-chair, and a 
quiet chat with Mrs. Varden on everything that 
had happened, was happening, or about to hap- 
pen, within the sphere of their domestic con- 
cern ; the locksmith sat himself down at the 
tea-table in the little back parlor ; the rosiest, 
cosiest, merriest, heartiest, best-contented old 
buck in Great Britain, or out of it. 

There he sat, with his beaming eye on Mrs. 
v., and his shining face suffused with gladness, 
and his capacious waistcoat smiling in every 
wrinkle, and his jovial humor peeping from un- 
der the table in the very plumpness of his legs : 
a sight to turn the vinegar of misanthropy into 
purest milk of human kindness. There he sat, 
watching his wife as she decorated the room 
with flowers for the greater honor of Dolly and 
Joseph Willet, who had gone out walking, and 
for whom the tea-kettle had been singing gaily 
on the hob full twenty minutes, chirping as never 
kettle chirped before ; for whom the best ser- 
vice of real undoubted china, patterned with di- 
vers round-faced mandarins holding up broad 
umbrellas, was now displayed in all its glory ; 
to tempt whose appetites a clear, transparent, 
juicy ham, garnished with cool, green lettuce- 
leaves and fragrant cucumber, reposed upon a 
shady table, covered with a snow-white cloth ; 
for whose delight, preserves and jams, crisp 
cakes and other pastry, short to eat, with cun- 
ning twists, and cottage loaves, and rolls of 
bread, both white and brown, were all set forth 
in rich profusion ; in whose youth Mrs. V. her- 
self had grown quite young, and stood there in 
a gown of red and white ; symmetrical in fig- 
ure, buxom in bodice, ruddy in cheek and lip, 
faultless in ankle, laughing in face and mood, 
in all respects delicious to behold — there sat 
the locksmith among all and every these de- 
lights, the sun that shone upon them all : the 
centre of the system : the source of light, heat, 
life, and frank enjoyment in the bright house- 
hold world. — Barnaby Rudge^ Chap. 80. 

HOME— Of confusion and wretohednesa. 

"My dear!" said I, smiling. "Your papa, 
no doubt, considers his family." 

" O yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Sum- 
merson," replied Miss Jellyby ; " but what com- 
fort is his family to him ? His family is nothing 



but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles down-stairs, 
confusion, and wretchedness. His scrambling 
home, from week's end to week's end, is like one 
great washing-day — only nothing's washed ! " 
Bleak House, Chap. 14. 

HOME— A rosary of regrets. 

He was tortured by anxiety for those he had 
left at home ; and that home itself was but 
another bead in the long rosary of his regrets. 
Barnaby jRudge, Chap. 61. 

HOME— Of Captain Cuttle. 

Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little 
canal near the India Docks, where there was a 
swivel bridge, which opened now and then to 
let some wandering monster of a ship come 
roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan. 
The gradual change from land to water, on the 
approach to Captain Cuttle's lodgings, was curi- 
ous. It began with the erection of flagstaffs, 
as appurtenances to public-houses ; then came 
slop-sellers* shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou'- 
wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the 
tightest and the loosest of their order, hanging 
up outside. These were succeeded by anchor 
and chain-cable forges, where sledge-hammers 
were dinging upon iron all day long. Then 
came rows of houses, with little vane-surmount- 
ed masts uprearing themselves from among the 
scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then pollard 
willows. Then more ditches. Then unaccount- 
able patches of dirty water, hardly to be des- 
cried, for the ships that covered them. Then, 
the air was perfumed with chips ; and all other 
trades were swallowed up in mast, oar, and 
block-making, and boat-building. Then, the 
ground grew marshy and unsettled. Then, 
there was nothing to be smelt but rum and su- 
gar. Then, Captain Cuttle's lodgings — at once 
a first floor and a top stoiy, in Brig Place — 
were close before you. 

Dombey dr» Son, Chap. 9. 

HOME— The representative of character. 

It is not a mansion ; it is of no pretensions as 
to size ; but it is beautifully arranged, and taste- 
fully kept. The lawn, the soft, smooth slope, 
the flower-garden, the clumps of trees, where 
graceful forms of ash and willow are not want- 
ing, the conservatory, the rustic verandah, with 
sweet-smelling creeping plants entwined about 
the pillars, the simple exterior of the house, the 
well-ordered offices, though all upon the dimin- 
utive scale proper to a mere cottage, bespeak 
an amount of elegant comfort within, that 
might serve for a palace. This indication is 
not without warrant ; for within it is a house of 
refinement and luxury. Rich colors, excellently 
blended, meet the eye at eveiy turn ; in the 
furniture — its proportions admirably devised to 
suit the shapes and sizes of the small rooms ; 
on the walls ; upon the floors ; tingeing and 
subduing the light that comes in through the 
odd glass doors and windows here and there. 
There are a few choice prints and pictures too ; 
in quaint nooks and recesses there is no want of 
books ; and there are games of skill and chance 
set forth on tables — fantastic chess-men, dice, 
back-gammon, cards, and billiards. 

And yet, amidst this opulence of comfort, 
there is something in the general air that is not 
well. Is it that the carpets and the cushions 



HOME 



224 



HOME 



are too soft and noiseless, so that those who move 
or repose among them seem to act by stealth ? 
Is it that the prints and pictures do not com- 
memorate grea:t thoughts or deeds, or render 
nature in the poetry of landscape, hall, or hut, 
but are of one voluptuous cast — mere shows of 
form and color — and no more ? Is it that the 
books have all their gold outside, and that the 
titles of the greater part qualify them to be 
companions of the prints and pictures? Is it 
that the completeness and the beauty of the 
place are here and there belied by an affectation 
of humility, in some unimportant and inexpen- 
sive regard, which is as false as the face of the 
too truly painted portrait hanging yonder, or 
its original at breakfast in his easy-chair below 
it? Or is it that, with the daily breath of that 
original and master of all here, there issues 
forth some subtle portion of himself, which 
gives a vague expression of himself to every- 
thing about him ? — Do7iibey 6^ Son, Chap. 33. 

HOME— In the suburbs. 

The neighborhood in which it stands has as 
little of the country to recommend it, as it has 
of the town. It is neither of the town or coun- 
try. The former, like the giant in his travel- 
ling boots, has made a stride and passed it, and 
has set his bi-ick and mortar heel a long way in 
advance ; but the intermediate space between 
the giant's feet, as yet, is only blighted country, 
and not town. — Do??tbey 6^ Son, Chap. 33. 

HOME— Disappointment in a. 

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed 
of home. There may be black ingratitude in 
the thing, and the punishment may be retribu- 
tive and well deserved ; but, that it is a misera- 
ble thing, I can testify. 

Home had never been a very pleasant place 
to me, because of my sister's temper. But, Joe 
had sanctified it, and I believed in it. I had 
believed in the best parlor as a most elegant 
saloon ; I had believed in the front door, as a 
mysterious portal of the Temple of State, whose 
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of 
roast fowls ; I had believed in the kitchen as a 
chaste though not magnificent apartment ; I had 
believed in the forge as the glowing road to 
manhood and independence. Within a single 
year all th^'s was changed. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 13. 

HOME. 

At sunrise, one fair Monday morning — the 
twenty-seventh of June, I shall not easily forget 
the day, — there lay before us old Cape Clear, 
God bless it, showing, in the mist of early morn- 
ing, like a cloud ; the brightest and most wel- 
come cloud to us that ever hid the face of 
Heaven's fallen sister, — Home. 

American Notes, Chap. 16. 

HOME— Adornment of a. 

But how the graces and elegances which she 
had dispersed about the poorly- furnished room, 
went to the heart of Nicholas ! Flowers, plants, 
birds, the harp, the old piano whose notes had 
sounded so much sweeter in by-gone times ; 
how many struggles had it cost her to keep 
these two last links of that broken chain which 
bound her yet to home ! With every slender 
ornament, the occupation of her leisure hours, 



replete with that graceful charm which lingers 
in every little tasteful work of woman's hands, 
how much patient endurance and how many 
gentle affections were entwined ! He felt as 
though the smile of Heaven were on the little 
chamber ; as though the beautiful devotion of 
so young and weak a creature had shed a ray 
of its own on the inanimate things around, and 
made them beautiful as itself; as though the 
halo with which old painters sun'ound the bright 
angels of a sinless world, played abcmt a being 
akin in spirit to them, and its light were visibly 
before him. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 46. 

HOME— The place of affection. 

" When I talk of homes," pursued Nicholas, 
" I talk of mine — which is yours of course. If it 
were defined by any particular four walls and a 
roof, God knows I should be sufficiently puzzled 
to say whereabouts it lay ; but that is not what 
I mean. When I speak of home, I speak of the 
place where, in default of a better, those I love 
are gathered together ; and if that place were a 
gipsy's tent, or a barn, I should call it by the 
same good name notwithstanding. And now, 
for what is my present home : which, however 
alarming your expectations may be, will neither 
terrify you by its extent nor its magnificence ! " 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35. 

HOME— An abandoned. 

God knows I had no part in it while they re- 
mained there, but it pained me to think of the 
dear old place as altogether abandoned ; of the 
weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen 
leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I 
imagined how the winds of winter would howl 
round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the 
window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts 
on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their 
solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave 
in the churchyard, underneath the tree : and it 
seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and 
all connected with my father and mother were 
faded away. — David Copperjield, Chap. 17. 

HOME— A desolate. 

Florence lived alone in the great dreary 
house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived 
alone ; and the blank walls looked down upon 
her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gor- 
gon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into 
stone. 

No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut 
up in the heart of a thick wood, was ever more 
solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her 
father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood 
lowering on the street : always by night, when 
lights were shining from neighboring windows, 
a blot upon its scanty brightness ; always by 
day, a frown upon its never-smiling face. 

There were not two dragon sentries keeping 
ward before the gate of this abode, as in magic 
legend are usually found on duty over the 
wronged innocence imprisoned ; but besides a 
glowering visage, with its thin lips parted wicked- 
ly, that surveyed all comers from above the arch- 
way of the door, there was a monstrous fantasy of 
rusty iron, curling and twisting like a petrifaction 
of an arbor over the threshold, budding in spikes 
and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either 
side, two ominous extinguishers that seemed to 
say, " Who enter here, leave light behind ! " 







A Family Reunion at Toodle's. 



225 



HOIKCE 



225 



HOME 



There were no talismanic characters engraven on 
the portal, but the house was now so neglected in 
appearance, that boys chalked the railings and 
the pavement — particularly round the corner 
where the side wall was — and drew ghosts on the 
stable door ; and being sometimes driven off by 
Mr. Towlinson, made portraits of him in return, 
with his ears growing out horizontally from under 
his hat. Noise ceased to be within the shadow of 
the roof. The brass band that came into the 
street once a week, in the morning, never brayed 
a note in at those windows ; but all such com- 
pany, down to a poor little piping organ of weak 
intellect, with an imbecile party of automaton 
dancers, waltzing in and out of folding-doors, 
fell ofif from it with one accord, and shunned it 
as a hopeless place. 

The spell upon it was more wasting than the 
spell that used to set enchanted houses sleeping 
once upon a time, but left their waking fresh- 
ness unimpaired. 

The passive desolation of disuse was every- 
where silently manifest about it. Within doors, 
curtains, drooping heavily, lost their old folds 
and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls. 
Hecatombs of furniture, still piled and covered 
up, shrunk like imprisoned and forgotten men, 
and changed insensibly. Mirrors were dim as 
with the breath of years. Patterns of carpets 
faded and became perplexed and faint, like the 
memory of those years' trifling incidents. 
Boards, starting at unwonted footsteps, creaked 
and shook. Keys rusted in the locks of doors. 
Damp started on the walls, and as the stains 
came out, the pictures seemed to go in and 
secrete themselves. Mildew and mould began 
to lurk in closets. Fungus trees grew in corners 
of the cellars. Dust accumulated, nobody knew 
whence or how : spiders, moths, and grubs were 
heard of every day. An exploratory black-beetle 
now and then was found immovable upon the 
stairs, or in an upper room, as wondering how 
he got there. Rats began to squeak and 
scuffle in the night-time, through dark galleries 
they mined behind the panelling. 

The dreary magnificence of the state-rooms, 
seen imperfectly by the doubtful light admitted 
through closed shutters, would have answered 
well enough for an enchanted abode. Such as 
the tarnished paws of gilded lions, stealthily 
put out from beneath their wrappers ; the marble 
lineaments of busts on pedestals, fearfully re- 
vealing themselves through veils ; the clocks 
that never told the time, or, if wound up by any 
chance, told it wrong, and struck unearthly 
numbers, which are not upon the dial ; the acci- 
dental tinklings among the pendant lustres, 
more startling than alarm-bells ; the softened 
sbunds and laggard air that made their way 
among these objects, and a phantom crowd of 
others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral 
of shape. But, besides, there was the great 
staircase, where the lord of the place so rarely 
set his foot, and by which his little child had 
gone up to Heaven. There were other staircases 
and passages where no one went for weeks to- 
gether ; there were two closed rooms associated 
with dead members of the family, and with 
whispered recollections of them ; and to all the 
house but Florence, there was a gentle figure 
moving through the solitude and gloom, that 
gave to every lifeless thing a touch of present 
Human interest and wonder. 



For Florence lived alone in the deserted 
house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived 
alone, and the cold walls looked down upon her 
with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like 
mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone. 

The grass began to grow upon the roof, and 
in the crevices of the basement paving. A scaly, 
crumbling vegetation sprouted round the win- 
dow-sills. Fragments of mortar lost their hold 
upon the inside of the unused chimneys, and 
came dropping down. The two trees with the 
smoky trunks were blighted high up, and the 
withered branches domineered above the leaves. 
Through the whole building white had turned 
yellow, yellow nearly black : and since the time 
when the poor lady died, it had slowly become 
a dark gap in the long monotonous street. 

But Florence bloomed there, like the king's 
fair daughter in the story. 

Donibey 6^ Son^ Chap. 23. 

HOME— A fasMonable. 

The saying is, that home is home, be it never 
so homely. If it hold good in the opposite 
contingency, and home is home be it never so 
stately, what an altar to the Household Gods is 
raised up here. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 35. 

HOME— Family reunion at Toodle's. 

Mr. Toodle had only three stages of existence. 
He was either taking refreshment in the bosom 
just mentioned, or he was tearing through the 
country at from twenty-five to fifty miles an hour, 
or he was sleeping after his fatigues. He was 
always in a whirlwind or a calm, and a peace- 
able, contented, easy-going man Mr. Toodle 
was in either state, who seemed to have made 
over all his own inheritance of fuming and fret- 
ting to the engines with which he was connected, 
which panted, and gasped, and chafed, and 
wore themselves out, in a most unsparing man- 
ner, while Mr. Toodle led a mild and equable 
life. 

"Polly, my gal," said Mr. Toodle, with a 
young Toodle on each knee, and two more 
making tea for him, and plenty more scattered 
about — Mr. Toodle was never out of children, 
but always kept a good supply on hand — " you 
an't seen our Biler lately, have you ? '* 

" No," replied Polly, " but he's almost certain 
to look in to-night. It's his right evening, and 
he's very regular." 

" I suppose," said Mr. Toodle, relishing his 
meal infinitely, " as our Biler is a doin' now about, 
as well as a boy can do, eh, Polly ? " 

" Oh ! he's a doing beautiful !" responded Polly. 

" He an't got to be at all secret-like — has he, 
Polly?" inquired Mr. Toodle. 

" No ! " said Mrs. Toodle, plumply. 

* * * * « 

" You see, my boys and gals," said Mr. Too- 
dle, looking round upon his family, " wotever 
you're up to in a honest way, it's my opinion 
as you can't do better than be open. If you 
find yourselves in cuttings or in tunnels, don't 
you play no secret games. Keep your whistles 
going, and let's know where you are." 

« * * ♦ * 

This profound reflection Mr. Toodle washed 
down with a pint mug of tea, and proceeded to 
solidify with a great weight of bread and but- 
ter ; charging his young daughters, meanwhile, 
to keep plenty of hot water ia the pot, as he 



HOME 



HONOR 



was uncommon dry, and should take the indefi- 
nite quantity of " a sight of mugs," before his 
thirst was appeased. 

In satisfying himself, however, Mr. Toodle 
was not regardless of the younger branches 
about him, who, although they had made their 
own evening repast, were on the look-out for 
irregular morsels as possessing a relish. These 
he distributed now and then to the expectant 
circle, by holding out great wedges of bread 
and butter, to be bitten at by the family in law- 
ful succession, and by serving out small doses 
of tea in like manner with a spoon ; which 
snacks had such a relish in the mouths of these 
young Toodles, that, after partaking of the same, 
they performed private dances of ecstasy among 
themselves, and stood on one leg a piece, and 
hopped, and indulged in other saltatory tokens 
of gladness. These vents for their excitement 
found, they gradually closed about Mr. Toodle 
again, and eyed him hard as he got through 
more bread and butter, and tea ; affecting, 
however, to have no further expectations of 
their own in reference to those viands, but to 
be conversing on foreign subjects, and whisper- 
ing confidentially. 

Mr. Toodle, in the midst of this family group, 
and setting an awful example to his children in 
the way of appetite, was conveying the two 
young Toodles on his knees to Birmingham by 
special engine, and was contemplating the rest 
over a barrier of bread and butter, when Rob 
the Grinder, in his sou'wester hat and mourning 
slops, presented himself. 

" Why, Polly ! " cried Jemima. " You ! what 
a turn you have given me ! who'd have thought 
it ! come along in, Polly ! How well you do 
look to be sure ! The children will go half 
wild to see you, Polly, that they will." 

That they did, if one might judge from the 
noise they made, and the way in which they 
dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair 
in the chimney corner, where her own honest 
apple-face became immediately the centre of a 
bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy 
cheeks close to it, and all evidently the growth 
of the same tree. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 38. 

HOME-Of Miss Tox. 

Miss Tox, all unconscious of any such rare 
appearances in connection with Mr. Dombey's 
house, as scaffoldings and ladders, and men with 
their heads tied up in pocket-handkerchiefs, glar- 
ing in at the windows like flying genii or strange 
birds — having breakfasted one morning at about 
this eventful period of time, on her customary 
viands : to wit, one French roll rasped, one egg, 
new laid (or warranted to be), and one little pot 
of tea, wherein was infused one little silver 
scoop-full of that herb on behalf of Miss Tox, 
and one little silver scoop-full on behalf of the 
teapot — a flight of fancy in which good house- 
keepers delight ; went up-stairs to set forth the 
bird waltz on the harpsichord, to water and ar- 
range the plants, to dust the nick-nacks, and, 
according to her daily custom, to make her little 
drawing-room the garland of Princess's Place. 

Miss Tox endued herself with the pair of an- 
cient gloves, like dead leaves, in which she was 
accustomed to perform these avocations — hidden 
from human sight at other times in a table 
drawei —and went m^ethodically to work ; be- 



ginning with the bird waltz ; passing, by a natu- 
ral association of ideas, to her bird — a very high- 
shouldered canary, stricken in years, and much 
rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess's 
Place well knew ; taking, next in order, the lit- 
tle china ornaments, paper fly-cages, and so 
forth ; and coming round, in good time, to the 
plants, which generally required to be snipped 
here and there with a pair of scissors, for some 
botanical reason that was very powerful with 
Miss Tox. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 29. 

HOME— Its peace and consolation. 

Florence felt that, for her, there was greater 
peace within it than elsewhere. It was better 
and easier to keep her secret shut up there, 
among the tall dark walls, than to carry her 
abroad into the light, and try to hide it from a 
crowd of happy eyes. It was better to pursue 
the study of her loving heart, alone, and find no 
new discouragements in loving hearts about her. 
It was easier to hope, and pray, and love on, all 
uncared for^ yet with constancy and patience, in 
the tranquil sanctuary of such remembrances, 
although it moulded, rusted, and decayed about 
her ; than in a new scene, let its gayety be what 
it would. She welcomed back her old enchanted 
dream of life, and longed for the old dark door 
to close upon her, once again. 

Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 28. 

HOMELESSNESS. 

In the wildness of her sorrow, shame, and 
terror, the forlorn girl hurried through the sun- 
shine of a bright morning, as if it were the dark- 
ness of a winter night. Wringing her hands 
and weeping bitterly, insensible to everything 
but the deep wound in her breast, stunned by 
the loss of all she loved, left like the sole sur- 
vivor on a lonely shore from the wreck of a 
great vessel, she fled without a thought, without 
a hope, without a purpose, but to fly somewhere 
— anywhere. 

The cheerful vista of the long street, burnished 
by the morning light, the sight of the blue sky 
and airy clouds, the vigorous freshness of the day, 
so flushed and rosy in its conquest of the night, 
awakened no responsive feelings in her so hurt 
bosom. Somewhere, anywhere, to hide her 
head ! somewhere, anywhere, for refuge, never 
more to look upon the place from which she fled ! 

But there were people going to and fro ; there 
were opening shops, and servants at the doors 
of houses ; there was the rising clash and roar 
of the day's struggle. Florence saw sui-prise 
and curiosity in the faces flitting past her, 
saw long shadows coming back upon the pave- 
ment ; and heard voices that were strange to her 
asking her where she went, and what the matter 
was ; and though these frightened her the more 
at first, and made her hurry on the faster, they 
did her the good service of recalling her in some 
degree to herself, and reminding her of the 
necessity of greater composure. 

Where to go ? Still somewhere, anywhere ! 
still going on ; but where ? She thought of the 
only other time she had been lost in the wide 
wilderness of London — though not lost as now 
— and went that way. To the home of Walter's 
uncle. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap, 48. 

HONOB— The true path of. 

" Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from 



HONOB 



227 



HOPES 



the broad path of honor, on the plausible pre- 
tence that he is justified by the goodness of his 
end. All good ends can be worked out by good 
means. Those that cannot, are bad ; and may 
be counted so at once, and left alone." 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 79. 

HONOR -The word of. 

" My good fellow," retorted Mr. Boffin, " you 
have my word ; and how you can have that, 
without my honor too, I don't know. I've 
sorted a lot of dust in my time, but I never 
knew the two things go into separate heaps." 
Our Muttial Friend, Book III., Chap. 14. 

HONESTY-The luxury of. 

" A man," says Sampson, " who loses forty- 
seven pound ten in one morning by his honesty, 
is a man to be envied. If it had been eighty 
pound, the luxuriousness of feeling would have 
been increased. Every pound lost, would have 
been a hundredweight of happiness gained. 
The still small voice, Christopher," cries Brass, 
smiling, and tapping himself on the bosom, " is 
a-singing comic songs within me, and all is hap- 
piness and joy ! " — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 57. 

HONEST MAN- An. 

" I tell you, ma'am," said Mr. Witherden, 
"what I think as an honest man, which, as the 
poet observes, is the noblest work of God. I 
agree with the poet in every particular, ma'am. 
The mountainous Alps on the one hand, or a 
humming-bird on the other, is nothing, in point 
of workmanship, to an honest man— or woman." 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 14. 

HOPE— Disappointed. 

Most men will be found sufficiently true to 
themselves to be true to an old idea. It is no 
proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly the 
opposite, when the idea will not bear close com- 
parison with the reality, and the contrast is a 
fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In 
his youth he had ardently loved this woman, 
and had heaped upon her all the locked-up 
wealth of his affection and imagination. That 
wealth had been, in his desert home, like Robin- 
son Crusoe's money ; exchangeable with no one, 
lying idle in the dark to rust, until he poured it 
out for her. Ever since that memorable time, 
though he had, until the night of his arrival, as 
completely dismissed her from any association 
with his Present and Future as if she had been 
dead (which she might easily have been for any- 
thing he knew), he had kept the old fancy of the 
Past unchanged, in its old sacred place. And 
now, after all, the last of the Patriarchs coolly 
walked into the parlor, saying in effect, " Be 
good enough to throw it down and dance upon 
\i."— Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 

HOPES— Disappointed. 

When he had walked on the river's brink in the 
peaceful moonlight, for some half-an-hour, he 
put his hand in his breast, and tenderly took out 
the handful of roses. Perhaps he put them to 
his heart, perhaps he put them to his lips, but 
certainly he bent down on the shore, and gently 
launched them on the flowing river. Pale and 
unreal in the moonlight, the river floated them 
away. 

The lights were bright within doors when he 



entered, and the faces on which they shone, his 
own face not excepted, were soon quietly cheer- 
ful. They talked of many subjects (his partner 
never had had such a ready store to draw upon 
for the beguiling of the time), and so to bed, and 
to sleep. While the flowers, pale and unreal in 
the moonlight, floated away upon the river ; and 
thus do greater things that once were in our 
breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the 
eternal seas. — Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 28. 

HOPES— Of Captain Cuttle. 

Captain Cuttle, addressing his face to the 
sharp wind and slanting rain, looked up at the 
heavy scud that was flying fast over the wilder- 
ness of house-tops, and looked for something 
cheery there in vain. The prospect near at hand 
was no better. In sundry tea-chests and other 
rough boxes at his feet, the pigeons of Rob the 
Grinder were cooing like so many dismal breezes 
getting up. Upon the Captain's coarse blue 
vest the cold rain-drops started like steel beads ; 
and he could hardly maintain himself aslant 
against the stiff Nor'wester that came pressing 
against him, importunate to topple him over the 
parapet, and throw him on the pavement below. 
If there were any Hope alive that evening, the 
Captain thought, as he held his hat on, it cer- 
tainly kept house, and wasn't out of doors ; so 
the Captain, shaking his head in a despondent 
manner, went in to look for it. 

Captain Cuttle descended slowly to the little 
back parlor, and, seated in his accustomed chair, 
looked for it in the fire ; but it was not there, 
though the fire was bright. He took out his 
tobacco-box and pipe, and composing himself to 
smoke, looked for it in the red glow from the 
bowl, and in the wreaths of vapor that curled 
upward from his lips ; but there was not so 
much as an atom of the rust of Hope's anchor 
in either. He tried a glass of grog ; but melan- 
choly truth was at the bottom of that well, and 
he couldn't finish it. He made a turn or two in 
the shop, and looked for Hope among the instru- 
ments ; but they obstinately worked out reckon- 
ings for the missing ship, in spite of any oppo- 
sition he could offer, that ended at the bottom 
of the lone sea. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 32. 



" Hope, you see, Wal'r," said the Captain, 
sagely, " Hope. It's that as animates you. Hope 
is a buoy, for which you overhaul your Little 
Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my 
lad, like any other buoy, it only floats ; it can't 
be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head 
of Hope," said the Captain, "there's a anchor; 
but what's the good of my having a anchor, if I 
can't find no bottom to let it go in ? " 

Captain Cuttle said this rather in his charac- 
ter of a sagacious citizen and householder, bound 
to impart a morsel from his stores of wisdom to 
an inexperienced youth, than in his own proper 
person. Indeed, his face was quite luminous as 
he spoke, with new hope, caught from Walter ; 
and he appropriately concluded by slapping 
him on the back, and saying, with enthusiasm, 
" Hooroar, my lad ! Indiwidually, I'm o' your 
opinion." — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 50. 

Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew 
how much hope had survived within him under 
discouragement, until he felt its death-shock. 
Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap, 32. 



HOPES 



228 



HOBSEBACK 



HOPES— Unrealized. 

It is when our budding hopes are nipped be- 
yond recovery by some rough wind, that we are 
the most disposed to picture to ourselves what 
flowers they might have borne, if they had flour- 
ished. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap, lo. 

HOPE— A subtle essence. 

Such is Hope, Heaven's own gift to struggling 
mortals ; pervading, like some subtle essence 
from the skies, all things, both good and bad ; 
as universal as death, and more infectious than 
disease ! — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 19. 

HORSES AND DOGS. 

" There ain't no sort of orse that I ain't bred, 
and no sort of dorg. Orses and dorgs is some 
men's fancy. They're wittles and drink to me — 
lodging, wife, and children — reading, writing, 
and 'rithmetic — snufl", tobacker, and sleep." 

" That ain't the sort of man to see sitting be- 
hind ^ coach-box, is it though ? " said William 
in my ear, as he handled the reins. 

I construed this remark into an indication of 
a wish that he should have my place, so I blush- 
ingly offered to resign it. 

" Well, if you don't mind, sir," said William, 
*' I think it would be more correct." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 19. 

HORSE— The carrier's. 

The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in 
the world, I should hope, and shufiied along, 
with his head down, as if he liked to keep peo- 
ple waiting to whom the packages were directed. 
I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled 
audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said 
he was only troubled with a cough. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 3. 

HORSE— Mr. Pecksniffs. 

The best of architects and land surveyors 
kept a horse, in whom the enemies already men- 
tioned more than once in these pages, pretended 
to detect a fanciful resemblance to his master. 
Not in his outward person, for he was a raw- 
boned, haggard horse, always on a much shorter 
allowance of corn than Mr. Pecksniff"; but in his 
moral character, wherein, said they, he was full 
of promise, but of no performance. He was 
always, in a manner, going to go, and never 
going. When at his slowest rate of travelling, 
he would sometimes lift up his legs so high, and 
display such mighty action, that it was difficult 
to believe he was doing less than fourteen miles 
aj:^ hour ; and he was forever so perfectly satis- 
fi^ with his own speed, and so little discon- 
certed by opportunities of comparing himself 
with the fastest trotters, that the illusion was the 
more difficult of resistance. He was a kind of 
animal who infused into the breasts of strangers 
a lively sense of hope, and possessed all those 
who knew him better with a grim despair. In 
what respect, having these points of character, 
he might be fairly likened to his master, that 
good man's slanderers only can explain. But 
it is a melancholy truth, and a deplorable in- 
stance of the uncharitableness of the world, that 
they made the comparison. 

In this horse, and the hooded vehicle, what- 
ever its proper name might be, to which he was 
usually harnessed — it was more like a gig with 
a tumor, than anything else — all Mr. Pinch's 



thoughts and wishes centred, one bright frosty 
morning : for with this gallant equipage he was 
about to drive to Salisbury alone, there to meet 
with the new pupil, and thence to bring him 
home in triumph. — Martin Chuzzlezvit, Chap. 3. 

HORSE— Tenacity of life in a. 

" How old is that horse, my friend ? " in- 
quired Mr. Pickwick, rubbing his nose with the 
shilling he had reserved for the fare. 

" Forty-two," replied the driver, eying hira 
askant. 

" What ! " ejaculated Mr. Pickwick, laying his 
hand upon his note-book. The driver reiterated 
his former statement. Mr. Pickwick looked very 
hard at the man's face, but his features were im- 
movable, so he noted down the fact forthwith. 

" And how long do you keep him out at a 
time ? " inquired Mr. Pickwick searching foi^ 
further information. 

" Two or three veeks," replied the man. 

" Weeks ! " said Mr. Pickwick in astonish- 
ment — and out came the note-book again. 

" He lives at Pentonwil when he's at home, 
observed the driver, coolly, " but we seldom 
takes him home, on account of his veakness." 

" On account of his weakness ! " reiteratec 
the perplexed Mr. Pickwick. 

*' He always falls down when he's took out o 
the cab," continued the driver ; " but when he* 
in it, we bears him up wery tight, and takes him 
in wery short, so as he can't wery well fal 
down ; and we got a pair o' precious larg< 
wheels on, so ven he does move, they run aft© 
him, and he must go on — he can't help it." 

Mr. Pickwick entered every word of this 
statement in his note-book, with the view o 
communicating it to the club, as a singular in- 
stance of the tenacity of life in horses, unde 
trying circumstances. — Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

HORSE— A fast. 

" Here's the gen'lm'n at last ! " said one 
touching his hat with mock politeness. " Wer 
glad to see you, sir, — been a-waiting for yoi 
these six weeks. Jump in, if you please, sir ! " 

" Nice light fly and fast trotter, sir," saic 
another : " fourteen miles a hour, and surround 
in' objects rendered inwisible by ex-treme we- 
locity ! " 

" Large fly for your luggage, sir," cried 
third. '• Wery large fly here, sir — reg'lar blue 
bottle ! " 

" 'Hqx&'s your fly, sir ! " shouted another aspir 
ing charioteer, mounting the box, and inducing 
an old gray horse to indulge in some imperfeci 
reminiscences of a canter. " Look at him, sir 
— temper of a lamb and haction of a steam- 
ingein ! " — Tales, Chap. 4. 

HORSEBACK— Mr. Winkle on. 

" Bless my soul ! " said Mr. Pickwick, as they 
stood upon the pavement while the coats were 
being put in. " Bless my soul ! who's to drive? 
I never thought of that." 

" Oh 1 you, of course," said Mr. Tupman. 

" Of course," said Mr. Snodgrass. 

" I !" exclaimed Mr. Pickwick. 

"Not the slightest fear, sir," interposed the 
hostler. " Warrant him quiet, sir ; a hinfant ii 
arms might drive him." 

" He don't shy, does he ? " inquired Mr. Pick- 
wick. 



HOSPITAL 2i 

"Shy, sir? — He wouldn't shy if he was to 
meet a vaggin-load of monkeys with their tails 
burnt off." 

The last recommendation was indisputable. 
Mr. Tupman and Mr, Snodgrass got into the 
bin ; Mr. Pickwick ascended to his perch, and 
deposited his feet on a floor-clothed shelf, 
erected beneath it for that purpose. 

" Now, Shiny Villiam," said the hostler to the 
deputy hostler, " give the gen'lm'n the ribbins." 
*• Shiny Villiam" — so called, probably from his 
sleek hair and oily countenance — placed the 
reins in Mr. Pickwick's left hand ; and the 
upper hostler thrust a whip into his right. 

" Wo — o ! " cried Mr. Pickwick, as the tall 
quadruped evinced a decided inclination to 
back into the coffee-room window. 

" Wo — o ! " echoed Mr. Tupman and Mr. 
Snodgrass, from the bin. 

" Only his playfulness, gen'lm'n," said the 
head hostler encouragingly ; " jist kitch hold on 
him, Villiam." The deputy restrained the ani- 
mal's impetuosity, and the principal ran to assist 
Mr. Winkle in mounting. 

" T'other side, sir, if you please." 

" Blowed if the gen'lm'n worn't a gettin' up on 
the wrong side," whispered a grinning post-boy 
to the inexpressibly gratified waiter. 

Mr. Winkle, thus instructed, climbed into his 
saddle, with about as much difficulty as he would 
have experienced in getting up the side of a 
first-rate man-of-war. 

" All right ? " inquired Mr. Pickwick, with an 
inward presentiment that it was all wrong. 

" All right," replied Mr. Winkle, faintly. 

" Let 'em go," cried the hostler, — " Hold him 
in, sir," and away went the chaise, and the sad- 
dle-horse, with Mr. Pickwick on the box of the 
one, and Mr. Winkle on the back of the other, 
to the delight and gratification of the whole inn- 
yard. 

** What makes him go sideways ? " said Mr. 
Snodgrass in the bin, to Mr. Winkle in the saddle. 

" I can't imagine," replied Mr. Winkle. His 
horse was drifting up the street in the most 
mysterious manner — side first, with his head 
towards one side of the way, and his tail to- 
wards the other. 

Mr. Pickwick had no leisure to observe either 
this or any other particular, the whole of his fac- 
ulties being concentrated in the management of 
the animal attached to the chaise, who displayed 
various peculiarities, highly interesting to a by- 
stander, but by no means equally amusing to 
any one seated behind him. Besides constantly 
jerking his head up, in a very unpleasant and 
uncomfortable manner, and tugging at the reins 
to an extent which rendered it a matter of great 
difficulty for Mr. Pickwick to hold them, he had 
a singular propensity for darting suddenly every 
now and then to the side of the road, then stop- 
ping short, and then rushing forward for some 
minutes, at a speed which it was wholly impos- 
sible to control. — Pickwick, Chap. 5. 

HOSPITAL— The patients in a. 

We went into a large ward containing some 
twenty or five-and-twenty beds. We went into 
several such wards, one after another. I find 
it very difficult to indicate what a shocking 
sight I saw in them without frightening the 
reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeat- 
ing my object of making it known. 



9 HOSPITAL 

O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I 
walked between the rows of beds, or — worse 
still — that glazedly looked at the white ceiling, 
and saw nothing and cared for nothing ! Here 
lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered 
with a thin, unwholesome skin, that not a bone 
in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp 
the arm above the elbow in my finger and thumb. 
Here lay a man with the black scurvy eating 
his legs away, his gums gone, and his teeth all 
gaunt and bare. This bed was empty because 
gangrene had set in, and the patient had died 
but yesterday. That bed was a hopeless one, 
because its occupant was sinking fast, and could 
only be roused to turn the poor pinched mask 
of face upon the pillow, with a feeble moan. 
The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful 
brightness of the deep-set eyes, the lips of lead, 
the hands of ivory, the recumbent human images 
lying in the shadow of death with a kind of 
solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had 
died aboard the ship and were lying at the bot- 
tom of the sea, O Pangloss, God forgive you ! 

In one bed lay a man whose life had been 
saved (as it was hoped) by deep incisions in the 
feet and legs. While I was speaking to him, a 
nurse came up to change the poultices which 
this operation had rendered necessary, and I 
had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to 
turn away merely to spare myself. He was 
sorely wasted and keenly susceptible, but the 
efforts he made to subdue any expression of 
impatience or suffering were quite heroic. It 
was easy to see in the shrinking of the figure, 
and the drawing of the bedclothes over the head, 
how acute the endurance was, and it made me 
shrink too, as if /were in pain ; but when the 
new bandages were on, and the poor feet were 
composed again, he made an apology for him- 
self (though he had not uttered a word), and said 
plaintively, *' I am so tender and weak, you see, 
sir ! " Neither from him, nor from any one sufferer 
of the whole ghastly number, did I hear a com- 
plaint. Of thankfulness for pi-esent solicitude and 
care, I heard much ; of complaint, not a word. 
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 8. 

HOSPITAL— Associations of a. 

In our rambles through the streets of London 
after evening has set in, we often pause beneath 
the windows of some public hospital, and pic- 
ture to ourselves the gloomy and mournful scenes 
that are passing within. The sudden moving 
of a taper as its feeble ray shoots from window 
to window, until its light gradually disappears, 
as if it were carried farther back into the room 
to the bedside of some suffering patient, is 
enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections ; 
the mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps, 
which, when all other habitations are wrapped 
in darkness and slumber, denote the chamber 
where so many forms are writhing with pain, 
or wasting with disease, is sufficient to check 
the most boisterous merriment. 

Who can tell the anguish of those weary 
hours, when the only sound the sick man 
hears, is the disjointed wanderings of some 
feverish slumberer near him, the low moan of 
pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten 
prayer of a dying man ? Who, but they who 
have felt it, can imagine the sense of loneliness 
and desolation which m')<:t be the portion of 
those who in the hour of dangerous illness are 



HOSPITAIi 



230 



HOTEL 



left to be tended by strangers ; for what h^nds, 
be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy 
brow, or smooth the restless bed, like those of 
mother, wife, or child ? 

Characters {Sketches)^ Chap. 6. 

HOSPITAIi-A female. 

In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such 
fables of a golden time as youth, the prime of 
life, or a hale old age. In ten minutes all the 
lights of womankind seemed to have been 
blown out, and nothing in that way to be left 
this vault to brag of but the flickering and ex- 
piring snuffs. 

And what was very curious was, that these 
dim old women had one company notion which 
was the fashion of the place. Every old woman 
who became aware of a visitor, and was not in 
bed, hobbled over a form into her accustomed 
seat, and became one of a line of dim old women 
confronting another line of dim old women 
across a narrow table. There was no obliga- 
tion whatever upon them to range themselves 
in this way ; it was their manner of " receiv- 
ing." As a rule, they made no attempt to talk 
to one another, or to look at the visitor, or to 
look at anything, but sat silently working their 
mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows. 

Among the bedridden there was great pa- 
tience, great reliance on the books under the 
pillow, great faith in GoD. All cared for sym- 
pathy, but none much cared to be encouraged 
with hope of recovery ; on the whole, I should 
say, it was considered rather a distinction to 
have a complication of disorders, and to be in a 
worse way than the rest. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 3. 

HOSPITAL— Maggy's experience in a. 

" My history ? " cried Maggy. " Little 
mother." 

" She means me," said Dorrit, "rather con- 
fused ; " she is very much attached to me. 
Her old grandmother was not so kind to her as 
she should have been ; was she, Maggy ? " 

Maggy shook her head, made a dririking-ves- 
sel of her clenched left-hand, drank out of it, 
and said, " Gin." Then beat an imaginary 
child, and said, " Broom-handles and pokers." 

" When Maggy was ten years old," said Dor- 
rit, watching her face while she spoke, " she 
had a bad fever, sir, and she has never grown 
any older ever since." 

" Ten years old," said Maggy, nodding her 
head. " But what a nice hospital ! So com- 
fortable, wasn't it? Oh, so nice it was. Such 
a Ev'nly place ! " 

" She had never been at peace before, sir," 
said Dorrit, turning towards Arthur for an in- 
stant and speaking low, " and she always runs 
off upon that." 

" Such beds there is there ! " cried Maggy. 
*' Such lemonades ! Such oranges ! Such d'li- 
cious broth and wine ! Such Chicking ! Oh, 
ain't it a delightful place to go and stop 
at?" 

"So Maggy stopped there as long as she 
could," said Dorrit, in her former tone of tell- 
ing a child's story ; the tone designed for Mag- 
gy's ear, "and at last when she could stop there 
no longer, she came out." 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 9. 



HOSPITALS— The sick fii. 

Abed in these miserable rooms, hen trfi bed- 
steads, there (for a change, as I undeve.tood it) 
on the floor, were women in every stage of dis- 
tress and disease. None but those who have 
attentively observed such scenes can conceive 
the extraordinary variety of expression still la- 
tent under the general monotony and uniform- 
ity of color, attitude, and condition. The form 
a little coiled up and turned away, as though it 
had turned its back on this world forever ; the 
uninterested face, at once lead-colored and yel- 
low, looking passively upward from the pillow ; 
the haggard mouth a little dropped ; the hand 
outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so 
light and yet so heavy — these were on every 
pallet ; but when I stopped beside a bed, and 
said ever so slight a word to the figure lying 
there, the ghost of the old character came into 
the face, and made the Foul ward as various as 
the fair world. No one appeared to care to 
live, but no one complained ; all who could 
speak said that as much was done for them as 
could be done there — that the attendance was 
kind and patient — that their suffering was very 
heavy, but they had nothing to ask for. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 3. 

HOTEL— A fashionable. 

Now, Jairing's being an hotel for families and 
gentlemen, in high repute among the midland 
counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a great 
spirit when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she 
should have a chop there. That lady likewise 
felt that she was going to see Life. Arriving 
on that gay and festive scene, they found the 
second waiter, in a flabby undress, cleaning the 
windows of the empty coffee-room ; and the first 
waiter, denuded of his white tie, making up his 
cruets behind the Post-Office Directory. The 
latter (who took them in hand) was greatly put 
out by their patronage, and showed his mind to 
be troubled by a sense of the pressing necessity 
of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into 
the obscurest corner of the building. This 
slighted lady (who is the pride of her division 
of the county) was immediately conveyed, by 
several dark passages, and up and down several 
steps, into a penitential apartment at the back 
of the house, where five invalided old plate- 
warmers leaned up against one another under a 
discarded old melancholy sideboard, and where 
the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in the 
house lay thick. Also, a sofa, of incomprehen- 
sible form regarded from any sofane point of 
view, murmured, " Bed ; " while an air of min- 
gled fluffiness and heeltaps added, " Second 
Waiter's." Secreted in this dismal hold, ob- 
jects of a mysterious distrust and suspicion, 
Mr. Grazinglands and his charming partner wait- 
ed twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never 
came to a fire), twenty-five minutes for the 
sherry, half an hour for the table-cloth, forty 
minutes for the knives and forks, three quarters 
of an hour for the chops, and an hour for the 
potatoes. On settling the little bill — which 
was not much more than the day's pay of a 
Lieutenant in the navy — Mr. Grazinglands took 
heart to remonstrate against the general quality 
and cost of his reception. To whom the waiter 
replied, substantially, that Jairing's made it a 
merit to have accepted him on any terms, 
" For," added the waiter (unmistakably coughing 



HOTELS 



231 



HOUSE 



at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her division 
of the county) " when indiwiduals is not staying 
in the 'Ouse, their favors is not as a rule looked 
upon as making it worth Mr. Jairing's while ; nor 
is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing 
wishes." Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands 
passed out of Jairing's hotel for Families and 
Gentlemen in a state of the greatest depression, 
scorned by the bar, and did not recover their 
self-respect for several days. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap, 6. 

HOTELS— Their cliaracteristics. 

We 3.11 know the new hotel near the station, 
where it is always gusty, going up the lane 
which is always muddy, where we are sure to 
arrive at night, and where we make the gas start 
awfully when we open the front door. We all 
know the flooring of the passages and staircases 
that is too new, and the walls that are too new, 
and the house that is haunted by the ghost of 
mortar. We all know the doors that have 
cracked, and the cracked shutters through which 
we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon. We 
all know the new people who have come to keep 
the new hotel, and who wish they had never 
come, and who (inevitable result) wish we had 
never come. We all know how much too scant 
and smooth and bright the new furniture is, and 
how it has never settled down, and cannot fit 
itself into right places, and will get into wrong 
places. We all know how the gas, being lighted, 
shows maps of Damp upon the walls. We all 
know how the ghost of mortar passes into our 
sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to bed with 
us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and 
prevents the smoke from following. We all 
know how a leg of our chair comes off at break- 
fast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter 
attributes the accident to a general greenness 
pervading the establishment, and informs us, in 
reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to 
say he is an entire stranger in that part of the 
country, and is going back to his own connec- 
tion on Saturday. 

We all know, on the other hand, the great 
station hotel, belonging to the company of pro- 

Erietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the 
ack outskirts of any place we like to name, 
and where we look out of our palatial windows 
at little back-yards and gardens, old summer- 
houses, fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties. 
We all know this hotel, in which we can get 
anything we want, after its kind, for money ; but 
where nobody is glad to see us, or sorry to see 
us, or minds (our bill paid) whether we come or 
go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about us. 
We all know this hotel, where we have no in- 
dividuality, but put ourselves into the general 
post, as it were, and are sorted and disposed of 
according to our division. We all know that 
we can get on very well indeed at such a place, 
but still not perfectly well ; and this may be 
because the place is largely wholesale, and there 
is a lingering personal retail interest within us 
tk.\t isks to be satisfied. 

"? > sum up. My uncommercial travelling has 
hot yet brought me to the conclusion that we are 
close to perfection in these matters. And just 
as I do not believe that the end of the world will 
ever be near at hand, so long as any of the very 
tiresome and arrogant people who constantly 
predict that catastrophe are left in it, so I shall 



have small faith in the Hotel Millennium, while 
any of the uncomfortable superstitions I have 
glanced at remain in existence. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 6. 

HOUSE— Of a Barnacle. 

Arthur Clennam came to a squeezed house, 
with a ram-shackle bowed front, little dingy 
windows, and a little dark area like a damp 
waistcoat-pocket, which he found to be number 
twenty-four Mews Street (Jrosvenor Square. 
To the sense of smell, the house was like a sort 
of bottle filled with a strong distillation of mews ; 
and when the footman opened the door, he 
seemed to take the stopper out. 

The footman was to the Grosvenor Square 
footmen, what the house was to the Grosvenor 
Square houses. Admirable in his way, his way 
was a back and a bye way. His gorgeousness 
was not unmixed with dirt ; and both in com- 
plexion and consistency, he hat. 'buffered from 
the closeness of his pantry. A salluw flabbiness 
was upon him, when he took the stopper out, 
and presented the bottle to Mr. Clennam's nose. 

" Be so good as to give that card to Mr. Tite 
Barnacle, and to say that I have just now seen 
the younger Mr. Barnacle, who recommended 
me to call here." 

The footman (who had as many large buttons 
with the Barnacle crest upon them, on the flaps 
of his pockets, as if he were the family strong 
box, and carried the plate and jewels about with 
him, buttoned up) pondered over the card a 
little ; then said, " Walk in." It required some 
judgment to do it without butting the inner hall- 
door open, and in the consequent mental con- 
fusion and physical darkness slipping down the 
kitchen stairs. The visitor, however, brought 
himself up safely on the door-mat. 

Still the footman said " Walk in," so the vis- 
itor followed him. At the inner hall-door, 
another bottle seemed to be presented, and 
another stopper taken out. This second vial 
appeared to be filled with concentrated provis- 
ions, and extract of Sink from the pantry. After 
a skirmish in the narrow passage, occasioned by 
the footman's opening the door of the dismal 
dining-room with confidence, finding some one 
there with consternation, and backing on the 
visitor with disorder, the visitor was shut up, 
pending his announcement, in a close back 
parlor. There he had an opportunity of re- 
freshing himself with both the bottles at once, 
looking out at a low blinding back wall three 
feet off, and speculating on the number of Bar- 
nacle families within the bills of mortality who 
lived in such hutches of thfeir own free flunkey 
choice. — Little Don it. Book /., Chap. lo. 

HOUSE— A sombre. 

He stepped into the sober, silent, air-tight 
house — one might have fancied it to have been 
stifled by Mutes in the Eastern manner — and 
the door, closing again, seemed to shut out 
sound and motion. The furniture was formal, 
grave, and quaker-like, but well kept ; and 
had as prepossessing an aspect as anything, from 
a human creature to a wooden stool, that is 
meant for much use and is preserved for little, 
can ever wear. There was a grave clock, tick- 
ing somewhere up the staircase ; and there was 
a songless bird in the same direction, pecking 
at his cage as if he were ticking too. The par. 



H0T7SE 



232 



HOUSE 



lor-fire ticked in the grate. There was only one 
person on the parlor-hearth, and the loud watch 
in his pocket ticked audibly. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 

HOUSE- An old. 

Passing, now the mouldy hall of some obsolete 
Worshipful Company, now the illuminated win- 
dows of a Congregationless Church, that seemed 
to be waiting for some adventurous Belzoni to 
dig it out and discover its history ; passing 
silent warehouses and wharves, and here and 
there a narrow alley leading to the river, where 
a wretched little bill. Found Drowned, was 
weeping on the wet wall ; he came at last to 
the house he sought. An old brick house, so 
dingy as to be all but black, standing by itself 
within a gateway. Before it, a square court- 
yard where a shrub or two and a patch of grass 
were as rank (which is saying much) as the 
iron railings inclosing them were rusty ; behind 
it, a jumble of roots. It was a double house, 
with long, narrow, heavily-framed windows. 
Many years ago it had had it in its mind to slide 
down sideways ; it had been propped up, how- 
ever, and was leaning on some half-dozen gi- 
gantic crutches ; which gymnasium for the 
neighboring cats, weather-stained, smoke-black- 
ened, and overgrown with weeds, appeared in 
these latter days to be no very sure reliance. 
Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 3. 



In the course of the day too, Arthur looked 
through the whole house. Dull and dark he 
found it. The gaunt rooms, deserted for years 
upon years, seemed to have settled down into a 
gloomy lethargy from which nothing could rouse 
them again. The furniture, at once spare and 
lumbering, hid in the rooms rather than fur- 
nished them, and there was no color in all the 
house ; such color as had ever been there, had 
long ago started away on lost sunbeams — got 
itself absorbed, perhaps, into flowers, buttei-flies, 
plumage of birds, precious stones, what not. 
There was not one straight floor, from the foun- 
dation to the roof; the ceilings were so fantas- 
tically clouded by smoke and dust, that old 
women might have told fortunes in them, better 
than in grouts of tea ; the dead-cold hearths 
showed no traces of having ever been warmed, 
but in heaps of soot that had tumbled down the 
chimneys, and eddied about in little dusky 
whirlwinds when the doors were opened. In 
what had once been a drawing-room, there were 
a pair of meagre mirrors, with dismal proces- 
sions of black figures carrying black garlands, 
walking round the frames ; but even these were 
short of heads and legs, and one undertaker-like 
Cupid had swung round on his own axis and 
got upside down, and another had fallen off al- 
together. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 5. 

HOUSE— A tenement. 

The house was very close, and had an un- 
wholesome smell. The little staircase windows 
looked in at the back windows of other houses 
as unwholesome as itself, with poles and lines 
thrust out of them, on which unsightly linen 
hung: as if the inhabitants were angling for 
clothes, and had had some wretched bites not 
worth attending to. In the back garret — a 
sickly-room, with a turn-up bedstead in it, so 



hastily and recently turned up that the blankets 
were boiling over, as it were, and keeping the 
lid open — a half-finished breakfast of coffee and 
toast, for two persons, was jumbled down any- 
how on a rickety table. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 9. 

HOUSE — And surronndingrs (of Mrs. 
Growan). 

The house, on a little desert island, looked as 
if it had broken away from somewhere else, and 
had floated by chance into its present anchorage, 
in company with a vine almost as much in want 
of training as the poor wretches who were lying 
under its leaves. The features of the surround- 
ing picture were, a church with boarding and 
scaffolding about it, which had been under sup- 
posititious repair so long that the means of repair 
looked a hundred years old, and had themselves 
fallen into decay ; a quantity of washed linen, 
spread to dry in the sun ; a number of houses 
at odds with one another and grotesquely out 
of the perpendicular, like rotten pre-Adamite 
cheeses cut into fantastic shapes and full of 
mites ; and a feverish bewilderment of windows, 
with their lattice-blinds all hanging askew, and 
something draggled and dirty dangling out of 
most of them. 

On the first-floor of the house was a Bank — ^a 
surprising experience for any gentleman of com- 
mercial pursuits bringing laws for all mankind 
from a British city — where the two spare clerks, 
like dried dragoons, in green velvet caps adorned 
with golden tassels, stood, bearded, behind a 
small counter in a small room, containing no 
other visible objects than an empty iron safe, 
with the door open, a jug of water, and a paper- 
ing of garlands of roses ; but who, on lawful 
requisition, by merely dipping their hands out 
of sight, could produce exhaustless mounds of 
five-franc pieces. Below the Bank was a suite of 
three or four rooms with barred windows, which 
had the appearance of a jail for criminal rats. 
Above the Bank was Mrs. Gowan's residence. 

Notwithstanding that its walls were blotched, 
as if missionary maps were bursting out of them 
to impart geographical knowledge ; notwith- 
standing that its weird furniture was forlornly 
faded and musty, and that the prevailing Vene- 
tian odor of bilge water and an ebb-tide on a 
weedy shore was very sti"ong ; the place was 
better within than it promised. The door was 
opened by a smiling man like a reformed assas- 
sin — a temporary servant — who ushered them 
into the room where Mrs. Gowan sat. 

Little Dorrit, Book LI., Chap. 6. 

HOUSE— A g-loomy. 

A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over 
the way and a dead gateway at the side, where 
a pendant bell-handle produced two dead tinkles, 
and a knocker produced a dead, flat, surface-tap- 
ping, that seemed not to have depth enough in 
it to penetrate even the cracked door. However, 
the door jarred open on a dead sort of spring ; 
and he closed it behind him as he entered a 
dull yard, soon brought to a close at the back 
by another dead wall, where an attempt had 
been made to train some creeping shrubs, which 
were dead ; and to make a little fountain in a 
grotto, which was dry ; and to decorate that with 
a little statue, which was gone. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 20. 



HOUSE 



HOUSE 



HOUSE— In fashionable locality. 

Like unexceptionable society, the opposing 
rows of houses in Harley Street were very grim 
with one another. Indeed, the mansions and 
their inhabitants were so much alike in that re- 
spect, that the people were often to be found 
drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, 
in the shade of their own loftiness, staring at 
the other side of the way with the dullness of 
the houses. 

Everybody knows how like the street, the 
two dinner-rows of people who take their stand 
by the street will be. The expressionless uni- 
form twenty houses, all to be knocked at and 
rung at in the same form, all approachable by the 
same dull steps, all fended off by the same pat- 
tern of railing, all with the same impracticable 
fire-escapes, the same inconvenient fixtures in 
their heads, and everything, without exception, to 
be taken at a high valuation — who has not dined 
with these? The house so drearily out of re- 
pair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed 
house, the newly-fronted house, the corner house 
with nothing but angular rooms, the house with 
the blinds always down, the house with the 
hatchment always up, the house where the col- 
lector has called for one quarter of an Idea, and 
found nobody at home — who has not dined 
with these? The house that nobody will take, 
and is to be had a bargain — who does not know 
her ? The showy house that was taken for life by 
the disappointed gentleman, and which doesn't 
suit him at all — who is unacquainted with that 
haunted habitation ? 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 21. 

HOUSE— A debilitated. 

The debilitated old house in the city, wrapped 
in its mantle of soot, and leaning heavily on the 
crutches that had partaken of its decay and 
worn out with it, never knew a healthy or cheer- 
ful interval, let what would betide. If the sun 
ever touched it, it was but with a ray, and that 
was gone in half an hour ; if the moonlight ever 
fell upon it. It was only to put a few patches on 
its doleful cloak, and make it look more wretched. 
The stars, to be sure, coldly watched it when 
the nights and the smoke were clear enough ; 
and all bad weather stood by it with a rare 
fidelity. You should alike find rain, hail, frost, 
and thaw lingering in that dismal enclosure, 
when they had vanished from other places ; and 
as to snow, you should see it there for weeks, 
long after it had changed from yellow to black, 
slowly weeping away its grimy life. The place 
had no other adherents. As to street noises, the 
rumbling of wheels in the lane merely rushed in 
at the gateway in going past, and rushed out 
again ; making the listening Mistress Affery 
feel as if she were deaf, and recovered the sense 
of hearing by instantaneous flashes. So with 
whistling, singing, talking, laughing, and all 
pleasant human sounds. They leaped the gap 
m a moment, and went upon their way. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 15. 

HOUSE-IUuminated by love. 

She reserved it for me to restore the desolate 
house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms, 
set the clocks a going and the cold hearths a 
blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the 
vermin— in short, do all the shining deeds of 
the young Knight of romance, and marry the 



Princess. I had stopped to look at the house 
as I passed ; and its seared red brick walls, 
blocked windows, and strong green ivy, clasp- 
ing even the stacks of chimneys with its 
twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, 
had made up a rich attractive mystery, of which 
I was the hero. — Great Expectations, Chap. 29. 

HOUSE— A fierce-looking-. 

They lived at Camberwell ; in a house so big 
and fiex-ce, that its mere outside, like the outside 
of a giant's castle, struck terror into vulgar minds 
and made bold persons quail. There was a great 
front gate ; with a great bell, whose handle was 
in itself a note of admiration ; and a great 
lodge ; which, being close to the house, rather 
spoilt the look out certainly, but made the look- 
in tremendous. At this entry, a great porter 
kept constant watch and ward ; and when he 
gave the visitor high leave to pass, he rang a 
second great bell, responsive to whose note a 
great footman appeared in due time at the great 
hall-door, with such great tags upon his liveried 
shoulder that he was perpetually entangling and 
hooking himself among the chairs and tables, 
and led a life of torment which could scarcely 
have been surpassed, if he had been a blue-bot- 
tle in a world of cobwebs. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9. 

HOUSE— An ancient, renovated. 

Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to 
infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by 
repairing the costly old wood-work here and 
there with common deal ; but it was like the 
marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian 
pauper, and each party to the ill assorted union 
shrunk away from the other. 

David Copperjieldy Chap. 50. 

HOUSE— An old-fashioned. 

At length we stopped before a very old house 
bulging out over the road ; a house with long, 
low, lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and 
beams with carved heads on the ends bulging 
out too, so that I fancied the whole house was 
leaning forward, trying to see who was passing 
on the narrow pavement below. It was quite 
spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned 
brass knocker on the low arched door, ornament- 
ed with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, 
twinkled like a star ; the two stone steps de- 
scending to the door were as white as if they had 
been covered with fair linen ; and all the angles 
and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and 
quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little 
windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure 
as any snow that ever fell upon the hills. 

David Copper/ield, Chap. 15. 

HOUSE-A stiff lookinff. 

The Town Hall stands like a brick and mor- 
tar private on parade. — Reprinted Pieces. 

HOUSE— Of a Southern planter. 

The planter's house was an airy, rustic dwell 
ing, that brought Defoe's description of such 
places strongly to my recollection. The day was 
very warm, but, the blinds all being closed, and 
the windows and doors set wide open, a shady 
coolness rustled through the rooms.which was ex- 
quisitely refreshing after the glare and heat with- 
out. Before the windows was an open piazza. 



HOUSE 



H0X7SE 



where, in what they call the hot weather — what- 
ever that may be — they sling hammocks, and 
drink and doze luxuriously. I do not know how 
their cool refections may taste within the ham- 
mocks, but, having experience, I can report that, 
out of them, the mounds of ices and the bowls 
of mint-julep and sherry-cobbler they make in 
these latitudes are refreshments never to be 
thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who 
would preserve contented minds. 

American Notes ^ Chap. 9. 

HOUSE— A monotonous pattern. 

An indescribable character of faded gentility 
that attached to the house I sought, and made 
it unlike all the other houses in the street — 
though they were all built on one monotonous 
pattern, and looked like the early copies of a 
blundering boy who was learning to make 
houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped 
brick-and-mortar pothooks — reminded me still 
more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 27. 

HOUSE— Of Caleb Pliimnier. 

Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived 
all alone by themselves, in a little cracked nut- 
shell of a wooden house, which was, in truth, no 
better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick 
nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of 
Gruff and Tackleton were the great feature of 
the street ; but you might have knocked down 
Caleb Plummer's dwelling with a hammer or 
two, and carried off the pieces in a cart. 

***** 

It stuck to the premises of Gruff and Tackle- 
ton, like a barnacle to a ship's keel, or a snail to 
a door, or a little bunch of toadstools to the 
stem of a tree. But it was the germ from which 
the full-grown trunk of Gruff and Tackleton had 
sprung ; and under its crazy roof, the Gruff be- 
fore last had, in a small way, made toys for a 
generation of old boys and girls, who had play- 
ed with them, and found them out, and broken 
them, and gone to sleep. 

Cricket on the Hearth^ Chap. 2. 

HOUSE— A shy looking-. 

In one of these streets, the cleanest of them 
all, and on the shady side of the way — for good 
housewives know that sunlight damages their 
cherished furniture, and so choose the shade 
rather than its intrusive glare — there stood the 
house with which we have to deal. It was a 
modest building, not very straight, not large, not 
tall ; not bold-faced, with great staring windows, 
but a 'shy, blinking house, with a conical roof 
going up into a peak over its garret window of 
four small panes of glass, like a cocked hat on 
the head of an elderly gentleman wiih one eye. 
It was not built of brick or lofty stone, but of 
wood and plaster ; it was not planned with a 
dull and wearisome regard to regularity, for no 
one window matched the other, or seemed to 
have the slightest reference to anything besides 
itself. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 4. 

HOUSE— Description of Bleak House and 
furniture. 
It was one of those delightfully irregular 
houses where you go up and down steps out of 
one room into another, and where you come 
upon more rooms when you think you have 



seen all there are, and where there is a bounti- 
ful provision of little halls and passages, and 
where you find still older cottage-rooms in un- 
expected places, with lattice windows and green 
growth pressing through them. Mine, which 
we entered first, was of this kind, with an up- 
and-down roof, that had more corners in it than 
I ever counted afterwards, and a chimney (there 
was a wood-fire on the hearth) paved all around 
with pure white tiles, in every one of which a 
bright miniature of the fire was blazing. Out 
of this room you went down two steps, into a 
charming little sitting-room, looking down upon 
a flower-garden, which room was henceforth to 
belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went 
up three steps, into Ada's bed-room, which had 
a fine broad window, commanding a beautiful 
view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying 
underneath the stars), to which there was a hol- 
low window-seat, in which, with a spring-lock, 
three dear Adas might have been lost at once. 
Out of this room you passed into a little gallery, 
with which the other best rooms (only two) com- 
municated, and so, by a little staircase of shallow 
steps, with a number of corner stairs in it, con- 
sidering its length, down into the hall. But if, 
instead of going out at Ada's door, you came 
back into my room, and went out at the door 
by which you had entered it, and turned up a 
few crooked steps that branched off in an unex- 
pected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself 
in passages, with mangles in them, and three- 
cornered tables, and a Native-Hindoo chair, 
which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, 
and looked, in every form, something between a 
bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage, and had 
been brought from India nobody knew by whom 
or when. From these you came on Richard's 
room, which was part library, part sitting-room, 
part bed- room, and seemed indeed a comforta- 
ble compound of many rooms. Out of that, 
you went straight, with a little interval of pas- 
sage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce 
slept, all the year round, with his window open, 
his bedstead, without any furniture, standing in 
the middle of the floor for more air, and his 
cold-bath gaping for him in a smaller room 
adjoining. Out of that, you came into another 
passage, where there were back-stairs, and where 
you could hear the horses being rubbed down, 
outside the stable, and being told to Hold up, 
and Get over, as they slipped about very much 
on the uneven stones. Or you might, if you 
came out at another door (eveiy room had at 
least two doors), go straight down to the hall 
again by half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, 
wondering how you got back there, or had ever 
got out of it. 

The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, 
like the house, was as pleasantly irregular. Ada's 
sleeping-room was all flowers — in chintz and pa- 
per, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of 
two stiff courtly chairs, which stood, each at- 
tended by a little page of a stool for greater 
state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sit- 
ting-room was green ; and bad, framed and 
glazed, upon the walls, numbers of surprising 
and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a 
real trout in a case, as brown and shining as if 
it had been served with gravy ; at the death of 
Captain Cook ; and at the whole process of pre- 
paring tea in China, as depicted by Chinese art- 
ists. In my room there were oval engravings 



HOUSE 



HOUSE AND GARDEN 



of the months — ladies haymaking, in short 
waists, and large hats tied under the chin, for 
Tune — smooth-legged noblemen, pointing, with 
cocked-hats, to village steeples, for October. 
Half-length portraits, in crayons, abounded all 
through the house ; but were so dispersed that 
I found the brother of a youthful officer of mine 
in the china-closet, and the gray old age of my 
pretty young bride, with a flower in her bodice, 
in the breakfast-room. As substitutes I had four 
angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a com- 
placent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with 
some difficulty ; and a composition in needle- 
work, representing fruit, a kettle, and an alpha- 
bet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to 
the chairs and tables, hangings, glasses, even to 
the pin-cushions and scent-bottles on the dress- 
ing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. 
They agreed in nothing but their perfect neat- 
ness, their display of the whitest linen, and their 
storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a draw- 
er, small or large, rendered it possible, of quan- 
tities of rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, 
with its illuminated windows, softened here and 
there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon 
the starlight night ; with its light, and warmth, 
and comfort ; with its hospitable jingle, at a 
distance, of preparations for dinner ; with the 
face of its generous master brightening every- 
thing we saw ; and just wind enough without to 
sound a low accompaniment to everything we 
heard ; were our first impressions of Bleak 
House. — Bleak House, Chap. 6. 

HOUSE— A sombre. 

It was a dreary, silent building, with echoing 
courtyards, desolated turret-chambers, and whole 
suites of rooms shut up and mouldering to ruin. 

The terrace-garden, dark with the shades of 
overhanging trees, had an air of melancholy that 
was quite oppressive. Great iron gates, disused 
for many years, and red with rust, drooping on 
their hinges and overgrown with long rank grass, 
seemed as though they tried to sink into the 
ground, and hide their fallen state among the 
friendly weeds. The fantastic monsters on the 
walls, green with age and damp, and covered 
here and there with moss, looked grim and de- 
solate. There was a sombre aspect even on that 
part of the mansion which was inhabited and 
kept in good repair, that struck the beholder 
with a sense of sadness ; of something forlorn 
and failing, whence cheerfulness was banished. 
It would have been difficult to imagine a bright 
fire blazing in the dull and darkened rooms, or 
to picture any gaiety of heart or revelry that the 
frowning walls shut in. It seemed a place where 
such things had been, but could be no more — 
the very ghost of a house, haunting the old spot 
\n its old outward form, and that was all. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 13. 

HOUSE— A dissipated-looking-. 

She stopped at twilight, at the door of a mean 
little public house, with dim red lights in it. As 
haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of cus- 
tom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had 
gone the way all drunkards go, and was very 
near the end of it. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 5. 

HOUSE— In winter. 

Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled 
into great scrolls in corners of comfortless 



rooms, bright damask does penance in brown 
holland, carving and gilding puts on mortifica- 
tion, and the Dedlock ancestors retire from the 
light of day again. Around and around the 
house the leaves fall thick — but never fast, for 
they come circling down with a dead lightness 
that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener sweep ' 
and sweep the turf as he will, and press the 
leaves into full barrows, and wheel them off, 
still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the shrill wind 
round Chesney Wold ; the sharp rain beats, the 
windows rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists 
hide in the avenues, veil the points of view, and 
move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds. 
On all the house there is a cold, blank smell, 
like the smell of a little church, though some- 
thing dryer : suggesting that the dead and buried 
Dedlocks walk there, in the long nights, and 
leave the flavor of their graves behind them. 
Bleak House, Chap. 2g. 

HOUSE— A dull fashionable. 

For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is 
a vast blank of overgrown house looking out 
upon trees, sighing, wringing their hands, bow- 
ing their heads, and casting their tears upon the 
window-panes in monotonous depression. A 
labyrinth of grandeur, less the property of an 
old family of human beings and their ghostly 
likenesses, than of an old family of echoings and 
thunderings which start out of their hundred 
graves at every sound, and go resounding through 
the building. A waste of unused passages and 
staircases, in which to drop a comb upon a bed- 
room floor at night is to send a stealthy footfall 
on an errand through the house. A place where 
few people care to go about alone ; where a 
maid screams if an ash drops from the fire, 
takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes 
the victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and 
gives warning and departs. 

Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself 
abandoned to darkness and vacancy ; with so 
little change under the summer shining or the 
wintry lowering ; so sombre and motionless al- 
ways — no flag flying now by day, no rows of 
lights sparkling by night ; with no family to 
come and go, no visitors to be the souls of pale 
cold shapes of rooms, no stir of life about it ; — 
passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, 
have died away from the place in Lincolnshire, 
and yielded it to dull repose. 

Bleak House, Chap. 66. 

HOUSE AND GARDEN-A country. 

He lived in a pretty house, formerly the Par- 
sonage-house, with a lawn in front, a bright 
flower-garden at the side, and a well-siocked 
orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed 
with a venerable wall that had of itself a 
ripened, ruddy look. But, indeed, everything 
about the place wore an aspect of maturity and 
abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like 
green cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry- 
trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, 
the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that 
their branches arched and rested on the earth, 
the strawberries and raspberries grew in like 
profusion, and the peaches basked by the hun- 
dred on the wall. Tumbled about among the 
spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and 
winking in the sun, ther" were such heaps of 
drooping pods, and marrows, and cucumbers 



HOTJSE-PRONT 



HOUSE-AGENT 



that every foot of ground appeared a vegetable 
treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all 
kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of 
the neighboring meadows, where the hay was 
carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. 
Such stillness and composure reigned within the 
orderly precincts of the old red wall, that even 
the feathers, hung in garlands to scare the birds, 
hardly stirred ; and the wall had such a ripen- 
ing influence that where, here and there, high 
np a disused nail and scrap of list still clung to 
it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed 
with the changing seasons, and that they had 
rusted and decayed according to the common 
fate. — Bleak House, Chap. i8. 

HOUSE-FRONT— Like an old beau. 

The house-front is so old and worn, and the 
brass plate is so shining and staring, that the 
general result has reminded imaginative stran- 
gers of a battered old beau with a large modern 
eye-glass stuck in his blind eye. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 3. 

HOUSE— Mr. Gradgrind's. 

A very regular feature on the face of the 
country, Stone Lodge was. Not the least dis- 
guise toned down or shaded off that uncompro- 
mising fact in the landscape. A great square 
house, with a heavy portico darkening the prin- 
cipal windows, as its master's heavy brows over- 
shadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, bal- 
anced, and proved house. Six windows on this 
side of the door, six on that side ; a total of 
tv\^elve in this w'ing, a total of twelve in the 
other wing ; four-and-twenty carried over to the 
back wings. A lawn and garden and an infant 
avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical ac- 
count-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and 
water-service, all of the primest quality. Iron 
clamps and girders, fireproof from top to bot- 
tom ; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with 
all their brushes and brooms ; everything that 
heart could desire. 

Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little 
Gradgrinds had cabinets in vai-ious departments 
of science, too. They had a little conchologi- 
cal cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, 
and a little mineralogical cabinet ; and the 
specimens were all arranged and labelled, and 
the bits of stone and ore looked as though they 
might have been broken from the parent sub- 
stances by those tremendously hard instruments, 
their own names. 

Hard Times , Book /., Chap. 3. 

HOUSES-Old. 

On either side of him, there shot up against 
the dark sky, tall, gaunt, straggling houses, with 
time-stained fronts, and windows that seemed 
to have shared the lot of eyes in mortals, and to 
have grown dim and sunken with age. Six, 
seven, eight stories high, were the houses ; story 
piled above story, as children build with cards — 
throwing their dark shadows over the roughly 
paved road, and making the dark night darker. 
Pickwick, Chap. 49. 

HOUSES— A neig-hborhood of. 

They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a low- 
ering pile of building up a yard, where it had 
so little business to be, that one could scarcely 
help fancying it must have run there when it 



was a young house, playing at hide-and-serk 
with other houses, and have forgotten the way 
out again. — Christmas Carol, Stave i. 

HOUSES -In St. Louis. 

In the old French portion of the town the 
thoroughfares are narrow and crooked, and some 
of the houses are very quaint and picturesque, 
being built of wood, with tumble-down galler- 
ies before the windows, approachable by stairs, 
or rather ladders, from the street. There are 
queer little barbers' shops and drinking-houses 
too, in this quarter ; and abundance of crazy 
old tenements with blinking casements, such as 
may be seen in Flanders. Some of these an- 
cient habitations, with high garret gable-win- 
dows perking into the roofs, have a kind of 
French shrug about them ; and being lop-sided 
with age, appear to hold their heads askew, be- 
sides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment 
at the American Improvements. 

American Notes, Chap. 12. 

HOUSES— Isolated in a city. 

But it is neither to old Almshouses in the 
country, nor to new Almshouses by the railroad, 
that these present Uncommercial notes relate. 
They refer back to journeys made among those 
commonplace smoky-fronted London Alms- 
houses, with a little paved court-yard in front 
enclosed by iron railings, which have got snowed 
up, as it were, by bricks and mortar ; which were 
once in a suburb, but are now in the densely 
populated town, — gaps in the busy life around 
them, parentheses in the close and blotted texts 
of the streets. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 27. 

HOUSES— Involved in law. 

" I told you this was the Growlery, my dear. 
Where was I ? " 

I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had 
made in Bleak House. 

" Bleak House : true. There is, in that city 
of London there, some property of ours, which 
is much at this day what Bleak House was then, 
— I say property of ours, meaning of the Suit's, 
but I ought to call it the property of Costs ; for 
Costs is the only power on earth that will ever 
get anything out of it now, or will ever know it 
for anything but an eyesore and a heartsore. It 
is a street of perishing blind houses, with their 
eyes stoned out ; without a pane of glass, with- 
out so much as a window-frame, with the bare 
blank shutters tumbling from their hinges and 
falling asunder ; the iron rails peeling away in 
flakes of rust ; the chimneys sinking in ; the 
stone steps to every door (and every door might 
be Death's Door) turning stagnant green ; the 
very crutches on which the ruins are propped, 
decaying. Although Bleak House was not in 
Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped 
with the same seal. These are the Great Seal's 
impressions, my dear, all over England — the 
children know them ! " — Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

HOUSE-AGENT-Casby, the. 

A heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who, having 
stumbled, in the course of his unwieldy jostlings 
against other men, on the discovery that to get 
through life with ease and credit, he had but to 
hold his tongue, keep the bald part of his head 
well polished, and leave his hair alone, had had 



HOUSE-TOP 



237 



HOUSE-KEEPER 



just cunning enough to seize the idea and stick 
to it. It was said that his being town-agent to 
Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle was referable, not 
to his having the least business capacity, but to 
his looking so supremely benignant that nobody 
could suppose the property screwed or jobbed 
under such a man ; also, that for similar reasons 
he now got more money out of his own wretched 
lettings, unquestioned, than anybody with a less 
knobby nnd less shining crown could possibly 
have done. In a word, it was represented 
(Clennam called to mind, alone in the ticking 
parlor) that many people select their models, 
much as the painters, just now mentioned, select 
theirs ; and that, whereas in the Royal Academy 
some evil old ruffian of a Dog-stealer will an- 
nually be found embodying all the cardinal vir- 
tues, on account of his eyelashes, or his chin, or 
his legs (thereby planting thorns of confusion 
in the breasts of the more observant students 
of nature), so in the great social Exhibition, 
accessories are often accepted in lieu of the in- 
ternal character. 

Calling these things to mind, and ranging 
Mr. Pancks in a row with them, Arthur Clen- 
nam leaned this day to the opinion, without 
qvite deciding on it, that the last of the Patri- 
archs was the drifting Booby aforesaid, with the 
one idea of keeping the bald part of his head 
highly polished ; and that, much as an unwieldy 
ship in the Thames river may sometimes be 
seen heavily driving with the tide, broadside on, 
stern first, in its own way and in the way of 
everything else, though making a great show of 
navigation, when all of a sudden, a little coaly 
steam-tug will bear down upon it, take it in tow, 
and bustle off with it ; similarly, the cumbrous 
Patriarch had been taken in tow by the snorting 
Pancks, and was now following in the wake of 
that dingy little craft. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 



His turning of his smooth thumbs over one 
another as he sat there, was so typical to Clen- 
nam of the way in which he would make the 
subject revolve if it were pursued, never show- 
ing any new part of it, nor allowing it to make 
the smallest advance, that it did much to help 
to convince him of his labor having been in 
vain. He might have taken any time to think 
about it, for Mr, Casby, well accustomed to get 
on anywhere by leaving everything to his bumps 
and his white hair, knew his strength to lie in 
silence. So there Casby sate, twirling and twirl- 
ing, and making his polished head and fore- 
head look largely benevolent in every knob. 
Little Dorrit, Book LI., Chap. 9. 

HOUSE-TOP— Scene from Todgers's. 

The top of the house was worthy of notice. 
There was a sort of terrace on the roof, with 
posts and fragments of rotten lines, once in- 
tended to dry clothes upon ; and there were 
two or three tea-chests out there, full of earth, 
with forgotten plants in them, like old walking- 
sticks. Whoever climbed to this observatory, 
was stunned at first from having knocked his 
head against the little door in coming out ; and 
after that, was for the moment choked from 
having looked, perforce, straight down the 
kitchen chimney ; but these two stages over, 
there were things to gaze at from the top of 
Todgers's, well worth your seeing too. For, first 



and foremost, if the day were bright, you ob- 
served upon the house-tops, stretching far away, 
a long dark path — the shadow of the Monu- 
ment : and turning round, the tall original was 
close beside you, with every hair erect upon his 
golden head, as if the doings of the city fright- 
ened him. Then there were steeples, towers, 
belfries, shining vanes, and masts of ships ; a 
very forest. Gables, house-tops, garret-win- 
dows, wilderness upon wilderness. Smoke and 
noise enough for all the world at once. 

After the first glance, there were slight fea- 
tures in the r idst of this crowd of objects, 
which sprung out from ,the mass without any 
reason, as it were, and took 1-old of the atten- 
tion whether the spectator would or no. Thus, 
the revolving chimney-pots on one great stack 
of buildings, seemed to be turning gravely to 
each other every now and then, and whispering 
the result of their separate observation of what 
was going on below. Others, of a crook-backed 
shape, appeared to be maliciously holding them- 
selves askew, that they might shut the prospect 
out and baffle Todgers's. The man who was 
mending a pen at an upper window over the 
way, became of paramount importance in the 
scene, and made a blank in it, ridiculously dis- 
proportionate in its extent, when he retired. 
The gambols of a piece of cloth upon the dyer's 
pole had far more interest for the moment than all 
the changing motion of the crowd. Yet even 
while the looker-on felt angry with himself for 
this, and wondered how it was, the tumult 
swelled into a roar ; the hosts of objects seemed 
to thicken and expand a hundredfold ; and after 
gazing round him, quite scared, he turned into 
Todgers's again, much more rapidly than he 
came out ; and ten to one he told M. Todgers 
afterwards that if he hadn't done so, he would 
certainly have come into the street by the short- 
est cut : that is to say, head foremost. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9. 

HOUSE-KEEPER— Ruth as a. 

" Oh, you are going to work in earnest, are 
you ? " 

Ayes aye ! That she was. And in such pleas- 
ant earnest, moreover, that Tom's attention 
wandered from his writing every moment. First, 
she tripped down stairs into the kitchen for the 
flour, then for the pie-board, then for the eggs, 
then for the butter, then for a jug of water, then 
for the rolling-pin, then for a pudding-basin, 
then for the pepper, then for the salt, making a 
separate journey for everything, and laughing 
every time she started off afresh. When all the 
materials were collected, she was horrified to 
find she had no apron on, and so ran «/ stairs, 
by way of variety, to fetch it. She didn't put 
it on upstairs, but came dancing down with it in 
her hand ; and being one of those little women 
to whom an apron is a most becoming little 
vanity, it took an immense time to arrange ; 
having to be carefully smoothed down beneath 
— Oh, heaven, what a wicked little stomacher ! 
and to be gathered up into little plaits by the 
strings before it could be tied, and to be tapped, 
rebuked, and wheedled, at the pockets, before 
it would set right, which at last it did, and when 
it did — but nevermind ; this is a sober chronicle. 
And then, there were cuffs to be tucked up, for 
fear of flour ; and she had a little ring to pull 
off her finger, which wouldn't come oft" (foolish 



HOUSE-KEEPER 



KOUSE-KEEPER 



little ring ! ) : and during the whole of these 
preparations she looked demurely every now and 
then at Tom, from under her dark eye-lashes, as 
if they were all a part of the pudding, and in- 
dispensable to its composition. 

***** 

Such a busy little woman as she was ! So full 
of self-importance, and trying so hard not to 
smile, or se«im uncertain about anything ! It 
was a perfect treat to Tom to see her with 
her brows knit, and her rosy lips pursed up, 
kneading away at the crust, rolling it out, cut- 
ting it up into strips, lining the basin with it, 
shaving it off fine round the rim, chopping up 
the steak into small pieces, raining down pepper 
and salt upon them, packing them into the basin, 
pouring in cold water for gravy, and never ven- 
turing to steal a look in his direction, lest her 
gravity should be disturbed ; until, at last, the 
basin being quite full, and only wanting the top 
crust, she clapped her hands, all covered with 
paste and flour, at Tom, and burst out heartily 
into such a charming little laugh of triumph, 
that the pudding need have had no other sea- 
soning to commend it to the taste of any rea- 
sonable man on earth. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39. 

HOUSE-KEEPER-Ruth. 

Well ! she ivas a cheerful little thing ; and had 
a quaint, bright quietness about her, that was 
infinitely pleasant. Surely she was the best 
sauce for chops ever invented. The potatoes 
eeemed to take a pleasure in sending up their 
grateful steam before her ; the froth upon the 
pint of porter pouted to attract her notice. But 
X was all in vain. She saw nothing but Tom. 
Tom was the first and last thing in the world. 
Martin Chuzzlewity Chap. 37. 



Pleasant little Ruth ! Cheerful, tidy, bust- 
ling, quiet little Ruth ! No doll's house ever 
yielded greater delight to its young mistress, 
than little Ruth derived from her glorious do- 
minion over the triangular parlor and the two 
small bedrooms. 

To be Tom's housekeeper. What dignity ! 
Housekeeping, upon the commonest terms, as- 
sociated itself with elevated responsibilities of 
all sorts and kinds ; but housekeeping for Tom 
implied the utmost complication of grave trusts 
and mighty charges. Well might she take the 
keys out of the little chiffonnier which held the 
tea and sugar ; and out of the two little damp 
cupboards down by the fire-place, where the 
very black beetles got mouldy, and had the shine 
taken out of their backs by envious mildew ; 
and jingle them upon a ring before Tom's eyes 
when he came down to breakfast ! Well might 
she, laughing musically, put them up in that 
blessed little pocket of hers with a merry pride ! 
For it was such a grand novelty to be mistress 
of anything, that if she had been the most re- 
lentless and despotic of all little housekeepers, 
she might have pleaded just that much for her 
excuse, and have been honorably acquitted. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39. 

HOTJSE-KEEPER— Servants a ciirse to the. 

After several varieties of experiment, we had 
given up the housekeeping as a bad job. The 
house kept itself, and we kept a page. The 
principal function of this retainer was to quarrel 



with the cook ; in which respect he was a per- 
fect Whittington, without his cat, or the remotest 
chance of being made Lord Mayor. 

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of 
saucepan-lids. His whole existence was a scuffle. 
He would shriek for help on the most improper 
occasions, — as when we had a little dinner 
party, or a few friends in the evening, — and would 
come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron 
missiles flying after him. W^e wanted to get 
rid of him, but he was very much attached to us, 
and wouldn't go. He was a teaiful boy, and 
broke into such deplorable lamentations, when 
a cessation of our connection was hinted at, 
that we were obliged to keep him. He had no 
mother — no anything in the way of a relative, 
that I could discover, except a sister, who fled 
to America the moment we had taken him off 
her hands — and he became quartered on us like 
a horrible young changeling. He had a lively 
perception of his own unfortunate state, and 
was always rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his 
jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on the extreme 
corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which 
he never woidd take completely out of his pocket, 
but always economised and secreted. This un- 
lucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six 
pounds ten per annum, v/as a source of contin- 
ual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew 
— and he grew like scarlet beans— with painful 
apprehensions of the time when he would begin 
to shave ; even of the days when he would be 
bald or grey. I saw no prospect of ever get- 
ting rid of him ; and, projecting myself into the 
future, used to think what an inconvenience he 
would be when he was an old man. 

David Copper field. Chap. 48. 

HOTTSE-KEEPER — The neatness of Mrs. 
Tibbs. 

Mrs. Tibbs was, beyond all dispute, the most 
tidy, fidgety, thrifty little personage, that ever 
inhaled the smoke of London : and the house 
of Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the neatest in all 
Great Coram Street. The area and the area 
steps, and the street-door, and the street-door 
steps, and the brass handle, and the door-plate, 
and the knocker, and the fan-light, were all as 
clean and bright as indefatigable white-washing, 
hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and rubbing could 
make them. The wonder was, that the brass 
door-plate, with the interesting inscription, 
" Mrs. Tibbs," had never caught fire from con- 
stant friction, so perseveringly was it polished. 
There were meat-safe-looking blinds in the par- 
lor windows, blue and gold curtains in the 
drawing-room, and spring-roller blinds, as Mrs. 
Tibbs was wont in the pride of her heart to 
boast, " all the way up." The bell-lamp in the 
passage looked as clear as a soap-bubble ; you 
could see yourself in all the tables, and French- 
polish yourself on any one of the chairs. The 
banisters were bees'-waxed ; and the very stair- 
wires made your eyes wink, they were so glit- 
tering.— Ta/ifj. The Boarding-House, Chap. i. 

HOUSE-KEEPER— Mrs. Sweeney. 

The genuine laundress, too, is an institution 
not to be had in its entirety out of and away from 
the genuine Chambers. Again, it is not denied 
that you may be robbed elsewhere. Elsewhere 
you may have — for money — dishonesty, drunk- 
enness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity. 



HOUSE-KEEPER 



HTTCKSTEB 



But the veritable shining-red-faced, shameless 
laundress ; the true Mrs. Sweeney, — in figure, 
color, texture, and smell like the old damp fam- 
ily umbrella ; the tip-top complicated abomina- 
tion of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, loose- 
ness, and larceny, — is only to be drawn at the 
fountain-head. Mrs, Sweeney is beyond the 
reach of individual art. It requires the united 
efforts of several men to insure that great result, 
and it is only developed in perfection under an 
Honorable Society and in an Inn of Court. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 14. 

HOUSE-KEEPER-Of Dedlock HaU. 

Mrs. Rouncewell might have been sufficiently 
assured by hearing the rain, but that she is 
rather deaf, which nothing will induce her to 
believe. She is a fine old lady, handsome, 
stately, wonderfully neat, and has .such a back 
and such a stomacher, that if her stays should 
turn out when she dies to have been a broad 
old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who 
knows her would have cause to be surprised. 
Weather affects Mrs. Rouncewell little. The 
house is there in all weathers, and the house, as 
she expresses it, " is what she looks at." She 
sits in her room (in a side passage on the ground 
floor, with an arched window commanding a 
smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals 
with smooth round trees and smooth round 
blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to 
play at bowls with the stones), and the whole 
house reposes on her mind. She can open it 
on occasion, and be busy and fluttered ; but it 
is shut up now, and lies on the breadth of Mrs. 
Rouncewell's iron-bound bosom, in a majestic 
sleep. — Bleak House, Chap. 7. 

HOUSE-KEEPER-Mrs. Billickin, the. 

Personal faintness and an overpowering per- 
sonal candor were the distinguishing features of 
Mrs. Billickin's organization. She came lan- 
guishing out of her own exclusive back-parlor, 
with the air of having been expressly brought 
to for the purpose from an accumulation of sev- 
eral swoons. 

" I hope I see you well, sir," said Mrs. Bil- 
lickin, recognizing her visitor with a bend. 

"Thank you, quite well. And you, ma'am?" 
returned Mr. Grewgious. 

" I am as well," said Mrs. Billickin, becoming 
aspirational with excess of faintness, " as I hever 
ham." 

"My ward and an elderly lady," said Mr. 
Grewgious, "wish to find a genteel lodging for 
a month or so. Have you any apartments 
available, ma'am ? " 

"Mr. Grewgious," returned Mrs. Billickin, 
"I will not deceive you, far from it. I have 
apartments available." 

* * * * # 

" Coals is either by the fire, or /^r the scuttle." 
She emphasized the prepositions as marking a 
subtle but immense difference. " Dogs is not 
viewed with favior. Besides litter, they gets 
stole, and sharing suspicions is apt to creep in, 
and unpleasantness takes place." 

Edxvin Drood, Chap. 22. 

HUCKSTER -The stall of Silas Wegg. 

Assuredly, this stall of S'das Wegg's was tlie 
hardest little stall of all the sterile little stalls in 
London. It gave you the face-ache to look at 



his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his 
oranges, the tooth-ache to look at his nuts. Of 
the latter commodity he had always a grim little 
heap, on which lay a little wooden measure 
which had no discernible inside, and was con- 
sidered to represent the penn'orth appointed by 
Magna Charta. Whether from too much east 
wind or no — it was an easterly corner — the stall, 
the stock, and the keeper, were all as dry as the 
desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a close- 
grained, with a face carved out of very hard ma- 
terial, that had just as much play of expression 
as a watchman's rattle. When he laughed, cer- 
tain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung. 
Sooth to say, he was so wooden a man that he 
seemed to have taken his wooden leg naturally, 
and rather suggested to the fanciful observer, 
that he might be expected — if his development re- 
ceived no untimely check — to be completely set 
up with a pair of wooden legs in about six months. 

Mr. Wegg was an observant person, or, as he 
himself said, " took a powerful sight of notice." 
He saluted all his regular passers-by every day, 
as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamp- 
post ; and on the adaptable character of these 
salutes he greatly plumed himself Thus, to the 
rector, he addressed a bow, compounded of lay 
deference, and a slight touch of the shady pre- 
liminary meditation at church ; to the doctor, a 
confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose 
acquaintance with his inside he begged respect- 
fully to acknowledge ; before the Quality he de- 
lighted to abase himself; and for Uncle Parker, 
who was in the army (at least so he had settled 
it), he put his open hand to the side of his hat, 
in a military manner which that angry-eyed, 
buttoned up, inflammatory-faced old gentleman 
appeared but imperfectly to appreciate. 

The only article in which Silas dealt, that 
was not hard, was gingerbread. On a certain 
day, some wretched infant having purchased the 
damp gingerbread-horse (fearfully out of condi- 
tion), and the adhesive bird-cage, which had 
been exposed for the day's sale, he had taken 
a tin box from under his stool to produce a relay 
of those dreadful specimens, and was going to 
look in at the lid, when he said to himself, paus- 
ing : " Oh 1 here you are again ! " 

The words referred to a broad, round-shoul- 
dered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming 
comically ambling towards the corner, dressed 
in a pea over-coat, and carrying a large stick. 
He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, 
and thick gloves like a hedger's. Both as to 
his dress and to himself, he was of an overlap- 
ping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, 
and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, 
and his ears ; but with bright, eager, childishly 
inquiring, grey eyes, under his ragged eyebrows 
and broad-brimmed hat. A very odd-looking 
old fellow altogether. 

" Here you are again," repeated Mr. Wegg, 
musing. " And what are you now ? Are you 
in the Funns, or where are you ? Have you 
lately come to settle in this neighborhood, or do 
you own to another neighborhood? Are you 
in independent circumstances, or is it wasting 
the motions of a bow on you ? Come ; I'll 
speculate ! I'll invest a bow in you." 

Which Mr. Wegg, having replaced his tin box, 
accordingly did, as he rose to bait his ginger- 
bread-trap for some other devoted infant. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 5. 



HUCKSTiSR 



240 



HUMBUGS 



HUCKSTER- Mr. Wegrgr as a. 

All weathers saw the man at the post. This 
IS to be accepted in a double sense, for he con- 
trived a back to his wooden stool, by placing it 
against the lamp-post. When the weather was 
wet, he put up his umbrella over his stock in 
trade, not over himself; when the weather was 
dry, he furled that faded article, tied it round 
with apiece of yarn, and laid it cross-wise under 
the trestles ; where it looked like an unwhole- 
somely-forced lettuce that had lost in color and 
crispness what it had gained in size. 

He had established his right to the corner, 
by imperceptible prescription. He had never 
varied his ground an inch, but had in the begin- 
ning diffidently taken the corner upon which the 
side of the house gave. A howling corner in 
the winter time, a dusty corner in the summer 
time, an undesirable corner at the best of times. 
Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up 
revolving storms there, when the main street 
was at peace ; and the water-cart, as if it were 
drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and 
jolting round it, making it muddy when all 
else was clean. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 5. 

HUMAN ILLS-" The world full of wisita- 
tions." 

" Why, sir," said Mr. Squeers, *' I'm pretty 
well. So's the family, and so's the boys, except 
for a sort of rash as is a i^unning through the 
school, and rather puts 'em off their feed. But 
it's a ill wind as blows no good to nobody ; 
that's what I always say when them lads has a 
wisitation. A wisitation, sir, is the lot of mor- 
tality. Mortality itself, sir, is a wisitation. The 
world is chock full of wisitations ; and if a boy 
repines at a wisitation and makes you uncom- 
fortable with his noise, he must have his head 
punched. That's going according to the scripter, 
that is." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 56. 

HUMANITY— Its extremes. 

Were this miserable mother, and this miser- 
able daughter, only the reduction to their lowest 
grade, of certain social vices sometimes prevail- 
ing higher up ? In this round world of many 
circles within circles, do we make a weary jour- 
ney from the high grade to the low, to find at 
last that they lie close together, that the two ex- 
tremes touch, and that our journey's end is but 
our starting-place ? Allowing for great difference 
of stuff and texture, was the pattern of this 
woof repeated among gentle blood at all ? 

Dombey (Sr* Son, Chap. 35. 

HUMAN HELP— And God's forgiveness. 

" I have been where convicts go," she added, 
looking full upon her entertainer. " I have been 
one myself." 

" Heaven help you and forgive you ! " was the 
gentle answer. 

*' Ah ! Heaven help me and forgive me ! " she 
returned, nodding her head at the fire. " If man 
would help some of us a little more, God would 
forgive us all the sooner perhaps." 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 33. 

HUMBUGS-Official. 

" And the invention ? " said Clennam. 
" My good fellow," returned Ferdinand, " if 
you'll excuse the freedom of that form of address, 



nobody wants to know of the invention, and no- 
body cares twopence-halfpenny about it." 

" Nobody in the Office, that is to say ? " 

" Nor out of it. Everybody is ready to dis- 
like and ridicule any invention. You have no 
idea how many people want to be left alone. 
You have no idea how the Genius of the country 
(overlook the Parliamentary nature of the phrase, 
and don't be bored by it) tends to being left 
alone. Believe me, Mr. Clennam," said the 
sprightly young Barnacle, in his pleasante^t 
manner, " our place is not a wicked Giant to be 
charged at full tilt ; but only a windmill, show- 
ing you, as it grinds immense quantities of chaff, 
which way the country wind blov/s." 

" If I could believe that," said Clennam, " it 
would be a dismal prospect for all of us." 

" Oh ! don't say so ! " returned Ferdinand. 
" It 's all right. We must have humbug, we all 
like humbug, we couldn't get on without hum- 
bug. A little humbug, and a groove, and every- 
thing goes on admirably, if you leave it alone." 
Little Do^iit, Book II., Chap. 28. 

HUMBUGS— Social— Miss Mowcher's opin- 
ion of. 

" Face like a peach ! " standing on tiptoe to 
pinch my cheek as I sat. " Quite tempting ! 
I'm very fond of peaches. Happy to make your 
acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I'm sure." 

I said that I congratulated myself on having 
the honor to make hers, and that the happiness 
was mutual. 

" Oh, my goodness, how polite we are ! " ex- 
claimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous 
attempt to cover her large face with her morsel 
of a hand. " What a world of gammon and 
spinnage it is, though, ain't it ! " 

This was addressed confidentially to both of 
us, as the morsel of a hand came away from the 
face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag 
again. 

" What do you mean, Miss Mowcher ? " said 
Steerforth. 

" Ha ! ha ! ha ! What a refreshing set of hum- 
bugs we are, to be sure, ain't we, my sweet 
child ? " replied that morsel of a woman, feeling 
in the bag with her head on one side and her 
eye in the air. " Look here ! " taking something 
out. " Scraps of the Russian Prince's nails ! 
Prince Alphabet turned topsy-turvy, / call him, 
for his name's got all the letters in it, higgledy- 
piggledy." 

" The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is 
he ? " said Steerforth. 

" I believe you, my pet," replied Miss Mow- 
cher. " I keep his nails in order for him. Twice 
a week ! Fingers and toes." 

" He pays well, I hope ? " said Steerforth. 

" Pays as he speaks, my dear child — through 
the nose," replied Miss Mowcher. " None of 
your close shavei^s the Prince ain't. You'd say 
so, if you saw his moustachios. Red by nature, 
black by art." 

*' By your art, of course," said Steerforth. 

Miss Mowcher winked assent. "Forced to 
send for me. Couldn't help it. The climate 
affected his dye ; it did very well in Russia, but 
it was no go here. You never saw such a rusty 
Prince in all your born days as he was. Like old 
iron ! " 

"Is that why you called him a humbug, just 
now ? " inquired Steerforth. 



HUMILITY 



241 



HUMILITY 



" Oh, you're a broth of a boy, ain't you ? " re- 
turned Miss Mowcher.shaking her head violently. 
" I said, what a set of humbugs we were in gen- 
eral, and 1 showed you the scraps of the Prince's 
nails to prove it. The Prince's nails do more for 
me in private families of the genteel sort, than 
all my talents put together. I always carry 'em 
about. They're the best introduction. If Miss 
Mowcher cuts the Prince's nails, she must be all 
ri^^ht. 1 give 'ein away to ihe ytvang ladies.. 
They put 'em in albums, I believe. Ha ! ha ! 
ha ! Upon my life, ' the whole social system' (as 
the men call it when they make speeches in 
Parliament) is a system of Prince's nails ! " said 
this least of women, trying to fold her short 
arms, and nodding her large head. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 22. 

HUMILITY-Of Uriah Heep. 

My stool was such a tower of observation, 
that as I watched him reading on again, after 
this rapturous exclamation, and following up the 
lines with his fore-finger, I observed that his 
nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp 
dints in them, had a singular and most uncom- 
fortable way of expanding and contracting them- 
selves ; that they seemed to twinkle instead of 
his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all. 

"I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?" 
I said, after looking at him for some time. 

*' Me, Master Copperfield ? " said Uriah. " Oh, 
no ! I'm a very umble person." 

It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I 
observed ; for he frequently ground the palms 
against each other as if to squeeze them dry and 
warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy 
way, on his pocket-handkerchief. 

" I am well aware that I am the umblest per- 
son going," said Uriah Heep, modestly ; " let 
the other be where he may. My mother is like- 
wise a very umble person. We live in a um- 
ble abode. Master Copperfield, but have much 
to be thankful for. My father's former calling 
was umble. He was a sexton." 

•' What is he now ? " I asked. 

" He is a partaker of glory at present. Master 
Copperfield," said Uriah Heep. " But we have 
much to be thankful for. How much have I to 
be thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield ! " 

***** 

"Perhaps you'll be a partner in Mr. Wick- 
field's business, one of these days," I said, to 
make myself agreeable ; " and it will be Wick- 
field and Heep, or Heep late Wickfield." 

" Oh no. Master Copperfield," returned Uriah, 
shaking his head, " I am much too umble for 
that ! " 

He certainly did look uncommonly like the 
carved face on the beam outside my window, 
as he sat, in his humility, eying me sideways, 
with his mouth widened, and the creases in his 
cheeks. 

" Mr. Wickfield is a most excellent man. Mas- 
ter Copperfield," said Uriah. " If you have 
known him long, you know it, I am sure, much 
better than I can inform you." 

I replied that I was certain he was ; but that 
I had not known him long myself, though he 
was a friend of my aunt's. 

" Oh, indeed. Master Copperfield," said Uriah. 
" Your aunt is a sweet lady, Master Copper- 
field!" 

He had a way of writhing when he wanted to 



express enthusiasm, which was very ugly ; and 
which diverted my attention from the compli- 
ment he had paid my relation, to the snaky 
twistings of his throat and body. 

David Copperfield, Chap. i6. 

" I am not fond of professions of humility," I 
returned, " or professions of anything else." 

" There now ! " said Uriah, looking flabby 
and lead-colored in the moonlight. "IJidn't I 
know it ! But how little you think of the right- 
ful umbleness of a person in my station, Master 
Copperfield ! Father and me was both brought 
up at a foundation school for boys ; and mother, 
she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of 
charitable, establishment. They taught us all a 
deal of umbleness — not much else that I know 
of, from morning to night. We was to be um- 
ble to this person, and umble to that ; and to 
pull off our caps here, and to make bows there ; 
and always to know our place, and abase our- 
selves before our betters. And we had such a 
lot of betters ! Father got the monitor-medal 
by being umble. So did I. Father got made 
a sexton by being umble. He had the charac- 
ter, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well- 
behaved man, that they were determined to 
bring him in. ' Be umble, Uriah,' says father 
to me, 'and you'll get on. It was what was 
always being dinned into you and me at school ; 
it's what goes down best. Be umble,' says 
father, ' and you'll do ! ' And really it ain't 
done bad ! " 

It was the first time it had ever occurred to 
me, that this detestable cant of false humility 
might have originated out of the Heep family. 
I had seen the harvest, but had never thought 
of the seed. 

" When I was quite a young boy," said Uriah, 
" I got to know what umbleness did, and I took 
to it, I ate umble pie with an appetite. I 
stopped at the umble point of my learning, and 
says I, ' Hold hard ! ' When you offered to teach 
me Latin, I knew better. ' People like to be 
above you,' says father ; ' keep yourself down.' 
I am very umble to the present moment. Master 
Copperfield, but I've got a little power ! " 

And he said all this — I knew, as I saw his face 
in the moonlight — that I might understand he 
was resolved to recompense himself by using his 
power. I had never doubted his meanness, his 
craft and malice ; but I fully comprehended 
now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, 
and revengeful spirit must have been engen- 
dered by this early, and this long, suppression. 
David Copperfield, Chap. 3§. 

HUMILITY— Description of Carker, Jr. 

He was not old, but his hair was white ; his 
body was bent, or bowed as if by the weight 
of some great trouble ; and there were deep 
lines in his worn and melancholy face. The 
fire of his eyes, the expression of his features, 
the very voice in which he spoke, were all sub- 
dued and quenched, as if the spirit within him 
lay in ashes. He was respectably, though very 
plainly dressed, in black ; but his clothes, 
moulded to the general character of his figure, 
seemed to shrink and abase themselves upon 
him, and to join in the sorrowful solicitation 
which the whole man from head to foot ex 
pressed, to be left unnoticed, and alone in his 
humility. — Dombey (Sr' Son, Chap. 6. 



HUNGER 



242 



HUNGER 



HUNGER— In an Eng-lish workhouse. 

I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose 
meat and drink turn to gall within him, whose 
blood is ice, whose heart is iron, could have seen 
Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that 
the dog had neglected. I wish he could have 
witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver 
tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of 
famine. There is only one thing I should like 
better ; and that would be to see the philoso- 
pher making the same sort of meal himself, 
with the same relish. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 4. 



The bowls never wanted washing. The boys 
polished them with their spoons till they shone 
again ; and when they had performed this oper- 
ation (which never took very long, the spoons 
being nearly as large as the bowls), they would 
sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, 
as if they could have devoured the very bricks 
of which it was composed ; employing them- 
selves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most 
assiduously, with a view of catching up any striay 
splashes of gruel that might have been cast 
thereon. Boys have generally excellent appe- 
tites. Oliver Twist and his companions suf- 
fered the tortures of slow starvation for three 
months ; at last they got so voracious and wild 
with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his 
age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing 
(for his father had kept a small cook's shop), 
hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he 
had another basin of gruel /^;' diem, he was 
afraid he might some night happen to eat the 
boy who slept next him, who happened to be a 
weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, 
hungry eye ; and they implicitly believed him. 
A council was held ; lots were cast who should 
walk up to the master after supper that even- 
ing, and ask for more ; and it fell to Oliver 
Twist. 

The evening arrived ; the boys took their 
places. The master, in his cook's uniform, sta- 
tioned himself at the copper ; his pauper assist- 
ants ranged themselves behind him ; the gruel 
was served out ; and a long grace was said over 
the short commons. The gruel disappeared ; the 
boys whispered each other, and winked at Oli- 
ver ; while his next neighbors nudged him. Child 
as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and 
reckless with misery. He rose from the table ; 
and advancing to the master, basin and spoon 
in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own 
temerity, — 

" Please, sir, I want some more." 

The master was a fat, healthy man ; but he 
turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied aston- 
ishment on the small rebel for some seconds ; 
and then clung for support to the copper. The 
assistants were paralyzed with wonder ; the 
boys witlr fear. 

"What!" said 'the master at length, in a 
faint voice. 

" Please, sir," replied Oliver, " I want some 
more." 

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head 
with the ladle ; pinioned him in his arms ; and 
shrieked aloud for the beadle. 

The board was sitting in solemn conclave, 
when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in 
great excitement, and addressing the gentleman 
in the high chair, said, — 



" Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir ! Oli- 
ver Twist has asked for more ! 

There was a general start. Horror was de- 
picted on every countenance. 

"For more!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Com- 
pose "yourself, Bumble, and answer me dis- 
tinctly. Do I understand that he asked for 
more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by 
the dietary?" 

" He did, sir," replied Bumble. 

" That boy will be hung," said the gentle- 
man in the white waistcoat. " I know that boy 
will be hung." — Oliver Tivist, Chap. 2. 

HUNGER— Before the French Revolution. 

And now that the cloud settled on Saint An- 
toine, which a momentary gleam had driven 
from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it 
was heavy — cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and 
want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly 
presence — nobles of great power all of them ; 
but most especially the last. Samples of a 
people that had undergone a terrible grinding 
and re-grinding in the mill, and certainly not 
in the fabulous mill which ground old people 
young, shivered at every corner, passed in and 
out at every doorway, looked from every win- 
dow, fluttered in every vestige of a garment 
that the wind shook. The mill which had 
worked them down, was the mill that grinds 
young people old ; the children had ancient 
faces and grave voices ; and upon them, and 
upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every 
furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the 
sign. Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. 
Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in 
the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and 
lines ; Hunger was patched into them with 
straw and rag and wood and paper ; Hunger 
was repeated in every fragment of the small 
modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; 
Hunger stared down from the smokeless chim- 
neys, and started up from the filthy street that 
had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to 
eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's 
shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty 
stock of bad bread ; at the sausage shop, in 
every dead-dog preparation that was offered for 
sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the 
roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder ; Hun- 
ger was shred into atomies in every farthing 
porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with 
some reluctant drops of oil. 

Its abiding-place was in all things fitted to 
it. A narrow, winding street, full of offence and 
stench, with other narrow winding streets di- 
verging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and 
all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visi- 
ble things with a brooding look upon them that 
looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there 
was yet some wild-beast thought of the possi- 
bility of turning at bay. Depressed and slink- 
ing though they were, eyes of fire were not 
wanting among them ; nor compressed lips, 
white with what they suppressed, nor forehead^ 
knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope 
they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The 
trade signs (and they were almost as many as the 
shops) were all grim illustrations of Want. Tli 
butcher and the porkman painted up only th 
leanest scrags of meat ; the baker, the coarse 
of meagre loaves. ^ The people rudely picture^ 
as drinking in the wineshops, croaked ovei 



le 

I 




'Please, Sir, I want some more." 



242 



HUSBANDS 



243 



HYPOCRITE 



their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, 
and were gloweringly confidential together. 
Nothing was represented in a flourishing con- 
dition, save tools and weapons ; but the cutler's 
knives and axes were sharp and bright, the 
smith's hammers were heavy, and the gun- 
maker's stock was murderous. The crippling 
stones of the pavement, with their many little 
reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, 
but broke off abruptly at the doors. The ken- 
nel, to make amends, ran down the middle of 
the street — when it ran at all ; which was only 
after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many 
eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the 
itreets. at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was 
;lung by a rope and pulley ; at night, when the 
amplighter had let these down, and lighted, 
and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim 
wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if 
they were at sea. Indeed, they were at sea, and 
the ship and crew were in peril of tempest. 

For the time was to come, when the gaunt 
scarecrows of that region should have watched 
the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so 
long, as to conceive the idea of improving on 
his method, and hauling up men by those ropes 
and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their 
condition. But the time was not come yet ; 
and every wind that blew over France shook 
the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, 
fine of song and feather, took no warning. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5. 

HUSBANDS— A tea-party opinion of. 

" Before I'd let a man order me about as 
Quilp orders her," said Mrs. George ; " before I'd 
consent to stand in awe of a man as she does of 
him, I'd — I'd kill myself, and write a letter first 
to say he did it ! " — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 4. 

HUSBANDS— Mrs. Jiniwin's treatment of. 

All the ladies then sighed in concert, shook 
their heads gravely, and looked at Mrs. Quilp 
as at a martyr. 

" Ah I " said the spokeswoman, " I wish you'd 
give her a little of your advice, Mrs. Jiniwin," — 
Mrs. Quilp had been a Miss Jiniwin, it should 
be observed — " nobody knows better than you, 
ma'am, what us women owe to ourselves." 

"Owe indeed, ma'am !" replied Mrs. Jiniwin. 
" When my poor husband, her dear father, was 
alive, if he had ever ventur'd a cross word to 

me, I'd have " the good old lady did not 

finish the sentence, but she twisted off the head 
of a shrimp with a vindictiveness which seemed 
to imply that the action was in some degree a 
substitute for words. In this light it was clearly 
understood by the other party, who immediately 
replied with great approbation, " You quite enter 
into my feelings, ma'am, and it's jist what I'd 
do myself" — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 4. 

HUSBAND-A surly. 

" Is it a chilling thing to have one's husband 
sulking and falling asleep directly he comes 
home — to have him freezing all one's warm- 
heartedness, and throwing cold water over the 
fireside ? " — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 7. 

HUSBAND-Pott, the subjugated. 

" Upon my word, sir," said the astonished 
Mrs. Pott, stooping to pick up the paper. 
'* Upon my word, sir ! " 



Mr. Pott winced beneath the contemptuous 
gaze of his wife. He had made a desperate 
struggle to screw up his courage, but it was last 
coming unscrewed again. 

There appears nothing very tremendous in 
this little sentence, " Upon my word, sir," when 
it comes to be read ; but the tone of voice in 
which it was delivered, and the look that ac- 
companied it; both seeming to bear reference to 
some revenge to be thereafter visited upon the 
head of Pott, produced their full effect upon 
him. The most unskillful observer could have 
detected in his troubled countenance, a readi- 
ness to resign his Wellington boots to any effi- 
cient substitute who would have consented to 
stand in them at that moment. 

4( He * He * 

Pott looked very frightened. It was time to 
finish him. 

"And now," sobbed Mrs. Pott, " now, after 
all, to be treated in this way ; to be reproached 
and insulted in the i)iesence of a third party, 
and that party almo.-,t a stranger. But 1 will 
not submit to it ! Goodwin," continued Mrs. 
Pott, raising herself in the arms of her atten- 
dant, " my brother, the Lieutenant, shall inter- 
fere. I'll be separated, Goodwin ! " 

" It would certainly serve him right, ma'am," 
said Goodwin. 

Whatever thoughts the threat of a separation 
might have awakened in Mr. Pott's mind, he 
forebore to give utterance to them, and con- 
tented himself by saying, with great humility : 

" My dear, will you hear me ? " 

A fresh train of sobs was the only reply, as 
Mrs. Pott grew more hysterical, requested to be 
informed why she was ever born, and required 
sundry other pieces of information of a similar 
description. — Pickwick, Chap. 18. 

HYPOCRITES— Their moral book-keepingr. 

There are some men who, living with the one 
object of enriching themselves, no matter by 
what means, and being perfectly conscious of 
the baseness and rascality of the means which 
they will use every day towards this end, affect 
nevertheless — even to themselves — a high tone 
of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and 
sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of 
the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this 
earth, or rather — for walking implies, at least, 
an erect position and the bearing of a man- 
that ever crawled and crept through life by its 
dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot 
down in diaries the events of every day, and 
keep a regular debtor and creditor account with 
Heaven, which shall always show a floating bal- 
ance in their own favor. Whether this is a gra- 
tuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood 
and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they 
really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up 
treasure in the next world by the same process 
which has enabled them to lay up treasure in 
this — not to question how it is, so it is. And, 
doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain auto- 
biographies which have enlightened the world) 
cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one re- 
spect of sparing the recording Angel some time 
and labor. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 44. 

HYPOCRITE— The. 

Mr. Carker the Manager rose with the lark, 
and went out walking in the summer day. His 



HYPOCRISY AND CONCEIT 



244 



HYPOCHONDRIACS 



I 



meditations — and he meditated with contracted 
brows while he strolled along — hardly seemed 
to soar as high as the lark, or to mount in that 
direction ; rather they kept close to their nest 
upon the earth, and looked about, among the 
dust and worms. But there was not a bird in 
the air, singing unseen, farther beyond the reach 
of human eye than Mr. Carker's thoughts. He had 
his face so perfectly under control, that few could 
say more, in distinct terms, of its expression, 
than that it smiled or that it pondered. It pon- 
dered now, intently. As the lark rose higher, 
he sank deeper in thought. As the lark poured 
out her melody clearer and stronger, he fell 
into a graver and profounder silence. At length 
when the lark came headlong down, with an 
accumulating stream of song, and dropped among 
the gieen wheat near him, rippling in the breath 
of the morning like a river, he sprang up from 
his reverie, and looked around with a sudden 
smile, as courteous and as soft as if he had had 
numerous observers to propitiate : nor did he 
relapse, after being thus awakened ; but clear- 
ing his face, like one who bethought himself 
that it might otherwise wrinkle and tell tales, 
went smiling on, as if for practice. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 27. 

HYPOCRISY AND CONCEIT. 

Mere empty-headed conceit excites our pity, 
but ostentatious hypocrisy awakens our disgust. 
Sketches of Couples. 

HYPOCRISY. 

" You see," he continued, with a smile, and 
softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have 
laid its sheathed claws, on Mr. Dombey's arm. 

Mr. Carker bowed his head, and rising from 
the table, and standing thoughtfully before the 
fire, with his hands to his smooth chin, looked 
down at Mr. Dombey with the evil slyness of 
some monkish carving, half human and half 
brute ; or like a leering face on an old water- 
spout. — Dojnbey (Sr* Son, Chap. 42. 

HYPOCRITES-Mr. Weller's opinion of 
clerical. 

Mr. Weller smoked for some minutes in si- 
lence, and then resumed : 

" The worst o' these here shepherds is, my 
boy, that they reg'larly turns the heads of all the 
young ladies about here. Lord bless their lit- 
tle hearts, they thinks it's all right, and don't 
know no better ; but they're the wictims o' gam- 
mon, Samivel, they're the wictims o' gammon." 

" I s'pose they are," said Sam. 

" Nothin' else," said Mr. Weller, shaking his 
head gravely ; " and wot aggrawates me, 
Samivel, is to see *em a wastin' all their time 
and labor in making clothes for copper-colored 
people as don't want 'em, and taking no notice 
of flesh-colored Christians as do. If I'd my vay, 
Samivel, I'd just stick some o' these here lazy 
shepherds behind a heavy wheelbarrow, and run 
'em up and down a fourteen-inch-wide plank all 
day. That 'ud shake the nonsense out of 'em, 
if anythin' vould." 

Mr. Weller having delivered this gentle re- 
cipe with strong emphasis, eked out by a va- 
riety of nods and contortions of the eye, emp- 
tied his glass at a draught, and knocked the 
ashes out of his pipe, with native dignity. 

Pickwick, Chap. 27. 



HYPOCRITE— Pecksniff as a. 

It was a special quality, among the many 
admirable qualities possessed by Mr. Pecksniff, 
that the more he was found out, the more hypoc- 
risy he practised. Let him be discomfited in 
one quarter, and he refreshed and recompensed 
himself by carrying the war into another. If 
his workings and windings were detected by A, 
so much the greater reason was there for prac- 
tising without loss of time on B, if it were only 
to keep his hand in. He had never been such 
a saintly and improving spectacle to all about 
him, as after his detection by Thomas Pinch. 
He had scarcely ever been at once so tender in 
his humanity, and so dignified and exalted in 
his virtue, as when young Martin's scorn was 
fresh and hot upon him. 

Having this large stock of superfluous senti- 
ment and morality on hand, which must posi- 
tively be cleared off at any sacrifice, Mr. Peck- 
sniff no sooner heard his son-in-law announced, 
than he regarded him as a kind of wholesale 
or general order, to be immediately executed. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 44. 

It would be no description of Mr. Pecksniff's 
gentleness of manner to adopt the common par- 
lance, and say, that he looked at this moment as 
if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He ra- 
ther looked as if any quantity of butter might 
have been made out of him, by churning the 
milk of human kindness, as it spouted upwards 
from his heart. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3. 

HYPOCRITE— Q,uilp's description of a. 

" This Kit is one of your honest people ; one 
of your fair characters ; a prowling, prying 
hound ; a hypocrite ; a double-faced, white- 
livered, sneaking spy ; a crouching cur to those 
that feed and coax him, and a barking, yelping 
dog to all besides." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 51. 

HYPOCHONDRIACS. 

Both Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle wear an ex- 
traordinary quantity of flannel, and have a habit 
of putting their feet in hot water to an unnatu- 
ral extent. They indulge in chamomile tea 
and such-like compounds, and rub themselves 
on the slightest provocation with camphorated 
spirits and other lotions applicable to mumps, 
sore-throat, rheumatism, or lumbago. 

Mr. Merrywinkle's leaving home to go to 
business on a damp or wet morning is a very 
elaborate affair. Pie puts on wash-leather socks 
over his stockings, and India-rubber shoes above 
his boots, and wears under his waistcoat a cui- 
rass of hare-skin. Besides these precautions, he 
winds a thick shawl round his throat, and blocks 
up his mouth with a large silk handkerchief. 
Thus accoutred, and furnished besides with a 
great-coat and umbrella, he braves the dangers 
of the sti-eets ; travelling in severe weather at a 
gentle trot, the better to preserve the circulation, 
and bringing his mouth to the surface to take 
breath but very seldom, and with the utmost 
caution. His office door opened, he shoots past 
his clerk at the same pace, and diving into his 
own private room, closes the door, examines the 
window-fastenings, and gradually unrobes him- 
self ; hanging his pocket-handkerchief on the 
fender to air, and determining to write to the 
newspapers about the fog, which, he says, " has 



HYPOCHONDMAO 



246 



IDLEJEU3 



really got to that pitch that it is quite unbear- 
able." 



Our readers may rest assured of the accuracy 
of these general principles : — that all couples 
who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful — 
that they charge upon every wind that blows, 
every rain that falls, and every vapor that hangs 
in the air, the evils which arise from their own 
imprudence or the gloom which is engendered 
in their own tempers — and that all men and 
women, in couples or otherwise, who fall into 
exclusive habits of self-indulgence, and forget 
their natural sympathy and close connection 
with everybody and everything in the world 
around them, not only neglect the first duty of 
life, but, by a happy retributive justice, deprive 
themselves of its truest and best enjoyment. 
Sketches of Couples. 

HYPOCHONDRIAC-Mr. Gobler, the. 

" It's rather singular," continued Mrs. Tibbs, 
with what was meant for a most bewitching 
smile, " that we have a gentleman now with us, 
who is in a very delicate state of health — a Mr. 
Gobler — His apartment is the back drawing- 
room." 

" The next room ? " inquired Mrs. Bloss. 

" The next room," repeated the hostess. 

•' How very promiscuous 1 " ejaculated the 
widow. 

" He hardly ever gets up," said Mrs. Tibbs in 
a whisper. 

" Lor ! " cried Mrs. Bloss, in an equally low 
tone. 

" And when he is up," said Mrs. Tibbs, " we 
never can persuade him to go to bed again." 

" Dear me ! " said the astonished Mrs. Bloss, 
drawing her chair nearer Mrs. Tibbs. " What is 
his complaint ? " 

" Why, the fact is," replied Mrs. Tibbs, with 
a most communicative air, " he has no stomach 
whatever." 

" No what ? " inquired Mrs. Bloss, with a look 
of the most indescribable alarm. 

" No stomach," repeated Mrs. Tibbs, with a 
shake of the head. 

" Lord bless us ! what an extraordinary case ! " 
gasped Mrs. Bloss, as if she understood the com- 
munication in its literal sense, and was astonish- 
ed at a gentleman without a stomach finding it 
necessary to board anywhere. 

" When I say he has no stomach," explained 
the chatty little Mrs. Tibbs, '• I mean that his 
digestion is so much impaired, and his interior 
so deranged, that his stomach is not of the least 
use to him — in fact, it's an inconvenience." 

" Never heard such a case in my life ! " ex- 
claimed Mrs. Bloss. " Why, he's worse than I 
am." — Tales, Chap. i. 



IDEAS-A flow of. 

" Ah," said Sam, " what a pleasant chap he 
is." 

" Ain't he ? " replied Mr. Muzzle. 

" So much humor," said Sam. 



" And such a man to speak," said Mr. Muzzle. 
" How his ideas flow, don't they ? " 

" Wonderful," replied Sam ; " they comes a 
pouring out, knocking each other's heads so fast, 
that they seems to stun one another ; you hardly 
know what he's arter, do you ? " 

Pickwick, Chap. 25. 

IDEAS— Mr. "Willet's cooking: process. 

Although it was hot simimer weather, Mr. 
Willet sat close to the fire. He was in a state 
of profound cogitation, with his own thoughts, 
and it was his custom at such times to stew him- 
self slowly, under the impression that that pro- 
cess of cookery was favorable to the melting out 
of his ideas, which, when he began to simmer, 
sometimes oozed forth so copiously as to aston- 
ish even himself. 

And this dim ray of light did so diffuse itself 
within him, and did so kindle up and shine, 
that at last he had it as plainly and visibly be- 
fore him as the blaze by which he sat: and fully 
persuaded that he was the first to make the dis- 
covery, and that he had started, hunted down, 
fallen upon, and knocked on the head, a per- 
fectly original idea, which had never presented 
itself to any other man, alive or dead, he laid 
down his pipe, rubbed his hands, and chuckled 
audibly. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 78. 

IDEA— A " penned up." 

But her abiding reliance was on Mr. Dick. 
That man had evidently an idea in his head, she 
said ; and if he could once pen it up into a cor- 
ner, which was his great difficulty, he would dis- 
tinguish himself in some extraordinary manner. 
David Copperjield, Chap. 45. 

IDEAS— The association of. 

We have all some experience of a feeling, that 
comes over us occasionally, of what we are say- 
ing and doing having been said and done be- 
fore, in a remote time — of our having been 
surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, 
objects, and circumstances — of our knowing 
perfectly what will be said next, as if we sud- 
denly remembered it ! 

David Copperjieldy Chap. 39. 

IDLE LIFE- An. 

Sir Leicester is content enough that the iron- 
master should feel that there is no hurry there ; 
there, in that ancient house, rooted in that quiet 
park, where the ivy and the moss have had time 
to mature, and the gnarled and warted elms, 
and the umbrageous oaks, stand deep in the 
fern and leaves of a hundred years ; and where 
the sun-dial on the terrace has dumbly recorded 
for centuries that Time, which was as much the 
property of every Dedlock — while he lasted — as 
the house and lands. — Bleak Home^ Chap. 28. 

IDLERS-City. 

We never were able to agree with Sterne in 
pitying the man who could travel from Dan to 
Beersheba, and say that all was barren ; we 
have not the slightest commiseration for tlfe 
man who can take up his hat and stick, and 
walk from Coven t Garden to St. Paul's Church- 
yard, and back, into the bargain, without de- 
riving some amusement — we had almost said 
instruction — from his perambulation. And yet 



IMAGINATION 



INDECISION 



there are such beings : we meet them eveiy day. 
Large black stocks and light waistcoats, jet 
canes and discontented countenances, are the 
characteristics of the race ; other people brush 
quickly by you, steadily plodding on to busi- 
ness, or cheerfully running after pleasure. These 
men linger listlessly past, looking as happy and 
animated as a policeman on duty. Nothing 
seems to make an impression on their minds : 
nothing short of being knocked down by a por- 
ter, or run over by a cab, will disturb their equa- 
nimity. You will meet them on a fine day in 
any of the leading thoroughfares : peep through 
the window of a west-end cigar-shop in the 
evening, if you can manage to get a glimpse 
between the blue curtains which intercept the 
vulgar gaze, and you see them in their only en- 
joyment of existence. There they are, lounging 
about, on round tubs and pipe-boxes, in all the 
dignity of whiskers and gilt watch-guards ; whis- 
pering soft nothings to the young lady in amber, 
with the large ear rings, who, as she sits behind 
the counter in a blaze of adoration and gas-light, 
is the admiration of all the female servants in 
the neighborhood, and the envy of every milli- 
ner's apprentice within two miles round. 

Sketches f Scenes J, Chap. 3. 

IMAGINATION- A stai-ved. 

Struggling through the dissatisfaction of her 
face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, 
a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagina- 
tion keeping life in itself somehow, which bright- 
ened its expression. Not with the brightness 
natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, 
eager, doubtful flashes, which had something 
painful in them, analogous to the changes on a 
blind face groping its way. 

Haf-d Times^ Book /., Chap. 3. 

IMPERTINENCE-Rebuked. 

"He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, 
that's what he is, in English." 

" It's all the same to me what he is or what 
he is not, whether in English or whether in 
French," retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing 
about. " I am telling your friend what's the 
fact ; if you don't like to hear it, you can avail 
yourself of the open air. You give it mouth 
enough, you do ; but give it mouth in your own 
building at least," remonstrated E. W. B., with 
stern irony. " Don't give it mouth in this build- 
ing, till you're called upon. You have got some 
building of your own, I dare say, now ? " 

*• Perhaps so," replied Mr. Bounderby, rat- 
tling his money and laughing, 

" Then give it mouth in your own building, 
will you, if you please ? " said Childers. " Be- 
cause this isn't a strong building, and too much 
of you might bring it down ! " 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 6. 

IMPRESSIONS OF PEOPLE-The first. 

In real life the peculiarities and oddities of a 
man \\\\o has anything whimsical about him, 
generally impress us first, and it is not until we 
are better acquainted with him that we usually 
begin to look below these superficial traits, and 
to know the better part of him. 

Fickvjick, Preface. 

IMPOSTORS-Social. 

" You are genuine also." 



" Thank you for the compliment," said Clen- 
nam, ill at ease ; " you are too, I hope ? " 

" So, so," rejoined the other. " To be candid 
with you, tolerably. I am not a great impostor. 
Buy one of my pictures, and I assure you, in 
confidence, it will not be worth the money. Buy 
one of another man's — any great professor who 
beats me hollow — and the chances are that the 
more you give him, the more he'll impose upon 
you. They all do it." 

" All painters ? " 

" Painters, writers, patriots, all the rest who 
have stands in the market. Give almost any 
man I know, ten pounds, and he will impose 
upon you to a corresponding extent ; a thousand 
pounds — to a corresponding extent ; ten thou- 
sand pounds — to a corresponding extent. So 
great the success, so great the imposition. But 
what a capital world it is ! " cried Gowan with 
warm enthusiasm. "What a jolly, excellent 
loveable world it is ! " 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 26. 

IMPUDENCE AND CREDULITY- As 

passports. 

Impudence and the marvellous are pretty sure 
passports to any society. — Tales, Chap. 7. 

INCOMPREHENSIBILITY - The com- 
pound interest of. 

As nobody on the face of the earth could be 
more incapable of explaining any single item 
in the heap of confusion than the debtor him- 
self, nothing comprehensible could be made of 
his case. To question him in detail, and en- 
deavor to reconcile his answers ; to closet hiir 
with accountants and sharp practitioners, learn- 
ed in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy ; 
was only to put the case out at compound inter- 
est of incomprehensibility. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 6. 

INDECISION-Of character. 

To be in the halting state of Mr. Henry 
Gowan ; to have left one of two Powers in dis- 
gust, to want the necessary qualifications for 
finding promotion with another, and to be loi- 
tering moodily about on neutral ground, curs- 
ing both ; is to be in a situation unwholesome 
for the mind, which time is not likely to im- 
prove. The worst class of sum worked in the 
every-day M'^orld, is cyphered by the diseased 
arithmeticians who are always in the rule of 
Subtraction as to the merits and successes 
of others, and never in Addition as to their 
own. 

The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recom- 
pense in the discontented boast of being disap- 
pointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy. 
A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of 
consistency soon comes of it. To bring de- 
serving things down by setting undeserving 
things up, is one of its perverted delights ; and 
there is no playing fast and loose with the 
truth, in any game, without growing the worse 
for \\..— Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6. 

INDECISION— Of character (Sparkler). 

He had no greater will of his own than a 
boat has M'hen it is towed by a steam-ship ; and 
he followed his cniel mistress through rough 
and smooth, on equally strong compulsion. 

Little Dorrit, Book 11, Chap. 14. 



INDIFFERENCE 



247 



INNS 



INDIFFERENCE. 

A display of indifference to all the actions 
and passions of mankind was not supposed to 
be such a distinguished quality at that time, I 
think, as I have observed it to be considered 
since. I have known it very fashionable in- 
deed. I have seen it displayed with such suc- 
cess, that I have encountered some fine ladies 
and gentlemen who might as well have been 
born caterpillars. — David Copperjield, Chap. 36. 

INFIiXJENCES-Kind. 

It is not possible to know how far the influ- 
ence of any amiable, honest-hearted, duty-do- 
ing man flies out into the world ; but it is very 
possible to know how it has touched one's self 
in going by, and I know right well that any 
good that intermixed itself with my apprentice- 
ship came of plain, contented Joe, and not of 
restless, aspiring, discontented me. 

Great Expectations, Chap, 14. 

INTEREST AND CONVENIENCE. 

"Our interest and convenience commonly 
oblige many of us to make professions that we 
cannot feel. We have partnerships of interest 
and convenience, friendships of interest and 
convenience, dealings of interest and conveni- 
ence, marriages of interest and convenience, 
every day." — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 45. 

INN- An Eng-lisli. 

The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, already 
mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, 
had long settled down into a state of hale in- 
firmity. In its whole constitution it had not a 
straight floor, and hardly a straight line ; but it 
had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, 
many a better-trimmed building, many a spru- 
cer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow, 
lopsided jumble of corpulent windows, heaped 
one upon another as you might heap as many 
toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah 
impending over the water ; indeed, the whole 
house, inclusive of the complaining flagstaff" on 
the roof, impended over the water, but seemed 
to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted 
diver, who has paused so long on the brink that 
he will never go in at all. 

* * « « 4c 

The wood forming the chimney-pieces, beams, 
partitions, floors, and doors of the Six Jolly Fel- 
lowship-Porters, seemed in its old age fraught 
with confused memories of its youth. In many 
places it had become gnarled and riven, accord- 
ing to the manner of old trees ; knots started 
out of it ; and here and there it seemed to twist 
itself into some likeness of boughs. In this 
state of second childhood, it had an air of being 
in its own way garrulous about its early life. 
Not without reason was it often asserted by the 
regular frequenters of the Porters, that when 
the light shone full upon the grain of certain 
panels, and particularly upon an old corner cup- 
board of walnut-wood in the bar, you might 
trace little forests there, and tiny trees like the 
parent-tree, in full umbrageous leaf. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 6. 

INN- An old (The Maypole). 

Whether these, and many other stories of the 
like nature, were true or untrue, the Maypole 
was really an old house, a very old house, per- 



haps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps 
older, which will sometimes happen with houses 
of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age. 
Its windows were old diamond -pane lattices, its 
floors were sunken and uneven, its ceilings 
blackened by the hand of time, and heavy with 
massive beams. Over the door-way was an 
ancient porch, quaintly and grotesquely carved ; 
and here on summer evenings the more favored 
customers smoked and drank — ay, and sang 
many a good song too, sometimes — reposing on 
two grim-looking, high-backed settles, which, 
like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded 
the entrance to the mansion. 

In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swal- 
lows had built their nests for many a long year, 
and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole 
colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in 
the eaves. There were more pigeons about the 
dreary stable-yard and outbuildings than any- 
body but the landlord could reckon up. The 
wheeling and circling flights of runts, fantails, 
tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite 
consistent with the grave and sober character ot 
the building, but the monotonous cooing, which 
never ceased to be raised by some among them 
all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to 
lull it to rest. With its overhanging stories, 
drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging 
out and projecting over the pathway, the old 
house looked as if it were nodding in its sleep. 
Indeed, it needed no very great stretch of fan- 
cy to detect in it other resemblances to hu- 
manity. The bricks of which it was built had 
originally been a deep dark red, but had grown 
yellow and discolored, like an old man's skin ; 
the sturdy timbers had decayed like teeth ; and 
here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to 
comfort it in its age, wrapped its green leaves 
closely round the time-worn walls. 

It was a hale and hearty age though, still : 
and in the summer or autumn evenings, when 
the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak 
and chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the 
old house, partaking of its lustre, seemed their 
fit companion, and to have many good years of 
life in him yet. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. i. 

INN— A roadside. 

Indeed, The Tilted Wagon— as a cool establish- 
ment on the top of a hill, where the ground be- 
fore the door was puddled with damp hoofs and 
trodden straw ; where a scolding landlady 
slapped a moist baby (with one red sock on and 
one wanting) in the bar ; where the cheese was 
cast aground upon a shelf, in company with a 
mouldy tablecloth and a green-handled knife, 
in a sort of cast-iron canoe ; where the pale-faced 
bread shed tears of crumb over its shipwreck, in 
another canoe ; where the family linen, half 
washed and half dried, led a public life of 
lying about ; where everything to drink was 
drunk out of mugs, and everything else was 
suggestive of a rhyme to mugs — The Tilled 
Wagon, all these things considered, hardly kept 
its painted promise of providing good entertain- 
ment for Man and Beast. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 15. 

INNS-Of Europe. 

Next to the provincial Inns of France, with 
the great church-tower rising above the court- 
yard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and 



INNS 



248 



INN 



down the street beyond, and the clocks of all 
descriptions in all the rooms, which are never 
right, unless taken at the precise minute when, 
by getting exactly twelve hours too fast or too 
slow, they unintentionally become so. Away I 
went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy ; 
where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in 
wear) are always lying in your ante-room ; where 
the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your 
face in summer, and the cold bites it blue in 
winter ; where you get what you can, and for- 
get what you can't ; where I should again like 
to be boiling my tea in a pocket-handkerchief 
dumpling, for want of a teapot. So to the old 
palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns 
and cities of the same bright country ; with their 
massive quadrangular staircases, whence you 
may look from among clustering pillars high 
into the blue vault of Heaven ; with their stately 
banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories ; with 
their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and 
their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no 
appearance of reality or possibility. So to the 
close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with 
their pale attendants, and their peculiar smell of 
never letting in the air. So to the immense 
fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of the 
gondolier below, as he skims the corner ; the 
grip of the watery odors on one particular little 
bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never 
released while you stay there) ; and the great 
bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight. 
Next I put up for a minute at the restless Inns 
upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no 
matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin 
for everybody else's getting up ; and where, in 
the table d'h6te room, at the end of the long 
table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the 
other end, all made of white plates), one knot of 
stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and 
dirt, and having nothing else upon them, will 
remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing 
aboutf the river that flows and the grape that 
grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine 
woman that smiles, and hi drink drink my friend 
and ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest 
of it. I departed thence as a matter of course, 
to other German Inns, where all the eatables are 
sodden down to the same flavor, and where the 
mind is disturbed by the apparition of hot pud- 
dings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at 
awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After 
a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming 
glass jug, and a glance of recognition through 
the windows of the student beer-houses at Hei- 
delberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the 
Inns of America, with their four hundred beds 
apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies 
and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I 
stood in the bar rooms thereof, taking my even- 
ing cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail. Again I 
listened to my friend the General — whom I had 
known for five minutes, in the course of which 
period he had made me intimate for life with 
two Majors, who again had made me intimate 
for life with three Colonels, who again had made 
me brother to twenty-two civilians — again, I say, 
I listoficd to my friend the General, leisurely 
expounding the resources of the establishment, 
as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir ; ladies' 
morning-room, sir ; gentlemen's evening-room, 
sir ; ladies' evening-room, sir ; ladies' and gentle- 
men's evening reuniting-room, sir ; music-room. 



sir; reading-room, sir: over four ht ndred sleep- 
ing-rooms, sir ; and the entire planned and finited 
within twelve calendar months from the first clear- 
ing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a 
cost of five hundred thousand dollars, sir. 
Again I found, as to my individual way of think- 
ing, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and 
the more dollarous the establishment was, the 
less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I 
drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in 
all good-will, to my friend the General, and my 
friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians all ; 
full well knowing that, whatever little motes my 
beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, they 
belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and 
great people. — The Holly Tree. 

INN— Mexnories of an old. 

Or take any other of the numerous travelling 
instances in which, with more time at your dis- 
posal, you are, have been, or may be, equally ill- 
served. Take the old-established Bull's Head, 
with its old-established knife-boxes on its old- 
established side-boards, its old-established flue 
under its old-established four-post bedsteads in 
its old-established airless rooms, its old-estab- 
lished frowziness up-stairs and down-stairs, its 
old-established cookery, and its old-established 
principles of plunder. Count up your injuries, 
in its side-dishes of ailing sweetbreads in white 
poultices, of apothecaries' powders in rice for 
curry, of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually 
relying for an adventitious interest on forcemeat 
balls. You have had experience of the old- 
established Bull's Head's stringy fowls, with 
lower extremities like wooden legs sticking up 
out of the dish ; of its cannibalic boiled mutton, 
gushing horribly among its capers, when carved ; 
of its little dishes of pastry, — roofs of spermaceti 
ointment erected over half an apple or four 
gooseberries. Well for you if you have yet for- 
gotten the old established Bull's Head's fruity 
port ; whose reputation was gained solely by the 
old-established price the Bull's Head put upon 
it, and by the old-established air with which the 
Bull's Head set the glasses and D'Oyleys on, and 
held that Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny 
wax-candle, as if its old-established color hadn't 
come from the dyer's. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 6. 

INN— Scenes in an. 

If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird — if it 
had only some confused idea of making a com- 
fortable nest — I could hope to get through the 
hours between this and bed-time, without being 
consumed by devouring melancholy. But the 
Dodo's habits are all wrong. It provides me 
with a trackless desert of sitting-room, with a 
chair for every day in the year, a table for every 
month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely 
China vase pines in a corner for its mate long 
departed, and will never make a match with the 
candlestick in the opposite corner if it live till 
Doomsday. The Dodo has nothing in the 
larder. Even now, I behold the boots return- 
ing with my sole in a piece of paper ; and with 
that portion of my dinner, the Boots, perceiving 
me at the blank bow window, slaps his leg as he 
comes across the road, pretending it is some- 
thing else. The Dodo excludes the outer air. 
When I mount up to my bed-room, a smell of 
closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like 



INN 



949 



INNOOENCS 



sleepy snuff. The loose little bits of carpet 
writhe under my tread, and take wormy shapes. 
I don't know the ridiculous man in the looking- 
glass, beyond having met him once or twice in 
a dish-cover — and I can never shave him to- 
morrow morning ! The Dodo is narrow-minded 
as to towels ; expects me to wash on a freema- 
son's apron without the trimming : when I ask 
for soap, gives me a stony-hearted something 
white, with no more lather in it than the Elgin 
marbles. The Dodo has seen better days, and 
possesses interminable stables at the back — si- 
lent, grass-grown, broken-windowed, horseless. 

This mournful bird can fry a sole, however, 
which is much. Can cook a steak, too, which is 
more. I wonder where it gets its Sherry ! If I 
were to send my pint of wine to some famous 
chemist to be analyzed, what would it turn out 
to be made of? It tastes of pepper, sugar, bit- 
ter almonds, vinegar, warm knives, any flat 
drink, and a little brandy. Would it unman a 
Spanish exile by reminding him of his native 
land at all? I think not. If there really be 
any townspeople out of the churchyards, and if 
a caravan of them ever do dine, with a bottle of 
wine per man, in this desert of the Dodo, it 
must make good for the doctor next day ! 

Where was the waiter born? How did he 
come here ? Has he any hope of getting away 
from here? Does he ever receive a letter, or 
take a ride upon the railway, or see anything 
but the Dodo ? Perhaps he has seen the Berlin 
Wool. He appears to have a silent sorrow on 
him, and it may be that. He clears the table ; 
draws the dingy curtains of the great bow win- 
dow, which so unwillingly consent to meet, that 
they must be pinned together ; leaves me by the 
fire with my pint decanter, and a little thin 
funnel-shaped wine-glass, and a plate of pale 
biscuits — in themselves engendering despera- 
tion. 

No book, no newspaper ! I left the Arabian 
Nights in the railway carriage, and have nothing 
to read but Bradshaw, and " that way madness 
lies," Remembering what prisoners and ship- 
wrecked mariners have done to exercise their 
minds in solitude, I repeat the multiplication 
table, the pence table, and the shilling table : 
which are all the tables I happen to know. 
What if I write something? The Dodo keeps 
no pens but steel pens ; and those I always stick 
through the paper, and can turn to no other 
account. — A Plated Article. Reprinted Pieces. 

INN— An unwholesome. 

" I meantersay, you two gentlemen, which I 
hope as you gets your elths in this close spot? 
For the present may be a wery good inn, accord- 
ing to London opinions," said Joe, confidential- 
ly, " and I believe its character do stand i ; but I 
wouldn't keep a pig in it myself— not in the 
case that I wished him to fatten wholesome, and 
to eat with a meller flavor on him." 

Great Expectations, Chap. 27. 

INN— An ancient apaxtznent. 

It had such a prescriptive, stiff"-necked, long- 
established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced 
about the room, which had had its sanded floor 
sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner 
when the chief waiter was a boy — if he ever 
was a boy, which appeared improbable — and at 
the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, 



in unruffled depths of old mahogany — and at 
the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming or 
cleaning ; and at the comfortable green curtains, 
with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the 
boxes ; and at the two large coal fires, brightly 
burning ; and at the rows of decanters, burly as 
if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive 
old port wine below ; and both England, and 
the law, appeared to me to be very difficult 
indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my 
bed-room to change my wet clothes ; and the 
vast extent of that old wainscotted apartment 
(which was over the archway leading to the inn, 
I remember), and the sedate immensity of the 
four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity 
of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in 
sternly frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or 
on any such daring youth. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 59. 

INN— Room in an. 

The Concord bed-chamber being always as- 
signed to a passenger by the mail, and passen- 
gers by the mail being always heavily wrapped 
up from head to foot, the room had the odd in- 
terest for the establishment of the Royal George, 
that although but one kind of man was seen to 
go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came 
out of it. — Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 4. 

Inn— A wayside. 

At such a time, one little roadside inn, snugly 
sheltered behind a great elm-tree, with a rare 
seat for idlers encircling its capacious bole, ad- 
dressed a cheerful front towards the traveller, as 
a house of entertainment ought, and tempted 
him with many mute but significant assurances 
of a comfortable welcome. The ruddy sign- 
board perched up in the tree, with its golden 
letters winking in the sun, ogled the passer-by, 
from among the green leaves, like a jolly face, 
and promised good cheer. The horse-trough, 
full of clear fresh water, and the ground below 
it sprinkled with droppings of fragrant hay, 
made every horse that passed prick up his ears. 
The crimson curtains in the lower rooms, and 
the pure white hangings in the little bed-cham- 
bers above, beckoned. Come in ! with every 
breath of air. Upon the bright green shut- 
ters, there were golden legends about beer 
and ale, and neat wines, and good beds ; and an 
affecting picture of a brown jug frothing over 
at the top. Upon the window-sills were flower- 
ing plants in bright red pots, which made a 
lively show against the white front of the house ; 
and in the darkness of the doorway there were 
streaks of light, which glanced off from the 
surfaces of bottles and tankards. 

Battle of Life, Chap. 3. 

INNOCENCE— The affectation of advice of 
Mr. Bucket. 

"Now, Miss Summerson, I'll give you a piece 
of advice that your husband will find useful 
when you are happily married and have got a 
family about you. Whenever a person says to 
you that they are as innocent as can be in all 
concerning money, look well after your own 
money, for they are dead certain to collar it, if 
they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you 
' In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider 
that that person is only a-crying off from being 
held accountable, and that you have got that per- 



INNOCENCE 



260 



INQUISITION 



son's number, and it's Number One. Now, 1 
am not a poetical man myself, except in a vocal 
way, when it goes round a company, but I'm a 
practical one, and that's my experience. So's 
this rule. Fast and loose in one thing. Fast and 
loose in everything. I never knew it fail." 

Bleak House, Chap. 57. 

INNOCENCE-And guUt. 

It was a curious contrast to see how the timid 
country girl shrunk through the crowd that hur- 
ried up and down the streets, giving way to the 
press of people, and clinging closely to Ralph, 
as though she feared to lose him in the throng ; 
and how the stern and hard-featured man of 
business went doggedly on, elbowing the pas- 
sengers aside, and now and then exchanging a 
gruff salutation with some passing acquaintance, 
who turned to look back upon his pretty charge, 
with looks expressive of surprise, and seemed 
to wonder at the ill-assorted companionship. 
But it would have been a stranger contrast still, 
to have read the hearts that were beating side 
by side ; to have laid bare the gentle innocence 
of the one, and the rugged villany of the other ; 
to have hung upon the guileless thoughts of the 
affectionate girl, and been amazed that, among 
all the wily plots and calculations of the old 
man, there should not be one word or figure de- 
noting thought of death or of the grave. But 
so it was ; and stranger still — though this is a 
thing of every day — the warm young heart pal- 
pitated with a thousand anxieties and apprehen- 
sions, while that of the old worldly man lay 
rusting in its cell, beating only as a piece of cun- 
ning mechanism, and yielding no one throb of 
hope, or fear, or love, or care, for any living thing. 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10. 

INNOCENT OFPENDERS-PubUc injustice 
to. 

Let moralists and philosophers say what they 
may, it is very questionable whether a guilty man 
would have felt half as much misery that night, 
as Kit did, being innocent. The world, being 
in the constant commission of vast quantities 
of injustice, is a little too apt to comfort itself 
with the idea that if the victim of its falsehood 
and malice have a clear conscience, he cannot 
fail to be sustained under his trials, and some- 
how or other to come right at last ; " in which 
case," say those who have hunted him down, 
" — though we certainly don't expect it — nobody 
will be better pleased than we." Whereas, the 
world would do well to reflect, that injustice is 
in itself, to every generous and properly consti- 
tuted mind, an injury, of all others the most 
insufferable, the most torturing, and the most 
hard to bear ; and that many clear consciences 
have gone to their account elsewhere, and many 
sound hearts have broken, because of this very 
reason ; the knowledge of their own deserts 
only aggravating their sufferings, and rendering 
them the less endurable. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 61. 

INNOCENT— Hasty judgment of the. 

To this indictment, Christopher Nubbles, in 
a low and trembling voice, pleaded Not Guilty : 
and here, let those who are in the habit of form- 
ing hasty judgments from appearances, and who 
would have had Christopher, if innocent, speak 
out very strong and loud, observe, that confine- 



ment and anxiety will subdue the stoutest 
hearts ; and that to one who has been close 
shut up, though it be only for ten or eleven 
days, seeing but stone walls and a very few 
stony faces, the sudden entrance into a great 
hall filled with life, is a rather disconcerting 
and startling circumstance. To this it must be 
added, that life in a wig is, to a large class of 
people, much more terrifying and impressive 
than life with its own head of hair. 

Old Curiosity SIiop, Chap. 63. 

INQTJISITIVENESS-A cure for spasms. 

" Well, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby, *' you see 
my little woman is — not to put too fine a point 
upon it — inquisitive. She's inquisitive. Poor 
little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good 
for her to have her mind employed. In conse- 
quence of which she employs it — I should say 
upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, 
whether it concerns her or not — especially not. 
My little woman has a very active mind, sir." 
Bleak House, Chap. 22. 



INaUISITION-Thc tortures of the. 

A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in 
which the prisoners of the Inquisition were con- 
fined for forty-eight hours after their capture, 
without food or drink, that their constancy 
might be shaken, even before they were con- 
fronted with their gloomy judges. The day has ^ 
not got in there yet. They are still small |i 
cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard f" 
walls ; still profoundly dark ; still massively 
doored and fastened, as of old. 

Goblin, looking back as I have described, 
went softly on into a vaulted chamber, now 
used as a store-room : once the chapel of the 
Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat 
was plain. The platform might have been re- 
moved but yesterday. Conceive the parable of 
the Good Samaritan having been painted on the 
wall of one of these Inquisition chambers ! But 
it was, and may be traced there yet. 

High up in the jealous wall, are niches where 
the faltering replies of the accused were heard 
and noted down. Many of them had been 
brought out of the very cell we had just looked 
into, so awfully ; along the same stone passage. 
We had trodden in their very footsteps. 

I am gazing round me, with the horror that 
the place inspires, when Goblin clutches me by 
the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but 
the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites 
me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She 
leads me out into a room adjoining — a rugged 
room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, 
open at the top, to the bright day. I ask her 
what it is. She folds her arms, leers hideously, 
and stares. I ask again. She glances round, 
to see that all the little company are there ; sits 
down upon a mound of stones ; throws up her 
arms, and yells out, like a fiend, " La Salle de 
la Question ! " 

The Chamber of Torture ! And the roof was 
made of that shape to stifle the victim's cries ! 
Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, 
in silence. Peace, Goblin ! Sit with your short 
arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap 
of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame 
out again. 

Minutes ! Seconds are not marked upon the 
Palace clock, when, with her eyes flashing fire, 



iNaxnsiTioN 



261 



INVALID 



Goblin is up, in the middle of the chamber, de- 
scribing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of 
heavy blows. Thus it ran round ! cries Gob- 
lin. Mash, mash, mash ! An endless routine 
of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash ! upon 
the sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough ! 
says Goblin. For the water torture ! Gurgle, 
swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer's honor ! 
Suck the bloody rag, deep down into your un- 
believing body. Heretic, at every breath you 
draw ! And when the executioner plucks it 
out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's 
own Image, know us for His chosen servants, 
true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, 
elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle 
but to heal : who never struck a man with pal- 
sy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, madness, or 
any one affliction of mankind ; and never 
stretched His blessed hand out, but to give re- 
lief and ease. 

See ! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. 
There they made the irons red-hot. Those 
holes supported the sharp stake, on which the 
tortured persons hung poised ; dangling with 
their whole weight from the roof. " But ; " and 
Goblin whispers this ; " Monsieur has heard of 
this tower? Yes? Let Monsieur look down, 
then ! " 

A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls 
upon the face of Monsieur ; for she has opened, 
while speaking, a trap-door in the wall. Mon- 
sieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, up- 
ward to the top, of a steep, dark, lofty tower : 
very dismal, very dark, very cold. The Execu- 
tioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in 
her head to look down also, flung those who 
were past all further torturing, down here. 
" But look ! does Monsieur see the black stains 
on the wall ? " A glance, over his shoulder, at 
Goblin's keen eye, shows Monsieur — and would, 
without the aid of the directing-key — where 
they are. " What are they ? " " Blood ! " 

In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at 
its height here, sixty persons ; men and women 
(" and priests," says Goblin, " priests "), were 
murdered, and hurled, the dying and the dead, 
into this dreadful pit, where a quantity of quick- 
lime was tumbled down upon their bodies. 
Those ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon 
no more ; but while one stone of the strong 
building in which the deed was done, remains 
upon another, there they will lie in the memo- 
ries of men, as plain to see as the splashing of 
their blood upon the wall is now. 

Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retri- 
bution, that the cruel deed should be committed 
in this place ! That a part of the atrocities and 
monstrous institutions, which had been, for 
scores of years, at work, to change men's na- 
ture, should, in its last service, tempt them with 
the ready means of gratifying their furious and 
beastly rage ! Should enable them to show them- 
selves, in the height of their frenzy, no worse 
than a great, solemn, legal establishment, in the 
height of its power ! No worse ! Much better. 
They used the Tower of the Forgotten, in the 
name of Liberty — their liberty ; an earth-born 
creature, nursed in the black mud of the Bastile 
moats and dungeons, and necessarily betraying 
many evidences of its unwholesome bringing-up 
— but the Inquisition used it in the name of 
Heaven. 
Goblin's finger is lifted ; and she steals out 



again, into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She 
stops at a certain part of the flooring. Her 
great eff'ect is at hand. She waits for the rest. 
She darts at the brave Courier, who is explain- 
ing something ; hits him a sounding rap on the 
hat with the largest key ; and bids him be si- 
lent. She assembles us all round a little trap- 
door in the floor, as round a grave. " Voila ! " 
she darts down at the ring, and flings the door 
open with a crash, in her goblin energy, though 
it is no light weight. " Voila les oubliettes ! 
Voila les oubliettes ! Subterranean ! Frightful 1 
Black ! Terrible ! Deadly I Les oubliettes de 
rinquisition ! " 

My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblm, 
down into the vaults, where these forgotten 
creatures, with recollections of the world out- 
side—of wives, friends, children, brothers — 
starved to death, and made the stones ring with 
their unavailing groans. But the thrill I felt on 
seeing the accursed wall below, decayed and 
broken through, and the sun shining in through 
its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory 
and triumph. I felt exalted with the proud de- 
light of living, in these degenerate times, to see 
it. As if I were the hero of some high achieve- 
ment ! The light in the doleful vaults was typi- 
cal of the light that has streamed in on all per- 
secution in God's name, but which is not yet at 
its noon ! It cannot look more lovely to a blind 
man newly restored to sight, than to a traveller 
who sees it, calmly and majestically, treading 
down the darkness of that Infernal Well. 

Pictures from Italy, 

INTEIiLECT— BUghted by cruelty. 

To prepare the mind for such a heavy sleep, 
its growth must be stopped by rigor and cruelty 
in childhood ; there must be years of miseiy and 
suff"ering, lightened by no ray of hope ; the 
chords of the heart, which beat a quick response 
to the voice of gentleness and affection, must 
have rusted and broken in their secret places, 
and bear the lingering echo of no old word of 
love or kindness. Gloomy, indeed, must have 
been the short day, and dull the long, long twi- 
light, preceding such a night of intellect as his. 
Nicholas Nickkby^ Guip. 38. 

INVALID— Philosophy of an. 

" I see more of the world, I can assure you," 
said Mr. Omer, " in this chair, than ever I see 
out of it. You'd be surprised at the number of 
people that looks in of a day to have a chat. 
You really would ! There's twice as much in 
the newspaper, since I've taken to this chair, as 
there used to be. As to general reading, dear 
me, what a lot of it I do get through ! That's 
what I feel so strong, you know ! If it had been 
my eyes, what should I have done ? If it had 
been my ears, what should I have done ? Being 
my limbs, what does it signify ? Why, my limbs 
only made my breath shorter when I used 'em. 
And now, if I want to go out into the street or 
down to the sands, I've only got to call Dick, 
Joram's youngest 'prentice, and away I go in 
my own carriage, like the Lord Mayor of Lon- 
don." 

He half suffocated himself with laughing here. 

" Lord bless you !" said Mr. Omer, resuming 
his pipe, " a man must take the fat with the lean ; 
that's what he must make up his mind to, in this 
life." — David Copperjield, ChaJ>.^i, 



INVAIilD 



262 INVENTION AND DISCOVERY 



INVALID— Tim Linkinwater'a friend. 

" It is a good heart," said Nicholas, " that dis- 
entangles itself from the close avocations of 
every day, to heed such things. You were say- 
ing " 

" That the flowers belonged to this poor boy," 
said Tim, " that's all. When it is fine weather, 
and he can crawl out of bed, he draws a chair 
close to the window, and sits there, looking at 
them and arranging them, all day long. We 
used to nod, at first, and then we came to speak. 
Formerly, when I called to him, of a morning, 
and asked him how he was, he would smile, and 
say, ' better ; ' but now he shakes his head, and 
only bends more closely over his old plants. It 
must be dull to watch the dark house-tops and 
the flying clouds, for so many months ; but he 
is very patient." 

" Is there nobody in the house to cheer or help 
him?" asked Nicholas. 

" His father lives there, I believe," replied 
Tim, " and other people too ; but no one seems 
to care much for the poor sickly cripple. I have 
asked him, very often, if I can do nothing for 
him ; his answer is always the same, ' Nothing.' 
His voice is growing weak of late, but I can see 
that he makes the old reply. He can't leave his 
bed now, so they have moved it close beside the 
window, and there he lies all day ; now looking 
at the sky, and now at his flowers, which he still 
makes shift to trim and water, with his own thin 
hands. At night, when he sees my candle, he 
draws back his curtain, and leaves it so, till I am 
in bed. It seems such company to him to know 
that I am there, that I often sit at my window 
for an hour or more, that he may see that I am 
still awake ; and sometimes I get up in the night 
to look at the dull melancholy light in his little 
room, and wonder whether he is awake or sleep- 
ing. 

" The night will not be long coming," said 
Tim, " when he will sleep, and never wake 
again on earth. We have never so much as 
shaken hands in all our lives, and yet I shall 
miss him like an old friend. Are there any 
country flowers that could interest me like these, 
do you think? Or do you suppose that the 
withering of a hundred kinds of the choicest 
flowers that blow, called by the hardest Latin 
names that were ever invented, would give me 
one fraction of the pain that I shall feel when 
those old jugs and bottles are swept away as 
lumber ! Country ! " cried Tim, with a con- 
temptuous emphasis ; " don't you know that I 
couldn't have such a court under my bed-room 
window, anywhere, but in London ? " 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 40. 

INVALIDS— Their reveries. 

Morning, noon, and night, morning, noon, 
and night, each recurring with its accompanying 
monotony, always the same reluctant return of 
the same sequences of machinery, like a drag- 
ging piece of clock-work. 

The wheeled chair had its associated remem- 
brances and reveries, one may suppose, as every 
place that is made the station of a human being 
has. Pictures of demolished streets and altered 
houses, as they formerly were when the occu- 
pant of the chair was familiar with them ; images 
of people as they too used to be, with little or no 
allowance made for the lapse of time since they 
were seen ; of these, there must have been 



many in the long routine of gloomy days. To 
stop the clock of busy existence, at the hour 
when we were personally sequestered from it ; 
to suppose mankind stricken motionless, when 
we were brought to a stand-still ; to be unable 
to measure the changes beyond our view, by 
any larger standard than the shrunken one of 
our own uniform and contracted existence, is 
the infirmity of many invalids, and the mental 
unhealthiness of almost all recluses. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 29. 

ITALY— Its lessons to the world. 

What light is shed upon the world, at this 
day, from amidst these rugged Palaces of Flor- 
ence ! Here, open to all comers, in their beau- 
tiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculptors 
are immortal, side by side with Michael Angelo, 
Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Poets, 
Historians, Philosophers — those illustrious men 
of history, beside whom its crowned heads and 
harnessed warriors show so poor and small, and 
are so soon forgotten. Here, the imperishable 
part of noble minds survives, placid and equal, 
when strongholds of assault and defence are 
overthrown ; when the tyranny of the many, or 
the few, or both, is but a tale ; when Pride and 
Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire 
within the stern streets, and among the massive 
Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from 
Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flick- 
ering of war is extinguished and the household 
fires of generations have decayed ; as thousands 
upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife 
and passion of the hour, have faded out of the 
old Squares and public haunts, while the name- 
less Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion 
by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in enduring 
grace and youth. 

« « * -Sfr 4e 

And let us not remember Italy the less re- 
gardfully, because, in every fragment of her 
fallen Temples, and every stone of her deserted 
palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the 
lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an 
end, and that the world is, in all great essentials, 
better, gentler, more forbearing, and more 
hopeful, as it rolls ! — Pictures from Italy, 

INVENTION AND DISCOVER Y-The mea- 
tal property in. 

And so at home he had established himself in 
business, and had invented and executed, and 
worked his way on, until, after a dozen years of 
constant suit and service, he had been enrolled 
in the Great British Legion of Honor, the Legion 
of the Rebuffed of the Circumlocution Office, 
and had been decorated with the Great British 
Order of Merit, the Order of the Disorder of 
the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings. 

" It is much to be regretted," said Clennam, 
" that you ever turned your thoughts that way, 
Mr. Doyce." 

" True, sir, true to a certain extent. But 
what is a man to do? If he has the misfortune 
to strike out something serviceable to the nation, 
he must follow where it leads him." 

•' Hadn't he better let it go ? " asked Clen- 
nam. 

" He can't do it," said Doyce, shaking his head 
with a thoughtful smile. " It's not put into his 
head to be buried ; it's put into his head to be 
made useful. You hold your life on the ccndi- 



INVENTORS 



263 



JEALOUSY 



tion that to the last you shall struggle hard for 

it. Every man holds a discovery on the same 

terms." 

« « * * * 

A composed and unobtrusive self-sustainment 
was noticeable in Daniel Doyce — a calm know- 
ledge that what was true must remain true, in 
spite of all the Barnacles in the family ocean, and 
would be just the truth, and neither more nor 
less, when even that sea had run dry — which 
had aliind of greatness in it, though not of the 
official quality. 

Liit/e Dorrit, Book /., Chap. i6. 

INVENTORS— Their encotiragremeiit by bar- 
baric powers. 

A certain barbaric Power, with valuable pos- 
sessions on the map of the world, had occasion 
for the services of one or two engineers, quick 
in invention and determined in execution ; prac- 
tical men, who could make the men and means 
their ingenuity perceived to be wanted, out of 
the best materials they could find at hand ; and 
who were as bold and fertile in the adaptation 
of such materials to their purpose, as in the con- 
ception of their purpose itself. This Power,' 
being a barbaric one, had no idea of stowing 
away a great national object in a Circumlocution 
Office, as strong wine is hidden from the light 
in a cellar, until its fire and youth are gone, and 
the laborers who worked in the vineyard and 
pressed the grapes are dust. With characteris- 
tic ignorance, it acted on the moet decided and 
energetic notions of How to do it ; and never 
showed the least respect for, or gave any quarter 
to, the great political science How not to do it. 
Indeed, it had a barbarous way of striking the 
latter art and mystery dead, in the person of 
any enlightened subject who practised it. 

Accordingly, the men who were wanted, were 
sought out and found ; which was in itself a 
most uncivilized and irregular way of proceed- 
ing. Being found, they were treated with great 
confidence and honor (which again showed dense 
political ignorance), and were invited to come at 
once and do what they had to do. In short, 
they were regarded as men who meant to do 
it, engaging with other men who meant it to be 
done. — Little Dorrit, Book IL^ Chap. 22. 

INVENTOR— Character of Daniel Doyce. 

He had the power often to be found in union 
with such a character, of explaining what he him- 
self perceived and meant, with the direct force 
and distinctness with which it struck his own 
mind. His manner of demonstration was so or- 
derly and neat and simple, that it was not easy to 
mistake him. There was something almost ludi- 
crous in the complete irreconcilability of a vague 
conventional notion that he must be a visionary 
man, with the precise, sagacious travelling of 
his eye and thumb over the plans, their patient 
stoppages at particular points, their careful re- 
turns to other points whence little channels of 
explanation had to be traced up, and his steady 
manner of making everything good and every- 
thing sound, at each important stage, before 
taking his hearer on a line's breadth further. 
His dismissal of himself from his description, 
was hardly less remarkable. He never said, I 
discovered this adaptation or invented that com- 
bination ; but showed the whole thing as if the 
Divine artificer had made it, and he had hap- 



pened to find it. So modest he was about it, 
such a pleasant touch of respect was mingled 
with his quiet admiration of it, and so calmly 
convinced he was that it was established on 
irrefragable laws. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 8. 

IVY QREEN-The. 

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy greeu, 

That crcepeth o'er ruins old I 

or right clioice loocl are iiit; meals, I ween, 

In his cell eo lone and cold. 

The wall must be cninibled, the stone decayed. 

To pleasure his dainty whim : 

Ana the mouldering dust that years have made 

Is a merry meal for him. 

Creepinjj where no life is seen, 
A rare old plant is the Ivy green. 

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no winga, 

And a staunch old heart has he. 

How closely he twineth, how tight he clings, 

To his friend the huge Oak Tree 1 

And sliiy he traileth along the ground, 

And his leaves he gently waves, 

As he joyously hugs and crawleth round 

The rich mould of dead men's graves. 

Creeping where ^rim death has been, 
A rare old plant is the Ivy green. 

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed. 

And nations have scattered been ; 

But the stout old Ivy shall never fade, 

From its hale and hearty green. 

The brave old plant in its lonely days, 

Shall fasten upon the past: 

For the stateliest building man can raise, 

Is the Ivy's food at last. 

Creeping on. where time has been, 
A rare old plaut is the Ivy green. 

Pickwick, Chap. 6. 



JEAIiOUSY-Of Mrs. Snagsby. 

These various signs and tokens, marked by 
the little woman, are not lost upon her. They 
impel her to say, " Snagsby has something on 
his mind ! " And thus suspicion gets into 
Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. From suspicion 
to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as nat- 
ural and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery 
Lane. And thus jealousy gets into Cooks 
Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was 
always lurking thereabout), it is very active and 
nimble in Mrs. Snagsby's breast — prompting her 
to nocturnal examinations of Mr. Snagsby's 
pockets ; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's 
letters ; to private researches in the Day-Book 
and Ledger, till, cash-box, and iron safe ; to 
watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, 
and a general putting of this and that together 
by the wrong end. 

Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert, 
that the house becomes ghostly with creaking 
boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices 
think somebody may have been murdered 
there, in bygone times. Ouster holds certain 
loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, 
where they were found floating among the or- 
phans), that there is buried money underneath 
the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white 
beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand 
years, because he said the Lord's Prayer back- 
wards. — Bleak House, Chap, 25. 



JEWS 



254 



KETTLE AND CRICKET 



JEWS— Injustice to the. 

" It is not, in Christian countries, with the 
Jews as with other peoples. Men say, ' This is 
a bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This 
is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.' Not 
so with the Jews. Men find the bad among us 
easily enough — among what peoples are the 
bad not easily found ? — but they take the worst 
of us as samples of the best ; they take the low- 
est of us as presentations of the highest ; and 
they say ' All Jews are alike.' If, doing what I 
was content to do here, because I was grateful 
for the past and have small need of money now, 
I had been a Christian, I could have done it, 
compromising no one but my individual self. 
But doing it as a Jew, I could not choose but 
compromise the Jews of all conditions and all 
countries. It is a little hard upon us, but it is 
the truth. I would that all our people remem- 
bered it ! " 
Riah, in Our Mutual Friend^ Book IV, ^ Chap. 9. 

JOKES— Upon public men. 

"George," rejoined Mr. Kenwigs, "a joke is 
a wery good thing — a wery good thing — but 
when that joke is made at the expense of Mrs. 
Kenwigs's feelings, I set my face against it. A 
man in public life expects to be sneered at — 
it is the fault of his elewated sitiwation, and 
not of himself." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 14. 

JURY. ^ 

The whole jury was as a jury of dogs empan- 
elled to try the deer. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 9. 

JUSTICE— In America. 

Poor Justice ! she has been made to wear 
much stranger garments in America than those 
she pines in, in the Capitol. Let us hope that 
she has changed her dress-maker since they 
were fashioned, and that the public sentiment 
of the country did not cut out the clothes she 
hides her lovely figure in just now. 

American Notes, Chap. 8. 

JUDGES OF HORSEFLESH - Judgrea of 

anytMng'. 

" As four heads is better than two, Sammy," 
said Mr. Welle r, as they drove along the Lon- 
don Road in the chaise cart, " and as all this 
here property is a wery great temptation to a 
legal genTm'n, ve'll take a couple o' friends o' 
mine vith us, as '11 be wery soon down upon him 
if he comes anythin' irreg'lar ; two o' them as 
saw you to the Fleet that day. They're the 
wery best judges," added Mr. Weller in a half 
whisper, " the wery best judges of a horse you 
ever know'd." 

" And of a lawyer too ? " inquired Sam. 

" The man as can form a ackerate judgment 
of a animal, can form a ackerate judgment of 
anythin'," replied his father ; so dogmatically, 
that Sam did not attempt to controvert the posi- 
tion. — Pickwick, Chap. 55. 

JURIES— Bumble's opinion of. 

" The jury brought it in, ' Died from exposure 
to the cold, and want of the common necessa- 
ries of life,' didn't they?" 

Mr. Bumble nodded. 

" And they made it a special verdict, I think," 
said the undertaker, " by adding some words to 



the effect, that if the relieving officer had — " 

" Tush ! Foolery ! " interposed the beadle. 
" If the board attended to all the nonsense that 
ignorant jurymen talk, they'd have enough to 
do." 

"Very true," said the undertaker; "they 
would indeed." 

"Juries," said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane 
tightly, as was his wont when working into a 
passion: "juries is ineddicated, vulgar, grovel- 
ling wretches." 

" So they are," said the undertaker. 

" They haven't no more philosophy nor po- 
litical economy about 'em than that," said the 
beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously. 

" No more they have," acquiesced the under- 
taker. 

" I despise 'em," said the beadle, growing very 
red in the face. 

" So do I," rejoined the undertaker. 

" And I only wish we'd a jury of the inde- 
pendent sort, in the house for a week or two," 
said the beadle ; "the rules and regulations of 
the board would soon bring their spirit down 
for 'em." — Oliver Twist, Chap. 4. 

JURYMEN— Hungry. 

" Highly important ; very important, my dear 
sir," replied Perker. " A good, contented, well- 
breakfasted juryman, is a capital thing to get 
hold of. Discontented or hungry jurymen, my 
dear sir, always find for the plaintiff." 

Pickwick, Chap. 34. 



K 



KETTLE— An aggravating. 

Besides, the kettle was aggravating and ob- 
stinate. It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted 
on the top bar ; it wouldn't hear of accommo- 
dating itself kindly to the knobs of coal ; it 
would lean forward with a drunken air, and 
dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on the hearth. 
It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered 
morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, 
resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's fingers, first of all 
turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious 
pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived 
sideways in — down to the very bottom of the 
kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has 
never made half the monstrous resistance to 
coming out of the water, which the lid of that 
kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle, be- 
fore she got it up again. 

It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even 
then ; carrying its handle with an air of defiance, 
and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at 
Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, " 1 won't boil. 
Nothing shall induce me ! " 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 

KETTLE AND CRICKET — The music of 
the. 

The Cricket and the kettle were still keeping 
it up, with a perfect fury of competition. The 
kettle's weak side clearly being, that he didn't 
know when he was beat. 



^ 



■'-i^/M-^ik>3. 










The Song of the Kettle. 



255 



KETTLE 



265 



KISSING 



There was all the excitement of a race about 
it. Chirp, chirp, chirp 1 Cricket a mile ahead. 
Hum, hum, hum — m — m ! Kettle making play 
in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, 
chirp ! Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, 
hum — m — m ! Kettle sticking to him in his 
own way : no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, 
chirp ! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, 
hum — m — m ! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, 
chirp, chirp ! Cricket going in to finish him. 
Hum, hum, hum — m — m — ! Kettle not to be 
finished. Until at last, they got so jumbled 
together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of 
the match, that whether the kettle chirped and 
the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and 
the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and 
both hummed, it would have taken a clearer 
head than yours or mine to have decided with 
anything like certainty. But, of this there is no 
doubt : that the kettle and the Cricket, at one 
and the same moment, and by some power of 
amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, 
each, his fireside song of comfort streaming into 
a ray of the candle that shone out through the 
window, and a long way down the lane. And 
this light, bursting on a certain person who, on 
the instant, approached towards it through the 
gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, liter- 
ally in a twinkling, and cried, " Welcome home, 
old fellow ! Welcome home, my boy ! " 

Cricket on the Hearth^ Chap. i. 

KETTLE— Boiling" a. 

Having deposited my brown beauty in a red 
nook of the hearth, inside the fender, where she 
soon began to sing like an ethereal cricket, dif- 
fusing at the same time odors as of ripe vine- 
yards, spice forests, and orange groves, — I say, 
having stationed my beauty in a place of secu- 
rity and improvement, I introduced myself to 
my guests by shaking hands all round, and giving 
them a hearty welcome. 

Seven Poor Travellers, 

KETTLE— The song: of the. 

Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began 
to spend the evening. Now it was, that the ket- 
tle, growing mellow and musical, began to have 
irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to in- 
dulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in 
the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind 
yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after 
two or three such vain attempts to stifle its con- 
vivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, 
all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so 
cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale 
yet formed the least idea of. 

So plain, too ! Bless you, you might have un- 
derstood it like a book — better than some books 
you and I could name, perhaps. . With its warm 
breath gushing forth in a light cloud which mer- 
rily and gracefully ascended a few feet, then 
hung about the chimney-corner as its own 
domestic Heaven, it trolled its song with that 
Strong energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body 
hummed and stirred upon the fire ; and the lid 
itself, the recent rebellious lid — such is the in- 
fluence of a bright example — performed a sort 
of jig, and clattered like a deaf and dumb young 
cymbal that had never known the use of its 
twin brother. 

That this song of the kettle's was a song of 
invitation and welcome to somebody out of 



doors : to somebody at that moment coming 
on, towards the snug small home and the crisp 
fire : there is no doubt whatever. Mrs. Peery- 
bingle knew it perfectly, as she sat musing be- 
fore the hearth. It's a dark night, sang the ket- 
tle, and the rotten leaves are lying by the way, 
and above, all is mist and darkness, and below, 
all is mire and clay ; and there's only one relief 
in all the sad and murky air ; and I don't know 
that it is one, for it's nothing but a glare ; of 
deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind 
together ; set a brand upon the clouds for being 
guilty of such weather ; and the widest open 
country is a long, dull streak of black ; and 
there's hoar-frost on the finger-post, and thaw 
upon the track ; and the ice it isn't water, and 
the water isn't free ; and you couldn't say that 
anything is what it ought to be ; but he's com- 
ing, coming, coming ! 

And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime 
in ! with a Chirrup, Chirrup, Chirrup, of such 
magnitude, by way of chorus ; with a voice so 
astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as com- 
pared with the kettle (size ! you couldn't see it !), 
that if it had then and there burst itself like an 
over-charged gun, if it had fallen a victim on 
the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty 
pieces, it would have seemed a natural and in- 
evitable consequence, for which it had expressly 
labored. 

The kettle had had the last of its solo per- 
formance. It persevered with undiminished 
ardor: but the Cricket took first fiddle and 
kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped ! Its 
shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through 
the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer 
darkness like a star. There was an indescrib- 
able little trill and tremble in it at its loudest, 
which suggested its being carried off its legs, 
and made to leap again, by its own intense en- 
thusiasm. Yet they went very well together, the 
Cricket and the kettle. The burden of the song 
was still the same ; and louder, louder, loudei 
still, they sang it in their emulation. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. i. 

KISSES— Lips and. 

'* The young lady put up her hand as if to 
caution my uncle not to do so, and said — no, 
she didn't say anything — she smiled. When 
you are looking at a pair of the most delicious 
lips in the world, and see them gently break in- 
to a roguish smile — if you are very near them, 
and nobody else by — you cannot better testify 
your admiration of their beautiful form and 
color than by kissing them at once. My uncle 
did so, and 1 honor him for it." 

Pickwick, Chap. 49. 

KISSING— Mark Tapley's foreig-n manner. 

** When I first caught sight of the church to- 
night, I thought the steeple would have choked 
me, I did. One more ! Won't you ? Not a 
very little one, to finish off with ? " 

" You have had plenty, I am sure," said the 
hostess. " Go along with your foreign man- 
ners !" 

" That ain't foreign, bless you ! " cried Mark. 
" Native as oysters, that is ! One more, because 
it's native ! As a mark of respect for the land 
we live in ! This don't count as between you 
and me, you understand," said Mr. Tapley. " I 
ain't a kissing you now, you'll observe. 1 havo 



KISS 



256 



LANDLORD 



been among the patriots ! I'm a kissin' my 
country ! " — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43. 

KISS— A cold. 

She gave me one cold parting kiss upon my 
forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone porch. 
Bleak House, Chap. 3. 

KITCHEN— Of Clemency Newcome. 

Clemency Newcome, in the meantime, having 
accomplished her mission and lingered in the 
room until she had made herself a party to the 
news, descended to the kitchen, where her coad- 
jutor, Mr. Britain, was regaling after supper, sur- 
rounded by such a plentiful collection of bright 
pot-lids, well-scoured saucepans, burnished din- 
ner covers, gleaming kettles, and other tokens of 
her industrious habits, arranged upon the walls 
and shelves, that he sat as in the centre of a hall 
of mirrors. The majority did not give forth very 
flattering portraits of him, certainly ; nor were 
they by any means unanimous in their reflec- 
tions ; as some made him very long-faced, others 
very broad-faced, some tolerably well-looking, 
others vastly ill-looking, according to their sev- 
eral manners of reflecting : which were as vari- 
ous, in respect of one fact, as those of so many 
kinds of men. But they all agreed that in the 
midst of them sat, quite at his ease, an individual 
with a pipe in his mouth, and a jug of beer at 
his elbow, who nodded condescendingly to 
Clemency, when she stationed herself at the 
same table. — Battle of Life, Chap. 2. 

KITE— ISCr. Dick and his dissemination of 
facts. 

It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, 
to see him with the kite when it was up a great 
height in the air. What he had told me, in his 
room, about his belief in its disseminating the 
statements pasted on it, which were nothing but 
old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have 
been a fancy with him sometimes ; but not 
when he was out, looking up at the kite in the 
sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He 
never looked so serene as he did then. I used 
to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a 
green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in 
the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its 
confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish 
thought) into the skies. As he wound the string 
in, and it came lower and lower down out of the 
beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, 
and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to 
wake gradually out of a dream ; and I remem- 
ber to have seen him take it up, and look about 
him in a lost way, as if they had both come 
down together, so that I pitied him with all my 
heart. — David Copperfeld, Chap. 15. 

KNITTING. 

She sat there, plying her knitting-needles as 
monotonously as an hour-glass might have 
poured out its sands. What the knitting was, I 
don't know, not being learned in that art ; but 
it looked like a net : and as she worked away 
with those Chinese chopsticks of knitting- 
needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill- 
looking enchantress, baulked as yet by the ra- 
diant goodness opposite, but getting ready for a 
cast of her net by-and-by. 

David Copperfeld, Chap. 39. 



LABOR— The evil of Eng-lish. ' ' 

" I don't understand, and I am not under- 
stood. What is to come of such a state of 
things ! " 

He was bending over his work, often asking 
himself the question, when the news began to 
spread that a pestilence had appeared among the 
laborers, and was slaying them by thousands. 
Going forth to look about him, he soon found 
this to be true. The dying and the dead were 
mingled in the close and tainted houses among 
which his life was passed. New poison was 
distilled into the always murky, always sicken- 
ing air. The robust and the weak, old age and 
infancy, the father and the mother, all were 
stricken down alike. 

What means of flight had he ? He remained 
there, where he was, and saw those who were 
dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to 
him, and would have said some prayers to soften it 
his heart in his gloom, but he replied : || 

" O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, 
a man condemned to residence in this foetid 
place, where every sense bestowed upon me for 
my delight becomes a torment, and where every 
minute of my numbered days is new mire added 
to the heap under which I lie oppressed ! But, 
give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a lit- 
tle of its light and air ; give me pure water ; help 
me to be clean ; lighten this heavy atmosphere 
and heavy life, in which our spirits sink, and we 
become the indiff"erent and callous creatures you 
too often see us ; gently and kindly take the 
bodies of those who die among us, out of the 
small room where we grow to be so familiar 
with the awful change that even ITS sanctity is 
lost to us ; and. Teacher, then I will hear— none 
know better than you, how willinglyc— of Him 
whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and 
who had compassion for all human sorrow ! " 
Nobody's Story. Reprinted Pieces, 

LAMP. 

A club-headed little oil wick, dying away in a 
little dungeon of dirty glass. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 59. 

LANDLORD— A New England. 

Our host, who was very attentive and anxious 
to make us comfortable, was a handsome middle- 
aged man, who had come to this town from 
New England, in which part of the country he 
was " raised." When I say that he constantly 
walked in and out of the room with his hat on, 
and stopped to converse in the same free-and- 
easy state, and lay down on our sofa, and pulled 
his newspaper out of his pocket, and read it at 
his ease, I merely mention these traits as charac- 
teristic of the country, — not at all as being mat- 
ter of complaint, or as having been disagreeable 
to me. I should undoubtedly be off'ended by 
such proceedings at home, because there they 
are not the custom, and where they are not, 
they would be impertinences ; but in America, 
the only desire of a good-natured fellow of this 
kind is to treat his guests hospitably and well ; 
and I had no more right, and, I can truly say, 
no more disposition, to measure his conduct by 
our English rule and standard, than I had to 
quarrel with him for not being of the exact 



LANDLORD 



257 



LANDLORD 



Stature which would qualify him for admission 
into the Queen's grenadier guards. As little 
inclination had I to find fault with a funny old 
lady, who was an upper domestic in this estab- 
lishment, and who, when she came to wait upon 
us at any meal, sat herself down comfortably in 
the most convenient chair, and, producing a 
large pin to pick her teeth with, remained per- 
forming that ceremony, and steadfastly regarding 
us meanwhile with much gravity and composure 
(now and then pressing us to eat a little more), 
until it was time to clear away. It was enough 
for us, that whatever we wished done was done 
with great civility and readiness, and a desire 
to oblige, not only here, but everywhere else ; 
and that all our wants were, in general, zeal- 
ously anticipated. — American Notes, Chap. 14. 

LANDLORD— John WiUet, the. 

The sturdy landlord had a large pair of dull, 
fish-like eyes, and the little man who had haz- 
arded the remark about the moon (and who was 
the parish clerk and bell-ringer of Chigwell, a 
village hard by) had little round black shiny 
eyes like beads ; moreover, this little man wore, 
at the knees of his rusty black breeches, and on 
his rusty black coat, and all down his long flap- 
ped waistcoat, little queer buttons like nothing 
except his eyes ; but so like them, that as they 
twinkled and glistened in the light of the fire, 
which shone, too, in his bright shoe-buckles, he 
seemed all eyes, from head to foot, and to be gaz- 
ing with every one of them at the unknown 
customer. No wonder that a man should grow 
restless under such an inspection as this, to 
say nothing of the eyes belonging to short Tom 
Cobb, the general chandler and post-office 
keeper, and long Phil Parkes, the ranger, both 
of whom, infected by the example of their com- 

{)anions, regarded him of the flapped hat no 
ess attentively. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. i. 

LANDLORD— Fancks and the. 

* Mr. Pancks," was the Patriarchal remark, 
"you have been remiss, you have been remiss, sir." 

*' What do you mean by that ? " was the short 
rejoinder. 

The Patriarchal state, always a state of calm- 
ness and composure, was so particularly serene 
that evening as to be provoking. Everybody 
else within the bills of mortality was hot ; but the 
Patriarch was perfectly cool. Everybody was 
thirsty, and the Patriarch was drinking. There 
was a fragrance of limes or lemons about him ; 
and he had made a drink of golden sherry, 
which shone in a large tumbler, as if he were 
drinking the evening sunshine. This was bad, 
but not the worst. The worst was, that with 
his big blue eyes, and his polished head, and his 
long white hair, and his bottle-green legs 
stretched out before him, terminating in his easy 
shoes, easily crossed at the instep, he had a 
radiant appearance of having in his extensive 
benevolence made the drink for the human 
species, while he himself wanted nothing but 
his own milk of human kindness. 

Wherefore, Mr. Pancks said, "What do you 
mean by that?" and put his hair up with both 
hands, in a highly portentous manner. 

" I mean, Mr. Pancks, that you must be 
sharper with the people, sharper with the people, 
much sharper with the people, sir. You don't 
squeeze them. You don't squeeze them. Your 



receipts are not up to the mark. You must 
squeeze them, sir, or our connection will not 
continue to be as satisfactory as I could wish it 
to be, to all parties. All parties." 

" Don't I squeeze 'em ? " retorted Pancks, 
" What else am I made for ? " 

" You are made for nothing else, Mr. Pancks. 
You are made to do your duty, but you don't do 
your duty. You are paid to squeeze, and yon 
must squeeze to pay." The Patriarch so much 
surprised himself by this brilliant turn, after 
Doctor Johnson, which he had not in the least 
expected or intended, that he laughed aloud ; 
and repeated with great satisfaction, as he twirled 
his thumbs and nodded at his youthful portrait, 
" Paid to squeeze, sir, and must squeeze to pay." 

" Oh 1 " said Pancks. " Anything more ? " 

"Yes, sir. It appears to me, Mr. Pancks, 
that you yourself are too often and too much in 
that direction, that direction. I recommend you, 
Mr. Pancks, to dismiss from your attention both 
your own losses and other people's losses, and 
to mind your business, mind your business." 
Little Dornt, Book II., Chap. 32. 

LANDLORD. 

Reputed to be rich in weekly tenants, and to 
get a good quantity of blood out of the stones 
of several unpromising courts and alleys. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 

LANDLORD— Reveng-e of Fancks on the 
hypocrite. 

The population of the Yard were astonished 
at the meeting, for the two powers had never 
been seen there together, within the memory of 
the oldest Bleeding Heart. But they were 
overcome by unutterable amazement, when Mr. 
Pancks, going close up to the most venerable of 
men, and halting in front of the bottle-green 
waistcoat, made a trigger of his right thumb and 
forefinger, applied the same to the brim of the 
broad-brimmed hat, and, with singular smart- 
ness and precision, shot it off the polished head 
as if it had been a large marble. 

Having taken this little liberty with the Patri- 
archal person, Mr. Pancks further astounded 
and attracted the Bleeding Hearts by saying in 
an audible voice, " Now, you sugary swindler, I 
mean to have it out with you ! " 

" What do you pretend to be ? " said Mr. 
Pancks. " What's your moral game ? What 
do you go in for ? Benevolence, ain't it ? You 
benevolent ! " Here Mr. Pancks, apparently 
without the intention of hitting him, but merely 
to relieve his mind and expend his superfluous 
power in wholesome exercise, aimed a blow at 
the bumpy head, which the bumpy head ducked 
to avoid. This singular performance was re- 
peated, to the ever increasing admiration of the 
spectators, at the end of every succeeding article 
of Mr. Pancks's oration. 

" I have discharged myself from your service," 
said Pancks, " that I may tell you what you are. 
You're one of a lot of impostors that are the 
worst lot of all the lots to be met with. Speak- 
ing as a suff"erer by both, I don't know that I 
wouldn't as soon have the Merdle lot as your 
lot. You're a driver in disguise, a screwer by 
deputy, a wringer, and squeezer, and shaver by 
substitute. You^re a philanthropic sneak. 
You're a shabby deceiver 1" 



liANDIiORD 



258 



LA.ITDLOItD 



(The repetition of the performance at this 
point was received with a burst of laughter.) 

" Ask these good people who's the hard man 
here. They'll tell you, Pancks, I believe." 

This was confirmed with cries of " Certainly," 
and " Hear ! " 

" But I tell you, good people — Casby ! This 
mound of meekness, this lump of love, this 
bottle-green smiler, this is your driver ! " said 
Pancks. " If you want to see the man who 
would flay you alive — here he is ! Don't look 
for him in me, at thirty shillings a-week, but 
look for him in Casby, at I don't know how 
much a- year ! " 

" Good ! " cried several voices. " Hear Mr. 
Pancks ! " 

" Hear Mr. Pancks ? " cried that gentleman 
(after repeating the popular performance). 
" Yes, I should think so ! It's almost time to 
hear Mr. Pancks. Mr. Pancks has come down 
into the Yard to-night, on purpose that you 
should hear him. Pancks is only the Works ; 
but here's the Winder ! " 

The audience would have gone over to Mr. 
Pancks, as one man, woman, and child, but for 
the long, grey, silken locks, and the broad-brim- 
med hat. 

" Here's the Stop," said Pancks, " that sets the 
tune to be ground. And there is but one tune, 
and its name is Grind, Grind, Grind ! Here's 
the Proprietor, and here's his Grubber. Why, 
good people, when he comes smoothly spinning 
through the Yard to-night, like a slow-going 
benevolent Humming-Top, and when you come 
about him with your complaints of the Grubber, 
you don't know what a cheat the Proprietor is ! 
What do you think of his showing himself to- 
night, that I may have all the blame on 
Monday ? What do you think of his having 
had me over the coals this very evening, because 
I don't squeeze you enough ? What do you 
think of my being, at the present moment, under 
special orders to squeeze you dry on Monday ? " 

The reply was given in a murmur of " Shame ! " 
and " Shabby ! " 

" Shabby ? " snorted Pancks. " Yes, I should 
think so ! The lot that your Casby belongs to, 
is the shabbiest of all the lots. Setting their 
Grubbers on, at a wretched pittance, to do what 
they're ashamed and afraid to do, and pretend 
not to do, but what they will have done, or give 
a man no rest ! Imposing on you to give their 
Grubbers nothing but blame, and to give them 
nothing but credit ! Why, the worst-looking 
cheat in all this town, who gets the value of 
eighteenpence under false pretences, ain't half 
such a cheat as this sign-post of The Casby's 
Head here ! " 

Cries of *' That's true ! " and " No more he 
ain't!" 

" And see what you get of these fellows, be- 
sides," said Pancks. " See what more you get 
of these precious Humming-Tops, revolving 
among you with such smoothness that you've no 
idea of the pattern painted on 'em, or the little 
window in 'em ! I wish to call your attention 
to myself for a moment. I an't an agreeable 
style of chap, I know that very well." 

The auditory were divided on this point ; its 
more uncompromising members crying, '* No, 
you are not," and its politer materials, "Yes, 
you are." 

"I am, in general," said Mr. Pancks, "a dry. 



uncomfortable, dreary Plodder and Grubber. 
That's your humble servant. There's his full- 
length portrait, painted by himself, and pre- 
sented to you, warranted a likeness ! But what's 
a man to be, with such a man as this for his 
Proprietor ? What can be expected of him ? 
Did anybody ever find boiled mutton and ca- 
per-sauce growing in a cocoa-nut ? " 

None of the Bleeding Hearts ever had, it 
was clear from the alacrity of their response. 

" Well," said Mr. Pancks, "and neither will 
you find in Grubbers like myself, under Propri- 
etors like this, pleasant qualities. I've been a 
Grubber from a boy. What has my life been ? 
Fag and grind, fag and grind, turn the wheel, 
turn the wheel ! I haven't been agreeable to 
myself, and I haven't been likely to be agreeable 
to anybody else. If I was a shilling a week less 
useful in ten years' time, this impostor would 
give me a shilling a week less ; if as useful a 
man could be got at sixpence cheaper, he would 
be taken in my place at sixpence cheaper. Bar- 
gain and sale, bless you ! Fixed principles ! It 
is a mighty fine sign-post, is The Casby's Head," 
said Mr. Pancks, surveying it with anything 
rather than admiration ; " but the real jiame of 
the House is The Sham's Arms. Its motto is. 
Keep the Grubber always at it. Is any gentle- 
man present," said Mr. Pancks, breaking off 
and looking round, " acquainted with the En- 
glish Grammar?" 

Bleeding Heart Yard was shy of claiming 
that acquaintance. 

" It's no matter," said Mr. Pancks. " I mere- 
ly wish to remark that the task this Proprietor 
has set me, has been, never to leave off conjuga- 
ting the Imperative Mood, Present Tense of 
the verb To keep always at -it. Keep thou 
always at it. Let him keep always at it. Keep 
we or do we keep always at it. Keep ye or do 
ye or you keep always at it. Let them keep al- 
ways at it. Here is your benevolent Patriarch 
of a Casby, and there is his golden rule. He is 
uncommonly improving to look at, and I am 
not at all so. He is as sweet as honey, and I 
am as dull as ditchwater. He provides the 
pitch, and I handle it, and it sticks to me. 
Now," said Mr. Pancks, closing upon his late 
Proprietor again, from whom he had withdrawn 
a little for the better display of him to the Yard ; 
" as I am not accustomed to speak in public, 
and as I have made a rather lengthy speech, all 
circumstances considered, I shall bring my ob- 
servations to a close, by requesting you to get 
out of this." 

The Last of the Patriarchs had been so seized 
by assault, and required so much room to catch 
an idea in, and so much more room to turn it 
in, that he had not a word to offer in reply. 
He appeared to be meditating some Patriarchal 
way out of his delicate position, when Mr. 
Pancks, once more suddenly applying the trig- 
ger to his hat, shot it off again with his former 
dexterity. On the preceding occasion, one or 
two of the Bleeding Heart Yarders had obse- 
quiously picked it up and handed it to its own- 
er ; but Mr. Pancks had now so far impressed 
his audience, that the Patriarch had to turn and 
stoop for it himself. 

Quick as lightning. Mr. Pancks, who, for some 
moments had bad his right hand in his coat- 
pocket, whipped out a pair of shears, swooped 
upon the Patriarch behind, and snipped off short 



LANQUAOES 



259 



liATJGH 



the sacred locks that flowed upon his shoulders. 
In a paroxysm of animosity and rapidity, Mr. 
Pancks then caught the broad-brimmed hat out 
of the astounded Patriarch's hand, cut it down 
into a mere stewpan, and fixed it on the Patri- 
arch's head. 

Before the frightful results of this desperate 
action, Mr. Pancks himself recoiled in conster- 
nation. A bare-polled, goggle-eyed, big-headed, 
lumbering personage stood staring at him, not 
in the least impressive, not in the least vener- 
able, who seemed to have started out of the 
earth to ask what was become of Casby. After 
staring at this phantom in return, in silent awe, 
Mr. Pancks threw down his shears, and fled for 
a place of hiding, where he might lie sheltered 
from the consequences of his crime. Mr. Pancks 
deemed it prudent to use all possible despatch 
in making ofl", though he was pursued by noth- 
ing but the sound of laughter in Bleeding Heart 
Yard, rippling through the air, and making it 
ring again. — Little Dorrit, Book Il.y Chap. 32. 

LANGTJAG-ES— An acquaintance with. 

It is with languages as with people — when 
you only know them by sight, you are apt to 
mistake them ; you must be on speaking terms 
before you can be said to have established an 
acquaintance. — Somebody s Luggage^ Chap. 2. 

IjANGUAaE— The diffictdties of a foreign. 

" We have lost our pleasant interpreter (she 
spoke three foreign languages beautifully, 
Arthur ; you have heard her many a time), and 
you must pull me through it. Mother, as well as 
you can. I require a deal of pulling through, 
Arthur," said Mr. Meagles, shaking his head, " a 
deal of pulling through. I stick at everything 
beyond a noun-substantive — and I stick at him, 
if he's at all a tight one." 

Little Dorrit, Book IL., Chap. 9. 

liAUGH— The melodramatic. 

Mr. Swiveller did not wind up with a cheerful 
hilarious laugh, which would have been undoubt- 
edly at variance with his solemn reflections, but 
that, being in a theatrical mood, he merely 
achieved that performance which is designated 
in melodramas " laughing like a fiend" — for it 
seems that your fiends always laugh in syllables, 
and always in three syllables, never more nor less, 
which is a remarkable property in such gentry, 
and one worthy of remembrance. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56. 

liATJGHTER— And g-ood humor. 

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, 
to know a man more blest in a laugh than 
Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like 
to know him too. Introduce him to me, and 
I'll cultivate his acquaintance. 

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of 
things, that while there is infection in disease 
and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so 
irresistibly contagious as laughter and good 
humor. — Christmas Carol, Stave 3. 

LATJGHTER— John Browdie's. 

If there could only have been somebody by, 
to see how the bed-clothes shook, and to see the 
Yorkshireman's great red face and round head 
appear above the sheets, every now and then, 
like some jovial monster coming to the surface 



to breathe, and once more dive do\vn convulsed 
with the laughter which came bursting forth 
afresh — that somebody would have been scarcely 
less amused than John Browdie himself. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 39. 

liATTGHTER— Of Major Bagstock. 

All the way home to his own hotel, the 
Major incessantly said to himself, of himself, 
" Sly, Sir — sly. Sir — de-vil-ish sly ! " And when 
he got there, sat down in a chair, and fell into 
a silent fit of laughter, with which he was some- 
times seized, and which was always particularly 
awful. It held him so long on this occasion 
that the dark servant, who stood watching him 
at a distance, but dared not for his life approach, 
twice or thrice gave him over for lost. His whole 
form, but especially his face and head, dilated 
beyond all former experience ; and presented to 
the dark man's view nothing but a heavy mass 
of indigo. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 10. 



LAUGH. 

A sharp thin laugh, and one little cough at 
the end, like a note of admiration expressed. 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 45. 

" Ha, ha, ha ! " 

Really, for a man who had been out of prac- 
tice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, 
a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, 
long line of brilliant laughs ! 

Christinas Carol, Stave 5. 

LATTGH— An enjoyable. 

Job, rubbing his hands with delight, uttered 
the first sound he had given vent to, since he 
entered the house — a light, noiseless chuckle, 
which seemed to intimate that he enjoyed his 
laugh too much to let any of it escape in sound. 
Pickwick, Chap. 25. 

LATTGH— A sorrowful. 

His laugh had not quite left him either ; but 
it was like the echo of a joyful sound, and that 
is always sorrowful. — Bleak House, Chap. 60. 

LAUGH— An internal chuckle. 

" Ha, ha, ha ! " At this the Serjeant's clerk 
laughed again ; not a noisy, boisterous laugh, 
but a silent, internal chuckle, which Mr. Pick- 
wick disliked to hear. When a man bleeds in- 
wardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself ; but 
when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to 
other people. — Pickwick, Chap. 31. 

LAUGH— Thecontagrionof a (Mr. Boythom). 

Talking thus, they went up-stairs ; and pres- 
ently we heard him in his bedroom thundering 
" Ha, ha, ha !" and again '* Ha, ha, ha ! " until 
the flattest echo in the neighborhood seemed to 
catch the contagion, and to laugh as enjoyingly 
as he did, or as we did when we heard him 
laugh. 

We all conceived a prepossession in his favor ; 
for there was a sterling quality in this laugh, 
and in his vigorous, healthy voice, and in the 
roundness and fulness with which he uttered 
every word he spoke, and in the very fury of his 
superlatives, which seemed to go off like blank 
cannons and hurt nothing. He was not only a 
very handsome old gentleman— upright and 
stalwart as he had been described to us — with a 



LAUNDRESSES 



260 



LAW 



massive grey head, a fine composure of face 
when silent, a figure that might have become 
corpulent, but for his being so continually in 
earnest that he gave it no rest, and a chin that 
might have subsided into a double chin but for 
the vehement emphasis in which it was con- 
stantly required to assist ; but he was such a 
true gentleman in his manner, so chivalrously 
polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much 
sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain 
that he had nothing to hide, but showed him- 
self exactly as he W3^ — incapable (as Richard 
said) of anything on a limited scale, and firing 
away with those blank great guns, because he 
carried no small arms whatever — that really I 
could not help looking at him with equal pleas- 
ure as he sat at dinner, whether he smilingly 
conversed with Ada and me, or was led by Mr. 
Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, 
or threw up his head like a bloodhound, and 
gave out that tremendous " Ha, ha, ha ! " 

Bleak House ^ Chap. 9. 

LAUNDRESSES. 

"I am Mr. Perker's laundress," replied the 
old woman. 

"Ah," said Mr. Pickwick, half aside to Sam, 
" it's a curious circumstance, Sam, that they call 
the old women in these inns, laundresses. I 
wonder what that's for ? " 

" 'Cos they has a mortal awersion to washing 
anythin', I suppose, sir," replied Mr, Weller. 

" I shouldn't wonder," said Mr. Pickwick, 
looking at the old woman, whose appearance, 
as well as the condition of the office, which she 
had by this time opened, indicated a rooted an- 
tipathy to the application of soap and water. 
Pickwick, Chap. 20. 

LAW— The majesty of. 

•' This is a private room, sir. A private room." 

Mr. Grummer shook his head, and replied, 
" No room's private to his Majesty when the 
street door's once passed. That's law. Some 
people -maintains that an Englishman's house is 
his castle. That's gammon." 

The Pickwickians gazed on each otiier with 
wondering eyes. 

"Which is Mr. Tupman?" inquired Mr. 
Grummer. He had an intuitive perception of 
Mr. Pickwick ; he knew him at once. 

" My name's Tupman," said that gentleman. 

" My name's Law," said Mr. Grummer. 

"What?" said Mr. Tupman. 

" Law," replied Mr. Grummer, " law, civil 
power, and exekative ; them's my titles ; here's 
my authority. Blank Tupman, blank Pickvick 
— against the peace of our sufferin Lord the 
King — stattit in that case made and purwided — 
and all regular. I apprehend you, Pickvick ! 
Tupman — the aforesaid." — Pickwick, Chap. 24. 

LAW— An excuse for. 

" It's a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very 
pleasant world. There are bad people in it, 
Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, 
there would be no good lawyers." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56. 

LAW~The delays of the. 

" Tom Jarndyce was often in here. He got 
into a restless habit of strolling about when the 
cause was on, or expected, talking to the little 



shopkeepers, and telling 'em to keep out of 
Chancery, whatever they did, 'For,' says he, 
' it's being ground to bits in a slow mill ; it's 
being roasted at a slow fire ; it's being stung to 
death by single bees ; it's being drowned by 
drops ; it's going mad by grains.' " - . 

Bleak House, Chap. 5. ij 

LAW— The fictions of. 

There are many pleasant fictions of the law 
in constant operation, but there is not one so 
pleasant or practically humorous as thatfwhich 
supposes every man to be of equal value in its 
impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be 
equally attainable, by all men, without the small- 
est reference to the furniture of their pockets. 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 46. 

LAW— The hardship of the. 

" It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. 
It's hard enough to kill him, but it's wery hard 
to spile him, sir." 

Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 2. 

LAW-STATIONER-Sna&sby, the. 

On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, 
that is to say, more particularly in Cook's Court, 
Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby, Law-Stationer, 
pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of 
Cook's Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. 
Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of 
legal process ; in skins and rolls of parchment ; 
in paper — foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white, 
whitey brown, and blotting ; in stamps ; in of- 
fice-quills, pens, ink, and India-rubber, pounce, 
pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and wafers ; in red 
tape and green ferret ; in pocket-books, alma- 
nacs, diaries, and law lists ; in string boxes, 
rulers, inkstands — glass and leaden — penknives, 
scissors, bodkins, and other small office-cutlery ; 
in short, in articles too numerous to mention ; 
ever since he was out of his time, and went into 
partnership with Peffer. On that occasion, 
Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionized by 
the new inscription in fresh paint, Peffer and 
Snagsby, displacing the time-honored and not 
easily to be deciphered legend, Peffer, only. 
For smoke, which is the London ivy, had so 
wreathed itself round Peffer's name, and clung 
to his dwelling-place, that the affectionate para- 
site overpowered the parent tree. 

Peff"er is never seen in Cook's Court now. He 
is not expected there, for he has been recumbent 
this quarter of a century in the churchyard of 
St. Andrew's, Holbom, with the wagons and 
hackney-coaches roaring past him, all the day 
and half the night, like one great dragon. 

Bleak House, Chap. lo. 

LAW— A grame of chess. 

" Ah, cousin ! " said Richard. " Strange, in- 
deed ! all this wasteful, wanton chess-playing is 
very strange. To see that composed Court yes- 
terday jogging on so serenely, and to think of 
the wretchedness of the pieces on the board, 
gave me the headache and the heartache both 
together. My head ached with wondering how 
it happened, if men were neither fools nor ras- 
cals : and my heart ached to think they could 
possibly be either." — Bleak House, Chap. 5. 



LAW— A joke. 

"No," returned the Doctor. 



God forbid 



liAW 



261 



LAWYER'S CLERK 



May she live to laugh at it, as long as she can 
laugh, and then say, with the French wit, ' The 
farce is ended ; draw the curtain.' " 

" The French wit," said Mr. Snitchey, peep- 
ing sharply into his blue bag, " was wrong. Doc- 
tor Jeddler, and your philosophy is altogether 
wrong, depend upon it, as I have often told you. 
Nothing serious in life! What do you call 
law?" 

" A joke," replied the Doctor. 

" Did you ever go to law ? " asked Mr. Snitch- 
ey, looking out of the blue bag. 

" Never," returned the Doctor. 

"If you ever do," said Mr. Snitchey, "per- 
haps you'll alter that opinion." 

Craggs, who seemed to be represented by 
Snitchey, and to be conscious of little or no sep- 
arate existence of personal individuality, offered 
a remark of his own in this place. It involved 
the only idea of which he did not stand seized 
and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey ; 
but he had some partners in it among the wise 
men of the world. 

" It's made a great deal too easy," said Mr. 
Craggs. 

" Law is ? " asked the Doctor. 

"Yes," said Mr. Craggs, "everything is. 
Everything appears to me to be made too easy, 
now-a-days. It's the vice of these times. If 
the world is a joke (I am not prepared to say it 
isn't), it ought to be made a very difficult joke 
to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle, sir, 
as possible. That's the intention. But it's 
being made far too easy. We are oiling the 
gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We 
shall have them beginning to turn, soon, with a 
smooth sound. Whereas they ought to grate 
upon their hinges, sir." — Battle of Life, Chap. i. 

LAW— A married man's opinion of the. 

" That is no excuse," replied Mr. Brownlow, 
" You were present on the occasion of the de- 
struction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the 
more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law ; 
for the law supposes that your wife acts under 
your direction." 

" If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, 
squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, 
" the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of 
the law, the law's a bachelor ; and the worst I 
wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by 
experience — by experience." 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 51. 

LA W— A muddle to Stephen Blackpool. 

" I mun be ridden o' this woman, and I want 
t'know how?" 

" No how," returned Mr. Bounderby. 

" If I do her any hurt, sir, there's a law to 
punish me ? " 

" Of course there is." 

" If I flee from her, there's a law to punish 
me?" 

" Of course there is." 

" If I marry t'oother dear lass, there's a law to 
punish me ? " 

" Of course there is." 

" If I was to live wi' her an not marry her — 
saying such a thing could be, which it never 
could or would, an her so good — there's a law 
to punish me, in every innocent child belonging 
to me ? " 

" Of course there is." 



" Now, a' God's name," said Stephen Black- 
pool, " show me the law to help me ! " 

" Hem ! There's a sanctity in this relation 
of life," said Mr. Bounderby, "and — and — it 
must be kept up." 

" No no, dunnot say that, sir. Tan't kep' up 
that way. Not that way. 'Tis kep' down that 
way. I'm a weaver, I were in a fact'ry when a 
chilt, but I ha' gotten een to see wi' and eem to 
year wi'. I read in th' papers every 'Sizes, 
every Sessions — and you read too — I know it ! 
with dismay — how th' supposed unpossibility o' 
ever getting unchained from one another, at any 
price, on any terms, brings blood upon this < 
land, and brings many common married fok to 
battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us ha* 
this right understood. Mine's a grievous case, 
an I want — if yo will be so good — t'know the 
law that helps me." 

" Now, I tell you what ! " said Mr. Bounder- 
by, putting his hands in his pockets. " There is 
such a law." 

Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and 
never wandering in his attention, gave a nod. 

" But it's not for you at all. It costs money. 
It costs a mint of money." 

" How much might that be ? " Stephen calmly 
asked. 

" Why, you'd have to go to Doctors' Com- 
mons with a suit, and you'd have to go to a 
court of Common Law with a suit, and you'd 
have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, 
and you'd have to get an Act of Parliament to 
enable you to marry again, and it would cost 
you (if it was a case of very plain-sailing), I 
suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred 
pound," said Mr. Bounderby. " Perhaps twice 
the money." 

" There's no other law?" 

" Certainly not." 

" Why then, sir," said Stephen, turning 
white, and motioning with that right hand of 
his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, 
" 'tis a muddle. 'Tis just a muddle a'toogether, 
an the sooner I'm dead the better." 

(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety 
of the people.) 

" Pooh, pooh ! Don't you talk nonsense, my 
good fellow," said Mr. Bounderby, " about 
things you don't understand ; and don't you call 
the Institutions of your country a muddle, or 
you'll get yourself into a real muddle one of 
these fine mornings. The institutions of your 
country are not your piece-work, and the only 
thing you have got to do is, to mind your piece- 
work. You didn't take your wife for fast and for 
loose ; but for better for worse. If she has 
turned out worse — why, all we have got to say 
is, she might have turned out better." 

" 'Tis a muddle," said Stephen, shaking his 
head as he moved to the door. " ' Tis a' 
a muM\Q\"—IIard Times, Book /., Chap. ii. 

LAWYER'S CLERK— Description of a. 

Accordingly they betake themselves to a neigh- 
boring dining-house, of the class known among 
its frequenters by the denomination Slap Rang, 
where the waitress, a bouncing young female of 
forty, is supposed to have made some impression 
on the susceptible Smallweed ; of whom it may 
be remarked that he is a weird changeling, to 
whom years are nothing. He stands precocious- 
ly possessed of centuries of owlish wisdom. If 



LAWYERS' CLERKS 



LAWYERS' INNS. 



he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must 
have lain there in a tail-coat. He has an old, 
old eye, has Smallweed ; and he drinks and 
smokes in a monkeyish way ; aad his neck is 
stiff in his collar ; and he is never to be taken 
in ; and he knows all about it, whatever it is. 
In short, in his bringing up, he has been so 
nursed by Law and Equity that he has become 
a kind of fossil Imp, to account for whose ter- 
restrial existence it is reported at the public 
offices th.xt his father was John Doe, and his 
mother the only female member of the Roe 
family ; also that his first long-clothes were 
made from a blue bag. — Bleak House, Chap. 20. 

LAWYERS' CLERKS- At lunch. 

Into the dining-house, unaffected by the se- 
ductive show in the window, of artificially 
whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant bas- 
kets of peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and 
joints ready for the spit, Mr. Smallweed leads 
the way. They know him there, and defer to 
him. He has his favorite box, he bespeaks all 
the papers, he is down upon bald patriarchs, 
who keep them more than ten minutes after- 
wards. It is of no use trying him with anything 
less than a full-sized " bread," or proposing to 
him any joint in cut, unless it is in the very best 
cut. In the matter of gravy he is adamant. 

Conscious of his elfin power, and submitting 
to his dread experience, Mr. Guppy consults 
him in the choice of that day's banquet : turn- 
ing an appealing look towards him as the wait- 
ress repeats the catalogue of viands, and saying, 
"What diO you take. Chick?" Chick, out of the 
profundity of his artfulness, preferring " veal 
and ham and French beans — And don't you 
forget the stuffing, Polly" (with an unearthly 
cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. 
Jobling give the like order. Three pint pots of 
half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the wait- 
ress returns, bearing what is apparently a model 
of the tower of Babel, but what is really a pile 
of plates and flat tin dish-covers. Mr. Small- 
weed, approving of what is set before him, con- 
veys intelligent benignity into his ancient eye, 
and winks upon her. Then, amidst a constant 
coming in, and going out, and running about, 
and a clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up 
and down of the machine which brings the nice 
cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for 
more nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a 
shrill reckoning of the cost of nice cuts that 
have been disposed of, and a general flush and 
steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a con- 
siderably heated atmosphere in which the soiled 
knives and table-cloths seem to break out spon- 
taneously into eruptions of grease and blotches 
of beer, the legal triumvirate appease their appe- 
tites. — Bleak House, Chap. 20. 

LAWYERS— Their ofllces at nlg-ht. 

It is night in Lincoln's Inn — perplexed and 
troublous valley of the shadow of the law, where 
suitors generally find but little day — and fat 
candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks 
have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs, and 
dispersed. The bell that rings at nine o'clock, 
has ceased its doleful clangor about nothing ; 
the gates are shut ; and the night-porter, a sol- 
emn warder with a mighty power of sleep, 
keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of stair- 
case windows, clogged lamps, like the eyes of 



Equity, bleared Argus with a fathomless pocket 
for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at 
the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and 
there, hazy little patches of candlelight reveal 
where some wise draughtsman and conveyancer 
yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in 
meshes of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of 
about a dozen of sheep to an acre of land. Over 
which bee-like industry, these benefactors of 
their species linger yet, though office-hours be 
past ; that they may give, for every day, some 
good, account at last. — Bleak House, Chap. 32. 

LAWYER— Without brains. 

Mr. Samuel Briggs was a mere machine, a 
sort of self-acting legal walking-stick. 

Tales, Chap. 7. 

LAWYER— His oflace. 

There was a book-case in the room : I saw, 
from the backs of the books, that they were about 
evidence, criminal law, criminal biography, 
trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The 
furniture was all very solid and good, like his 
watch-chain. It had an official look, however, 
and there was nothing merely ornamental to be 
seen. In a corner, was a little table of papers 
with a shaded lamp ; so that he seemed to bring 
the office home with him in that respect too, 
and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to 
work. — Great Expectations, Chap. 26. 

LAWYERS' INNS— Their associations. 

" What do you know of the time when young 
men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms 
and read and read, hour after hour, and night 
after night, till their reason wandered beneath 
their midnight studies ; till their mental powers 
were exhausted ; till morning's light brought no 
freshness or health to them ; and they sank be- 
neath the unnatural devotion of their youthful 
energies to their dry old books ? Coming down 
to a later time, and a very different day, what 
Ao you know of the gradual sinking beneath 
consumption, or the quick wasting of fever — the 
grand results of ' life ' and dissipation — which 
men have undergone in these same rooms? 
How many vain pleaders for mercy, do you think, 
have turned away heart-sick from the lawyer's 
office, to find a resting-place in the Thames or 
a refuge in the gaol ? They are no ordinary 
houses, those. There is not a panel in the old 
wainscoting, but what, if it were endowed with 
the powers of speech and memory, could start 
from the wall, and tell its tale of horror — the 
romance of life, sir, the romance of life ! Com- 
mon-place as they may seem now, I tell you 
they are strange old places, and I would rather 
hear many a legend with a terrific sounding 
name, than the true history of one old set of 
chambers." 

* * * * * 

" Look at them in another light : their most 
common-place and least romantic. What fine 
places of slow torture they are ! Think of the 
needy man who has spent his all, beggared him- 
self, and pinched his friends, to enter the pro- 
fession, which will never yield him a morsel of 
bread. The waiting — the hope — the disappoint- 
ment — the fear — the misery — the poverty — the 
blight on his hopes, and end to his career — the 
suicide perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunk- 
ard. Am I not right about them ? " And the 



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old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in 
delight at having found another point of view 
in which to place his favorite subject. 

Pickwick^ Chap. 21. 

LAWYER-The old. 

Like a dingy London bird among the birds 
at roost in these pleasant fields, where the sheep 
are all made into parchment, the goats into 
wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, 
smoke-dried and faded, dwelling among man- 
kind but not consorting with them, aged with- 
out experience of genial youth, and so long 
used to make his cramped nest in holes and 
corners of human nature that he has forgotten 
its broader and better range, comes sauntering 
home. In the oven made by the hot pavements 
and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer 
than usual ; and he has, in his thirsty mind, his 
mellowed portwine, half a century old. 

Bleak House, Chap. 42. 

liAWYER— Ttdkinghom, the. 

It is let off in sets of chambers now ; and in 
those shrunken fragments of its greatness, law- 
yers lie like maggots in nuts. But its roomy 
staircases, passages, and antechambers still re- 
main ; and even its painted ceilings, where Al- 
legory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, 
sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, 
clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head 
ache — as would seem to be Allegory's object 
always, more or less. Here, among his many 
boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives 
Mr. Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at 
home in country-houses where the great ones 
of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to- 
day, quiet at his table. An Oyster of the old 
school, whom nobody can open. 

Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment 
in the dusk of the present afternoon. Rusty, 
out of date, withdrawing from attention, able to 
afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned 
mahogany and horsehair chairs, not easily lifted, 
obsolete tables with spindle legs and dusty 
baize covers, presentation prints of the holders of 
great titles in the last generation, or the last but 
one, environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey 
carpet muffles the floor where he sits, attended 
by two candles in old-fashioned silver candle- 
sticks, that give a very insufficient light to his 
large room. The titles on the backs of his 
books have retired into the binding ; every- 
thing that can have a lock has got one ; no key 
is visible. Very few loose papers are about. 
He has some manuscript near him, but is not 
referring to it. With the round top of an ink- 
stand, and two broken bits of sealing-wax, he 
is silently and slowly working out whatever 
train of indecision is in his mind. Now, the 
ink-stand top is in the middle ; now, the red 
bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That's 
not it. Mr. Tulkinghorn must gather them all 
up and begin again. 

Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with fore- 
shortened Allegory staring down at his intru- 
sion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and he 
cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once 
his house and office. He keeps no staff; only 
one middle-aged man, usually a little out at el- 
bows, who sits in a high Pew in the hall, and is 
rarely overburdened with business. Mr. Tulk- 
inghorn is not in a common way. He wants 



no clerks. He is a great reservoir of confi- 
dences, not to be so tapped. His clients want 
him ; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires 
to be drawn, are drawn by special pleaders in 
the Temple on mysterious instructions ; fair 
copies that he requires to be made, are made at 
the stationer's, expense being no consideration. 
The middle-aged man in the Pew knows scarce- 
ly more of the affairs of the Peerage, than any 
crossing sweeper in Holborn. 

Bleak House, Chap. 10. 

Whether he be cold and cruel, whether im- 
movable in what he has made his duty, whether 
absorbed in love of power, whether determined 
to have nothing hidden from him in ground 
where he has burrowed among secrets all his 
life, whether he in his heart despises the splen- 
dor of which he is a distant beam,- whether he 
is always treasuring up slights and offences in 
the affability of his gorgeous clients — whether 
he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that 
my Lady had better have five thousand pairs of 
fashionable eyes upon her, in distrustful vigil- 
ance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer, 
with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black 
breeches tied with ribbons at the knees. 

Bleak House, Chap. 29. 

He comes towards them at his usual method- 
ical pace, which is never quickened, never slack- 
ened. He wears his usual expressionless mask — 
if it be a mask — and carries family secrets in 
every limb of his body, and every crease of hjis 
dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to 
the great, or whether he yields them nothing 
beyond the services he sells, is his personal se- 
cret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his 
clients ; he is his own client in that matter, and 
will never betray himself. 

Bleak House, Chap. 12. 

And at her house in town, upon this muddy, 
murky afternoon, presents himself an old fash- 
ioned old gentleman, attorney-at-law, and eke 
solicitor of the High Court of Chancery, who 
has the honor of acting as legal adviser of the 
Dedlocks, and has as many cast-iron boxes in 
his office with that name outside, as if the pres- 
ent baronet were the coin of the conjuror's 
trick, and were constantly being juggled through 
the whole set. Across the hall, and up the 
stairs, and along the passages, and through the 
rooms, which are very brilliant in the season 
and very dismal out of it — Fairy-land to visit, 
but a desert to live in — the old gentleman is 
conducted, by a Mercury in powder, to my 
Lady's presence. 

The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is 
reputed to have made good thrift out of aristocra- 
tic marriage settlements and aristocratic wills, 
and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mys- 
terious halo of family confidences ; of which he is 
known to be the silent depository. There are 
noble Mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired 
glades of parks, among the growing timber and 
the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets 
than walk abroad among men, shut up in the 
breast of Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is 
called the old school— a phrase generally meaning 
any school that seems never to have been young 
—and wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and 
gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of his black 



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264 



LAWYER 



clothes, and of his black stockings, be they silk 
or worsted, is, that they never shine. Mute, 
close, irresponsive to any glancing light, his dress 
is like himself. He never converses, when not 
professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, 
speechless but quite at home, at corners of din- 
ner-tables in great country houses, and near doors 
of drawing-rooms, concerning which the fashion- 
able intelligence is eloquent : where everybody 
knows him, and where half the Peerage stops to 
say " How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn ? " he re- 
ceives these salutations with gravity, and buries 
them along with the rest of his knowledge. 

Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady, and is 
happy to see Mr. Tulkinghorn. There is an air 
of prescription about him which is always agree- 
able to Sir Leicester ; he receives it as a kind of 
tribute. He likes Mr, Tulkinghorn's dress ; there 
is a kind of tribute in that, too. It is eminently 
respectable, and likewise, in a general way, re- 
tainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward 
of the legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cel- 
lar, of the Dedlocks. — Bleak House, Chap, 2. 

LAWYER— The ofla.ce of Sampson Brass. 

In the parlor window of this little habitation, 
which is so close upon the footway that the pas- 
senger who takes the wall brushes the dim glass 
with his coat sleeve — much to its improvement, 
for it is very dirty — in this parlor window, in the 
days of its occupation by Sampson Brass, there 
hung, all awry and slack, and discolored by the 
sun, a curtain of faded green, so threadbare from 
long service as by no means to intercept the view 
of the little dark room, but rather to afford a 
favorable medium through which to observe it 
accurately. There was not much to look at. A 
rickety table, with spare bundles of papers, yel- 
low and ragged from long carriage in the pocket, 
ostentatiously displayed upon its top ; a couple 
of stools set face to face on opposite sides of this 
crazy piece of furniture ; a treacherous old chair 
by the fire-place, whose withered arms had hug- 
ged full many a client and helped to squeeze him 
dry ; a second-hand wig box, used as a deposi- 
tory for blank writs and declarations, and other 
small forms of law, once the sole contents of the 
head which belonged to the wig which belonged 
to the box, as they were now of the box itself ; 
two or three common books of practice ; a jar 
of ink, a pounce box, a stunted hearth-broom, 
a carpet trodden to shreds, but still clinging with 
the tightness of desperation to its tacks — these, 
with the yellow wainscot of the walls, the smoke- 
discolored ceiling, the dust and cobwebs, were 
among the most prominent decorations of the 
office of Mr. Sampson Brass. 

But this was mere still-life, of no greater im- 
portance than the plate, " Brass, Solicitor," upon 
the door, and the bill, " First floor to let to a 
single gentleman," which was tied to the 
knocker. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap, 33. 

LAWYER— The oflace of Vholes. 

The name of Mr. Vholes, preceded by the 
legend Ground Floor, is inscribed upon a 
door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane ; a 
little, pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn, like a 
large dust-bin of two compartments and a 
sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing 
man in his way, and constructed his inn of old 
building materials, which took kindly to the dry 
rot and to dirt and all things decaying and dis- 



mal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with 
congenial shabbiness. Quartered in this dingy 
hatchment commemorative of Symond, are the 
legal bearings of Mr. Vholes. 

Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and 
in situation retired, is squeezed up in a corner, 
and blinks at a dead wall. Three feet of knotty 
floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. 
Vholes's jet black door, in an angle profoundly 
dark on the brightest midsummer morning, and 
encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage 
staircase, against which belated civilians gener- 
ally strike their brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers 
are on so small a scale, that one clerk can open 
the door without getting off" his stool, while the 
other who elbows him at the same desk has 
equal facilities for poking the fire. A smell as 
of unwholesome sheep, blending with the smell 
of must and dust, is referable to the nightly (and 
often daily) consumption of mutton fat in can- 
dles, and to the fretting of parchment forms and 
skins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is 
otherwise stale and close. The place was last 
painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of 
man, and the two chimneys smoke, and there is 
a loose outer surface of soot everywhere, and the 
dull cracked windows in their heavy frames have 
but one piece of character in them, which is a 
determination to be always dirty, and always 
shut, unless coerced. This accounts for the 
phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually 
having a bundle of firewood thrust between its 
jaws in hot weather. — Bleak House, Chap. 39. 

LAWYER— Sally Brass as a. 

In mind, she was of a strong and vigorous 
turn, having from her earliest youth devoted her- 
self with uncommon ardor to the study of the 
law ; not wasting her speculations upon its 
eagle flights, which are rare, but tracing it at- 
tentively through all the shppery and eel-like 
crawlings in which it commonly pursues its 
way. Nor had she, like many persons of great 
intellect, confined herself to theory, or stopped 
short where practical usefulness begins ; inas- 
much as she could engross fair-copy, fill up 
printed forms with perfect accuracy, and, in short, 
transact any ordinary duty of the office down to 
pouncing a skin of parchment or mending a pen. 
It is difficult to understand how, possessed of 
these combined attractions, she should remain 
Miss Brass ; but whether she had steeled her 
heart against mankind, or whether those who 
might have wooed and won her, were deterred 
by fears that, being learned in the law, she might 
have too near her fingers' ends those particular 
statutes which regulate what are familiarly termed 
actions for breach, certain it is that she was still 
in a state of celibacy, and still in daily occupa- 
tion of her old stool opposite to that of her 
brother Sampson. And equally certain it is, by- 
the-way, that between these two stools a great 
many people had come to the ground. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 33. 

Miss Brass, however accurately formed to be 
beloved, was not of the loving kind. That 
amiable virgin, having clung to the skirts of the 
L^w from her earliest youth ; having sustained 
herself by their aid, as it were, in her first run- 
ning alone, and maintained a firm grasp upon 
them ever since ; had passed her life in a kind 
of legal childhood. She had been remarkable, 



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265 



liAWrEB 



when a tender prattler, for an uncommon talent 
in counterfeiting the walk and manner of a 
bailiff ; in which character she had learned to 
tap her little playfellows on the shoulder, and 
to carry them off to imaginary sponging-houses, 
with a correctness of imitation which was the 
surprise and delight of all who witnessed her 
performances, and which was only to be exceeded 
by her exquisite manner of putting an execution 
into her doll's house, and taking an exact inven- 
tory of the chairs and tables. These artless sports 
had naturally soothed and cheered the decline 
of her widowed father : a most exemplary gen- 
tleman (called " old Foxey " by his friends, from 
his extreme sagacity), who encouraged them to 
the utmost, and whose chief regret, on finding 
that he drew near to Houndsditch churchyard, 
was, that his daughter could not take out an at- 
torney's certificate and hold a place upon the 
roll. Filled with this affectionate and touching 
sorrow, he had solemnly confided her to his son 
Sampson, as an invaluable auxiliary ; and from 
the old gentleman's decease to the period of 
which we treat, Miss Sally Brass had been the 
prop and pillar of his business. 

It is obvious that, having devoted herself from 
infancy to this one pursuit and study. Miss Brass 
could know but little of the world, otherwise 
than in connection with the law ; and that, from 
a lady gifted with such high tastes, proficiency 
in those gentler and softer arts in which women 
usually excel, was scarcely to be looked for. 
Miss Sally's accomplishments were all of a mas- 
culine and strictly legal kind. They began 
with the practice of an attorney and they ended 
with it. She was in a state of lawful innocence, 
so to speak. The law had been her nurse. 
And, as bandy-legs or such physical deformities in 
children are held to be the consequence of bad 
nursing, so, if in a mind so beautiful any moral 
twist or bandiness could be found, Miss Sally 
Brass's nurse was alone to blame. 

Old Curiosity Shop^ Chap. 36. 

LAWYER— Jagrgers in coiirt. 

For several reasons, and not least because I 
didn't clearly know what Mr. Jaggers would be 
found to be " at," I replied in the affirmative. 
We dived into the city, and came up in a 
crowded police-court, where a blood-relation 
(in the murderous sense) of the deceased with 
the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at 
the bar, uncomfortably chewing something ; 
while my guardian had a woman under examin- 
ation or cross-examination — I don't know which 
— and was striking her, and the bench, and 
everybody with awe. If anybody, of whatso- 
ever degree, said a word that he didn't approve 
of, he instantly required to have it " taken 
down." If anybody wouldn't make an admis- 
sion, he said, " I'll have it out of you ! " and if 
anybody made an admission, he said, ** Now I 
have got you ! " The magistrates shivered un- 
der a single bite of his finger. Thieves and 
thief-takers hung in dread rapture on his words, 
and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned 
in their direction. Which side he was on, I 
couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be 
grinding the whole place in a mill ; I only know 
that when I stole out on tiptoe, he was not on 
the side of the bench ; for he was making the 
legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite 
convulsive under the table, by his denunciations 



of his conduct as the representative of British 
law and justice in that chair that day. 

Great ExpectationSy Chap. 24. 

LAWYER— Jag-gers at home. 

He cross-examined his very wine when he had 
nothing else in hand. He held it between him- 
self and the candle, tasted the port, rolled it in 
his mouth, swallowed it, looked at his glass 
again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, filled 
again, and cross-examined the glass again, until 
I was as nervous as if I had known the wine to 
be telling him something to my disadvantage. 
Three or four times I feebly thought I would 
start conversation ; but whenever he saw me 
going to ask him anything, he looked at me 
with his glass in his hand, and rolling his wine 
about in his mouth, as if requesting me to take 
notice that it was of no use, for he couldn't 
answer. — Great Expectations, Chap. 29. 

LAWYER— Office of Jaggers. 

Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight 
only, and was a most dismal place ; the skylight, 
eccentrically patched like a broken head, and 
the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they 
had twisted themselves to peep down at me 
through it. There were not so many papers 
about as I should have expected to see ; and 
there were some odd objects about, that I should 
not have expected to see — such as an old rusty 
pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange- 
looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful 
casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and 
twitchy about the nose. Mr. Jaggers's own 
high-backed chair was of deadly-black horse- 
hair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a 
coffin ; and I fancied I could see how he leaned 
back in it, and bit his forefinger at the clients. 
The room was but small, and the clients seemed 
to have had a habit of backing up against the 
wall : the wall, especially opposite to Mr. Jag- 
gers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I re- 
called, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had 
shuffled forth against the wall when I was the 
innocent cause of his being turned out. 

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over 
against Mr. Jaggers's chair, and became fasci- 
nated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I 
called to mind that the clerk had the same air 
of knowing something to everybody else's dis- 
advantage, as his master had. I wondered how 
many other clerks there were up-stairs, and whe- 
ther they all claimed to have the same detrimen- 
tal mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wonder- 
ed what was the history of all the odd litter 
about the room, and how it came there. I wonder- 
ed whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jag- 
gers's family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to 
have had a pair of such ill-looking relations, why 
he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks 
and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a 
place at home. — Great Expectations, Chap. 20. 

LAWYER — His enjoyznent of embarrass- 
xuents. 
Mr. Rugg's enjoyment of embarrassed affairs 
was like a housekeeper's enjoyment in pickling 
and preserving, or a washerwoman's enjoyment 
of a heavy wash, or a dustman's enjoyment of 
an overflowing dust-bin, or any other profes- 
sional enjoyment of a mess in the way of busi* 
viQss.— Little Dorrit, Book II., Chat. 28. 



LAWYER 



liAWYER 



LAWYER— His office, clerks, etc. 

The house was dark and shabby, and the 
greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr. 
Jaggers's room, seemed to have been shuffling up 
and down the staircase for years. In the front 
first floor, a clerk who looked something be- 
tween a publican and a rat-catcher — a large pale, 
puffed, swollen man — was attentively engaged 
with three or four people of shabby appearance, 
whom he treated as unceremoniously as every- 
body seemed to be treated who contributed to 
Mr. Jaggers's coffers. " Getting evidence to- 
gether," said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out, 
" for the Bailey." In the room over that, a lit- 
tle flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair 
(his cropping seemed to have been forgotten 
when he was a puppy) was similarly engaged 
with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr. Wem- 
mick presented to me as a smelter who kept his 
pot always boiling, and who would melt me 
any thing I pleased — and who was in an exces- 
sive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying 
his art on himself In a back room, a high- 
shouldered man with a face-ache tied up in dirty 
flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes 
that bore the appearance of having been waxed, 
was stooping over his work of making fair 
copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen 
for Mr. Jaggers's own use. 

This was all the establishment. When we 
went down-stairs again, Wemmick led me into 
my guardian's room, and said, " This you've 
seen already." 

" Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with 
the twitchy leer upon them caught my sight 
again, " whose likenesses are those ?" 

" These ? " said Wemmick, getting upon a 
chair, and blowing the dust off the horrible 
heads before bringing them down. " These are 
two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours, 
that got us a world of credit. This chap (why 
you must have come down in the night and been 
peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon 
your eyebrow, you old rascal !) murdered his 
master, and considering that he wasn't brought 
up to evidence, didn't plan it badly." _ 

" Is it like him ? " I asked, recoiling from the 
brute, as Wemmick spat upon his eyebrow and 
gave it a rub with his sleeve. 

"Like him? It's himself, you know. The 
cast was made in Newgate, directly after he was 
taken down." 

** Did that other creature come to the same 
end ? " I asked. " He has the same look." 

" You're right," said Wemmick ; " it's the 
genuine look. Much as if one nostril was 
caught up with a horsehair and a little fish-hook. 
Yes, he came to the same end ; quite the natural 
end here, I assure you. He forged wills, this 
blade did, if he didn't also put the supposed 
testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly 
Cove, though " (Mr. Wemmick was again apos- 
trophising), "and you said you could write 
Greek. Yah, Bounceable ! What a liar you 
were. I never met such a liar as you ! " Before 
putting his late friend on his shelf again, Wem- 
mick touched the largest of his mourning rings, 
and said, " Sent out to buy it for me, only the 
day before." 

While he was putting up the other cast and 
coming down from the chair, the thought crossed 
my mind that all his personal jewelry was de- 
rived from like sources. As he had shown no 



ed on the 'j 



diffidence on the subject, I ventured on the 
liberty of asking him the question, when he 
stood before me, dusting his hands. 

" Oh yes," he returned, " these are all gifts of 
that kind. One brings another, you see ; that's 
the way of it. I always take 'em. They're 
curiosities. And they're property. They may 
not be worth much, but, after all, they're pro- 
perty and portable. It don't signify to you, 
with your brilliant look-out, but as to myself, 
my guiding star always is, get hold of portable 
property." — Great Expectations, Chap. 24, 

LAW TERMS— Sam Weller on. 

" Wot do you mean by leavin' it on trust?" 
inquired Sam, waking up a little. " If it ain't 
ready money, were's the use on it ? " 

" It's a law term, that's all," said the cobbler. 

" I don't think that," said Sam, shaking his 
head. " There's wery little trust in that shop. 
Hows'ever, go on." 

" Well," said the cobbler : " when I was going 
to take out a probate of the will, the nieces and 
nevys, who was desperately disappointed at not 
getting all the money, enters a caveat against it." 

" What's that ? " inquired Sam. 

" A legal instrument, which is as much as to 
say, it's no go," replied the cobbler. 

"I see," said Sam, "a .sort of brother-in-law 
o' the have-his carcase." — Pickwick, Chap. 44. 

LAWYER— His individuality. 

The man who was gradually becoming more 
and more etherealized in my eyes every day, and 
about whom a reflected radiance seemed to me 
to beam when he sat erect in Court among his 
papers, like a little lighthouse in a sea of sta- 
tionery. — David Copperfieldy Chap. 33. 

LAWYER— And client. 

" Sir," returns Vholes, always looking at the 
client, as if he were making a lingering meal of 
him with his eyes as well as with his professional 
appetite. — Bleak House, Chap. 39. 

LAWYER— And client. 

Mr. Vholes, and his young client, and several 
blue bags, hastily stuffed out of all regularity of 
form, as the larger sort of serpents are in their 
first gorged state, have returned to the official 
den. Mr. Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man 
of so much respectability ought to be, takes off 
his close black gloves as if he were skinning his 
hands, lifts off" his tight hat as if he were scalp- 
ing himself, and sits down at his desk. The 
client throws his hat and gloves upon the ground 
— tosses them anywhere, without looking after 
them or caring where they go ; flings himself 
into a chair, half-sighing and half-groaning , 
rests his aching head upon his hand, and looks 
the portrait of Young Despair. 

Bleak House, Chap. 39. 

LAWYER— Appearance of Serjeant Snub- 
bin. 

Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was a lantern-faced, 
sallow-complexioned man of about five and 
forty, or — as the novels say — he might be fifty. 
He had that dull-looking boiled eye which is 
often to be seen in the heads of people who 
have applied themselves during many years to a 
weary and laborious course of study ; and which 
would have been sufficient, without the addition- 



LAWYERS 



267 



LAWYERS' CLERKS. 



al eye-glass wliich dangled from a broad black 
riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that 
he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin 
and weak, which was partly attributable to his 
having never devoted much time to its arrange- 
ment, and partly to his having worn for five-and- 
twenty years the forensic wig which hung on a 
block beside him. The marks of hair-powder 
on his coat-collar, and the ill-washed and worse- 
tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed 
that he had not found leisure since he left the 
court to make any alteration in his dress ; while 
the slovenly style of the remainder of his cos- 
tume warranted the inference that his personal 
appearance would not have been very much 
improved if he had. Books of practice, heaps 
of papers, and opened letters, were scattered 
over the table, without any attempt at order or 
arrangement ; the furniture of the room was old 
and rickety ; the doors of the book-case were 
rotting in their hinges ; the dust flew out from 
the carpet in little clouds at every step ; the 
blinds were yellow with age and dirt ; the state 
of everything in the room showed, with a clear- 
ness not to be mistaken, that Mr. Serjeant 
Snubbin was far too much occupied with his pro- 
fessional pursuits to take any great heed or re- 
gard of his personal comforts. 

Pickwick, Chap. 31. 

LAWYERS. 

I despised them, to a man. Frozen-out old 
gardeners in the flower-beds of the heart, I 
took a personal offence against them all. The 
Bench was nothing to me but an insensible 
blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or 
poetry in it, than the Bar of a public-house. 
David Copperfield, Chap. 33. 

LAWYERS— Always inquisitive. 

"We lawyers are always curious, always in- 
quisitive, always picking up odds and ends for 
our patchwork minds, since there is no knowing 
when and where they may fit into some corner." 
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 12. 

LAWYERS AND CLIENT - (Dodson and 

Fogg). 

" Perhaps you would like to call us swindlers, 
sir," said Dodson. " Pray do, sir, if you feel 
disposed ; now pray do, sir." 

" I do," said Mr. Pickwick. *' You are swin- 
dlers." 

" Very good," said Dodson. " You can hear 
down there, I hope, Mr. Wicks?" 

" Oh yes, sir," said Wicks. 

" You had better come up a step or two higher, 
if you can't," added Mr. Fogg. " Go on, sir ; 
do go on. You had better call us thieves, sir ; 
or perhaps you would like to assault one of us. 
Pray do it, sir, if you would : we will not make 
the smallest resistance. Pray do it, sir." 

As Fogg put himself very temptingly within 
the reach of Mr. Pickwick's clenched fist, there 
is little doubt that that gentleman would have 
complied with his earnest entreaty, but for the 
interposition of Sam, who, hearing the dispute, 
emerged from the office, mounted the stairs, and 
seized his master by the arm. 

"You just come avay," said Mr. Weller, 
*' Battledore and shuttlecock's a wery good 
game, vhen you an't the shuttlecock and two 
lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too 



excitin' to be pleasant. Come avay, sir. If you 
want to ease your mind by blowing up some- 
body, come out into the court and blow up me ; 
but it's rayther too expensive work to be carried 
on here." — Pickwick, Chap. 20. 

LAWYERS— And their own prescriptions. 

As Doctors seldom take their own prescrip- 
tions, and Divines do not always practice what 
they preach, so lawy'ers are shy of meddling 
with the Law on their own account : knowing 
it to be an edged tool of uncertain application, 
very expensive in the working, and rather re- 
markable for its properties of close shaving than 
for its always shaving the right person. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 37. 

LAWYERS— Like undertakers. 

We were a little like undertakers, in the 
Commons, as regarded Probate transactions ; 
generally making it a rule to look more or less 
cut up, when we had to deal with clients in 
mourning. In a similar feeling of delicacy, we 
were always blithe and light-hearted with the 
licence clients. — David Copperfield, Chap. 33. 

LAWYERS— Their distrustful nature. 

" Gentlemen of your profession, sir," continued 
Mr. Pickwick, ** see the worst side of human 
nature. All its disputes, all its ill-will and bad 
blood, rise up before you. You know from your 
experience of juries (I mean no disparagement to 
you, or them) how much depends upon effect : and 
you are apt to attribute to others, a desire to use, 
for purposes of deception and self-interest, the 
very instruments which you, in pure honesty and 
honor of purpose, and with a laudable desire to 
do your utmost for your client, know the temper 
and worth of so well, from constantly employing 
them yourselves. I really believe that to this 
circumstance may be attributed the vulgar but 
very general notion of your being, as a body, sus- 
picious, distrustful, and over-cautious. Conscious 
as I am, sir, of the disadvantage of making such a 
declaration to you, under such circumstances, I 
have come here, because I wish you distinctly to 
understand, as my friend Mr, Perker has said, 
that I am innocent of the falsehood laid to my 
charge ; and although I am very well aware of the 
inestimable value of your assistance, sir, I must 
beg to add, that unless you sincerely believe this, 
I would rather be deprived of the aid of your 
talents than have the advantage of them." 

Pickwick, Chap. 31. 

LAWYERS' CLERKS- And offices. 

Scattered about in various holes and corners 
of the Temple, are certain dark and dirty cham- 
bers, in and out of which, all the morning in Vaca- 
tion, and half the evening too in Term time, there 
may be seen constantly hurrying with bundles of 
papers under their arms, and protruding from 
their pockets, an almost uninterrupted succession 
of Lawyers' Clerks. There are several grades of 
Lawyers' Clerks. There is the Articled Clerk, 
who has paid a premium, and is an attorney in 
perspective, who runs a tailor's bill, receives in- 
vitations to parties, knows a family in Gower 
Street, and another in Tavistock Square : who 
goesout of town every Long Vacation to see his 
father, who keeps live horses innumerable ; and 
who is, in short, the very aristocrat of clerks. 
There is the salaried clerk— out of door, or in door. 



liAWTEBS 



268 



liEGISLATOKS 



as the case may be — who devotes the major part 
of his thirty shillings a week to his personal pleas- 
ure and adornment, repairs half price to the Adel- 
phi Theatre at least three times a week, dissi- 
pates majestically at the Cider Cellars afterwards, 
and is a dirty caricature of the fashion which ex- 
pired six months ago. There is the middle-aged 
copying-clerk, with a large family, who is always 
shabby, and often drunk. And there are the office 
lads in their first surtouts, who feel a befitting 
contempt for boys at day-schools ; club as they go 
home at night, for saveloys and porter ; and think 
there's nothing like " life," There are varieties 
of the genus, too numerous to recapitulate, but 
however numerous they may be, they are all to be 
seen, at certain regulated business hours, hurrying 
to and from the places we have just mentioned. 
These sequestered nooks are the public offices 
of the legal profession, where writs are issued, 
judgments signed, declarations filed, and numer- 
ous other ingenious machines put in motion for 
the torture and torment of His Majesty's liege 
subjects, and the comfort and emolument of the 
practitioners of the law. They are, for the most 
part, low-roofed, mouldy rooms, where innumera- 
ble rolls of parchment, which have been perspir- 
ing in secret for the last century, send forth an 
agreeable odor, which is mingled by day with the 
scent of the dry rot, and by night with the various 
exhalations which arise from damp cloaks, fester- 
ing umbrellas, and the coarsest tallow candles. 
Pickwick^ Chap. 31. 

LA"WYERS— Office of Snitchey and Cragrgs. 

Snitchey and Craggs had a snug little office 
on the old Battle Ground, where they drove a 
snug little business, and fought a great many 
small pitched battles for a great many contend- 
ing parties. Though it could hardly be said 
of these conflicts that they were running fights 
— for in truth they generally proceeded at a 
snail's pace — the part the Firm had in them 
came so far within the general denomination, 
that now they took a shot at this Plaintiff, and 
now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now made 
a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and 
now had some light skirmishing among an ir- 
regular body of small debtors, just as the occa- 
sion served, and the enemy happened to pre- 
sent himself. The Gazette was an important 
and profitable feature in some of their fields, as 
in fields of greater renown ; and in most of the 
Actions wherein they showed their generalship, 
it was afterwards observed by the combatants 
that they had had great difficulty in making 
each other out, or in knowing with any degree 
of distinctness what they were about, in conse- 
quence of the vast amount of smoke by which 
they were surrounded. 

The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs 
stood convenient, with an open door down two 
smooth steps, in the market-place ; so that any 
angry farmer inclining towards hot water, might 
tumble into it at once. Their special council- 
chamber and hall of conference was an old back 
room up-stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which 
seemed to be knitting its brows gloomily in the 
consideration of tangled points of law. It was 
furnished with some high-backed leathern chairs, 
garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of 
which, every here and there, two or three had 
fallen out — or had been picked out, perhaps by 
the wandering thumbs and forefingers of be- 



wildered clients. There was a framed print of 
a great judge in it, every curl in whose dreadful 
wig had made a man's hair stand on end. Bales 
of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves, and ta- 
bles ; and round the wainscot tnere were tiers 
of boxes, padlocked and fire-proof, with peo- 
ple's names painted outside, which anxious visi- 
tors felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, 
obliged to spell backwards and forwards, and to 
make anagram? of, while they sat seeming to 
listen to Snitchey and Craggs, without compre- 
hending one word of what they said. 

***** 

In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and 
Craggs made honey for their several hives. 
Here, sometimes, they would linger of a fine 
evening, at the window of their council-cham- 
ber, overlooking the old battle-ground, and 
wonder (but that was generally at assize time, 
when much business had made them sentiment- 
al) at the folly of mankind, who couldn't always 
be at peace with one another and go to law 
comfortably. — Battle of Li fe^ Chap. 2. 

1.EAVE— Taking. 

" My time being rather precious," said Mr. 
Merdle, suddenly getting up, as if he had been 
waiting in the interval for his legs, and they had 
just come. — Little Dorrit^ Book II., Chap. 16. 

LEGACIES-" Hankering after." 

* * * added Mr. Weller, " for it's a rum 
sort o' thing, Sammy, to go a hankerin' arter any- 
body's property, ven you're assistin' 'em in ill- 
ness. It's like helping an outside passenger up, 
ven he's been pitched off a coach, and puttin* 
your hand in his pocket, vile you ask him vith a 
sigh how he finds his-self, Sammy." 

Pickwick, Chap. 55. 

LEGISLATORS— American. 

I was sometimes asked, in my progress through 
other places, whether I had not been very much 
impressed by the heads of the lawmakers at 
Washington ; meaning not their chiefs and lead- 
ers, but literally their individual and personal 
heads, whereon their hair grew, and whereby 
the phrenological character of each legislator 
was expressed ; and I almost as often struck my 
questioner dumb with indignant consternation 
by answering, " No, that I didn't remember be- 
ing at all overcome." As I must, at whatever 
hazard, repeat the avowal here, I will follow it 
up by relating my impressions on this subject 
in as few words as possible. 

In the first place — it may be from some im- 
perfect development of my organ of veneration 
— I do not remember having ever fainted away, 
or having even been moved to tears of joyful 
pride, at sight of any legislative body. I have 
borne the House of Commons like a man, and 
have yielded to no weakness but slumber in the 
House of Lords. I have seen elections for bor- 
ough and county, and have never been impelled 
(no matter which party won) to damage my hat 
by throwing it up into the air in triumph, or to 
crack my voice by shouting forth any reference 
to our Glorious Constitution, to the noble purity 
of our independent voters, or the unimpeacha- 
ble integrity of our independent members. Hav- 
ing withstood such strong attacks upon my for- 
titude, it is possible that I may be of a cold and 
insensible temperament, amounting to iciness, 



LEGS 



269 



lilBRARY 



in such matters ; and therefore ntiy impressions 
of the live pillars of the Capitol at Washington 
must be received vi'ith such grains of allowance 
as this free confession may seem to demand. 
American Notes, Chap. 8. 

LEGS. 

'* You had better step into the marquee, I 
think, sir," said one very stout gentleman, whose 
body and legs looked like half a gigantic roll of 
flannel, elevated on a couple of inflated pillow- 
cases. — Fiikwick, Chap. 7. 

IiEGrS— Simon Tappertit's. 

Mr. Tappertit condescended to take the glass 
from his outstretched hand. Stagg then dropped 
on one knee, and gently smoothed the calves of 
his legs, with an air of humble admiration. 

" That I had but eyes ! " he cried, " to behold 
my captain's symmetrical proportions ! That 
I had but eyes, to look upon these twin invad- 
ers of domestic peace ! " 

Barttahy Rudge, Chap. 8. 

" Have my ears deceived me," said the 'Pren- 
tice, " or do I dream ! am I to thank thee, For- 
tun', or to cuss thee — which ? " 

He gravely descended from his elevation, 
took down his piece of looking-glass, planted it 
against the wall upon the usual bench, twisted 
his head round, and looked closely at his legs. 

" If they're a dream," said Sim, " let sculp- 
tures have such wisions, and chisel *em out 
when they wake. This is reality. Sleep has 
no such limbs as them. Tremble, Willet, and 
despair." — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 31. 

LEGS— Of Tilly Slowboy. 

If I might be allowed to mention a young 
lady's legs, on any terms, I would observe of 
Miss Slowboy's, that there was a fatality about 
them which rendered them singularly liable to 
be grazed ; and that she never effected the 
smallest ascent or descent, without recording the 
circumstance upon them with a notch, as Rob- 
inson Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden 
calendar. But as this might be considered un- 
genteel, I'll think of it. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2. 

LETTER— From Miss Panny Squeers. 

" DOTHEBOYS Hall, Thursday Morning. 

" Sir : — My pa requests me to write to you, 
the doctors considering it doubtful whether he 
will ever recuvver the use of his legs which pre- 
vents his holding a pen. 

" We are in a state of mind beyond everything, 
and my pa is one mask of brooses both blue 
and green likewise two forms are steepled in his 
Goar. We were kimpelled to have him carried 
down into the kitchen where he now lays. You 
will judge from this that he has been brought 
very low. 

" When your nevew that you recommended 
for a teacher had done this to my pa and jumped 
upon his body with his feet and also langwedge 
which I shall not poUewt my pen with describ- 
ing, he assaulted my ma with dreadful violence, 
dashed her to the earth, and drove her back 
comb several inches into her head. A very little 
more and it must have entered her skull. We 
have a medical certifiket that if it had, the tor 
tershell would have affected the brain. 



" Me and my brother were then the victims of 
his feury since which we have suffered very 
much which leads us to the arrowing belief 
that we have received some injury in our insides, 
especially as no marks of violence are visible ex- 
ternally. I am screaming out loud all the time 
I write and so is my brother which takes off my 
attention rather and I hope will excuse mis- 
takes. 

" The monster having sasiated his thirst lor 
blood ran away, taking with him a boy of des- 
perate caracter that he had excited to rebellyon, 
and a garnet ring belonging to my ma, and not 
having been apprehended by the constables is 
supposed to have been took up by some stage- 
coach. My pa begs that if he comes to you the 
ring may be returned, and that you will let the 
thief and assassin go, as if we prosecuted him 
he would only be transported, and if he is let 
go he is sure to be hung before long which will 
save us trouble and be much more satisfactory. 
Hoping to hear from you when convenient 
" I remain yours and cetrer 

" Fanny Squeers. 

" P. S. I pity his ignorance and despise him." 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 15. 

LETTER WRITINO-Peggotty's. 

To these communications Peggotty replied as 
promptly, if not as concisely, as a merchant's 
clerk. Her utmost powers of expression (which 
were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted 
in the attempt to write what she felt on the sub- 
ject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent 
and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that 
had no end, except blots, were inadequate to 
afford her any relief. But the blots were more 
expressive to me than the best composition ; 
for they showed me that Peggotty had been cry- 
ing all over the paper, and what could I have 
desired more? — David Copperjield, Chap. 17. 

LIBERTY— In America. 

"Lord love you, sir," he added, "they're so 
fond of liberty in this part of the globe, that 
they buy her and sell her and carry her to mar- 
ket with *em. They've such a passion for Lib- 
erty, that they can't help taking liberties with 
her. That's what it's owing to." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 17. 

LIBRARY— An unsocial. 

Ugh ! They were black, cold rooms ; and 
seemed to be in mourning, like the inmates of 
the house. The books, precisely matched as to 
size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked 
in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as if they 
had but one idea among them, and that was a 
freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repu- 
diated all familiarities. Mr. Pitt, in bronze on 
the top, with no trace of his celestial origin 
about him, guarded the unattainable treasure 
like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each 
high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, 
preached desolation and decay, as from two pul- 
pits ; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr. 
Dombey and his portrait at one blow, seemed 
fraught with melancholy meditations. 

The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim 
a nearer relationship than anything else there to 
Mr. Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white 
cravat, his heavy, gold watch-chain, and his 
creaking boots. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 5. 



LIES 



270 



LIFE 



LIES. 

" There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," 
said Joe, after some rumination, " namely, that 
lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't 
ought to come, and they come from the father 
of lies, and work round to the same. Don't you 
tell no more of 'em, Pip. That ain't the way to 
get out of being common, old chap." 

4c 4: * 4: « 

*' Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by 
a true friend. Which this to you the true friend 
say. If you can't get to be on common through 
going straight, you'll never get to do it through 
going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, 
Pip, and live well and die happy ! " 

Gj-eat Expectations, Chap. 9. 

LIGHT— At night. 

It shone from what happened to be an old 
oriel window, and being surrounded by the deep 
shadows of overhanging walls, sparkled like a 
Star. Bright and glimmering as the stars above 
their heads, lonely and motionless as they, it 
seemed to claim some kindred with the eternal 
lamps of Heaven, and to bum in fellowship 
with them. — Old Ctiriosity Shop, Chap. 70. 

LIGHT-HOTTSE. 

There the sea was tumbling in, with deep 
sounds, after dark, and the revolving French 
light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly burst- 
ing out and becoming obscured, as if the head 
of a gigantic light-keeper in an anxious state of 
mind were interposed every half-minute, to look 
how it was burning. 

Uficovunercial Traveller, Chap. 7. 

LIGHTS— The street. 

He was passing at nightfall along the Strand, 
and the lamplighter was going on before him, 
under whose hand the street-lamps, blurred by 
the foggy air, burst out one after another, like 
so many blazing sunflowers coming into full- 
blow all at oncQ.— Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 9. 

LIFE— A bargain across a counter. 

It was a fundamental principle of the Grad- 
grind philosophy, that everything was to be paid 
for. Nobody was ever on any account to give 
anybody anything, or render anybody help with- 
out purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, 
and the virtues springing from it were not to be. 
Every inch of the existence of mankind, from 
birth to death, was to be a bargain across a 
counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that 
way, it was not a politico-economical place, and 
we had no business there. 

Hard Times, Book III, Chap. 8. 

LIFE— A burden to Sim Tappertit. 

" I am as well, sir," said Sim, standing up to 
get nearer to his ear, and whispering hoarsely, 
" as any man can be under the aggrawations to 
which I am exposed. My life's a burden to me. 
If it wasn't for wengeance, I'd play at pitch and 
toss with it on the losing hazard." 

Bamaby Budge, Chap. 27. 

LIFE— A chequered. 

We have been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung 
himself, who has imposed on us a debt of obli- 
gation which we fear we can never repay. The 
life of this gentleman has been one of a very 



chequered description : he has undergone trans- 
itions — not from grave to gay, for he never was 
grave — not from lively to severe, for severity 
forms no part of his disposition ; his fluctuations 
have been between poverty in the extreme, and 
poverty modified, or, to use his own emphatic 
language, " between nothing to eat and just half 
enough." He is not, as he forcibly remarks, 
" one of those unfortunate men who, if they 
were to dive under one side of a barge stark- 
naked, would come up on the other with a new 
suit of clothes on, and a ticket for s©up in the 
waistcoat-pocket : " neither is he one of those, 
whose spirit has been broken beyond redemp- 
tion by misfortune and want. He is just one 
of the careless, good-for-nothing, happy fellows, 
who float, cork-like, on the surface, for the world 
to play at hockey with ; knocked here, and there, 
and everywhere : now to the right, then to the 
left, again up in the air, and anon to the bottom, 
but always reappearing and bounding with the 
stream buoyantly and merrily along. 

Sketches {Scenes), Chap. 5. 

LIFE— A contented. 

Our reunited life was more than all that we 
had looked forward to. Content and joy went 
with us as the wheels of the two carts went 
round, and the same stopped with us when the 
two carts stopped. I was as pleased and as 
proud as a Pug-Dog with his muzzle black- 
leaded for an evening party, and his tail extra 
curled by machinery. — Dr. Marigold, 

LIFE— An embodied conundrum. 

When I became enough of a man to find my- 
self an embodied conundrum, I bored myself 
to the last degree by trying to find out what I 
meant. You know that at length I gave it up, 
and declined to guess any more. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 6. 

LIFE— A game. 

" I don't stand up for life in general," he 
added, rubbing his hands and chuckling, "it's 
full of folly ; full of something worse. Profes- 
sions of trust, and confidence, and unselfishness, 
and all that ! Bah, bah, bah ! We see what 
they're worth. But you mustn't laugh at life ; 
you've got a game to play ; a very serious game 
indeed ! Everybody's playing against you, you 
know, and you're playing against them. Oh ! it's 
a very interesting thing. There are deep moves 
upon the board. You must only laugh, Doctor 
Jeddler, when you win — and then not much. He, 
he, he ! And then not much," repeated Snitchey, 
rolling his head and winking his eye, as if he 
would have added, " you may do this instead ! " 

" Well, Alfred ! " cried the Doctor, " what do 
you say now ? " 

" I say, sir," replied Alfred, " that the greatest 
favor you could do me, and yourself too, I am in- 
clined to think, would be to try sometimes to for- 
get this battle-field and others like it in that 
broader battle-field of Life, on which the sun 
looks every day." 

" Really, I'm afraid that wouldn't soften his 
opinions, Mr. Alfred," said Snitchey. " The com- 
batants are very eager and very bitter in that same 
battle of Life. There's a great deal of cutting and 
slashing, and firing into people's heads from be- 
hind. There is terrible treading down, and 
trampling on. It is rather a bad business." 



LIFE 



271 LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY 



•' I believe, Mr. Snitchey," said Alfred, " there 
are quiet victories and struggles, great sacrifices 
of self, and noble acts of heroism, in it — even in 
many of its apparent lightnesses and contradic- 
tions — not the less difficult to achieve, because 
they have no earthly chronicle or audience — done 
every day in nooks and corners, and in little 
households, and in men's and women's hearts — 
any one of which might reconcile the sternest 
man to such a world, and fill him with be- 
lief and hope in it, though two-fourths of its 
people were at war, and another fourth at 
law ; and that's a bold word." 

Battle of Life, Chap. i. 

LIFE— A zuuddle to Stephen Blackpool. 

" I've tried a long time, and 'ta'n't got better. 
But thou'rt right ; 'tmight male folk talk, even 
of thee. Thou hast been that to me, Rachael, 
through so many year : thou hast done me so 
much good, and heartened of me in that cheer- 
ing way, that thy word is a law to me. Ah, lass, 
and a bright good law ! Better than some real 
ones." 

" Never fret about them, Stephen," she an- 
swered quickly, and not without an anxious 
glance at his face. " Let the laws be." 

" Yes," he said, with a slow nod or two. " Let 
'em be. Let everything be. Let all sorts alone. 
*Tis a muddle, and that's aw." 

" Always a muddle ? " said Rachael, with 
another gentle touch upon his arm, as if to re- 
call him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he 
was biting the long ends of his loose necker- 
chief as he walked along. The touch had its 
instantaneous effect. He let them fall, turned 
a smiling face upon her, and said, as he broke 
into a good-humored laugh, " Ay, Rachael, lass, 
awlus a muddle. That's where I stick. I come 
to the muddle many times and agen, and I 
never get beyond it." 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap. lo. 

LIFE— A wasted. 

O ! Better to have no home in which to lay 
his head, than to have a home and dread to go 
to it, through such a cause. He ate and drank, 
for he was exhausted — but he little knew or 
cared what ; and he wandered about in the chill 
rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and 
brooding. 

No word of a new marriage had ever passed 
between them ; but Rachael had taken great 
pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had 
opened his closed heart all this time, on the 
subject of his miseries ; and he»knew very well 
that if he were free to ask her, she would take 
him. He thought of the home he might at that 
moment have been seeking with pleasure and 
pride ; of the different man he might have been 
that night ; of the lightness then in his now 
heavy-laden breast ; of the then restored honor, 
self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. 
He thought of the waste of the best part of his 
life, of the change it made in his character for 
the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of 
his existence, bound hand and foot to a dead 
woman, and tormented by a demon in her 
shape. He thought of Rachael, how young 
when they were first brought together in these 
circumstances, how mature now, how soon to 
grow old. He thought of the number of girls 
and women she had seen marry, how many 



homes with children in them she had seen 
grow up around her, how she had contentedly 
pursued her own lone, quiet path — for him — 
and how he had sometimes seen a shade of mel- 
ancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with 
remorse and despair. He set the picture of her 
up, beside the infamous image of last night ; and 
thought. Could it be, that the whole earthly 
course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, 
was subjugate to such a wretch as that ! 

Filled with these thoughts — so filled that he 
had an unwholesome sense of growing larger, 
of being placed in some new and diseased rela- 
tion towards the objects among which he passed, 
of seeing the iris round • every misty light turn 
red — he went home for shelter. 

Hard Times, Book /,, Chap. 12. 

LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY— Office 
of a. 

The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and 
Life Assurance Company started into existence 
one morning, not an Infant Institution, but a 
Grown-up Company running alone at a great 
pace, and doing business right and left : with a 
" branch " in a first floor over a tailor's at the 
West-end of the town, and main offices in anew 
street in the City, comprising the upper part of 
a spacious house, resplendent in stucco and plate- 
glass, with wire blinds in all the windows, and 
" Anglo-Bengalee " worked into the pattern of 
every one of them. On the door-post was paint- 
ed again in large letters, " Offices of the Anglo- 
Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance 
Company," and on the door was a large brass 
plate with the same inscription ; always kept 
very bright, as courting inquiry ; staring the City 
out of countenance after office hours on working 
days, and all day long on Sundays ; and looking 
bolder than the Bank. Within, the offices were 
newly plastered, newly painted, newly papered, 
newly countered, newly floor-clothed, newly 
tabled, newly chaired, newly fitted up in every 
way, with goods that were substantial andexpen 
sive, and designed (like the company) to last. 
Business ! Look at the green ledgers with red 
backs, like strong cricket-balls beaten flat ; the 
court-guides, directories, day-books, almanacks, 
letter-boxes, weighing-machines for letters, rows 
of fire-buckets for dashing out a conflagration 
in its first spark, and saving the immense wealth 
in notes and bonds belonging to the company ; 
look at the iron safes, the clock, the office seal — 
in its capacious self, security for anything. 
Solidity ! Look at the massive blocks of mar- 
ble in the chimney-pieces, and the gorgeous 
parapet on the top of the house ! Publicity ! 
Why, Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and 
Life Assurance Company is painted on the very 
coal-scuttles. It is repeated at every turn until 
the eyes are dazzled with it, and the head is 
giddy. It is engraved upon the top of all the 
letter-paper, and it makes a scroll-work round 
the seal, and it shines out of the porter's buttons, 
and it is repeated twenty times in every circular 
and public notice wherein one David Crimple, 
Esquire, Secretary and resident Director, takes 
the liberty of inviting your attention to the ac- 
companying statement of the advantages offered 
by the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and 
Life Assurance Company ; and fully proves to 
you that any connection on your part with that 
establishment must result in a perpetual Christ- 



LIFE 



272 



LIFE 



mas Box and constantly increasing Bonus to 
yourself, and that nobody can run any risk by 
the transaction except the office, which, in its 
great liberality, is pretty sure to lose. And this 
David Crimple, Esquire, submits to you (and the 
odds are heavy you believe him), is the best 
guarantee that can reasonably be suggested by 
the Board of Management for its permanence 
and stability. 

* ' * * * 4c 

The Board-room had a Turkey carpet in it, a 
sideboard, a portrait of Tigg Montague, Esquire, 
as chairman ; a veiy imposing chair of office, 
garnished with an ivory hammer and a little 
handbell ; and a long table, set out at intervals 
with sheets of blotting-paper, foolscap, clean 
pens, and inkstands. The chairman having 
taken his seat with great solemnity, the secretary 
supported him on his right hand, and the porter 
stood bolt upright behind them, forming a warm 
background of waistcoat. This was the board ; 
everything else being a light-hearted little fic- 
tion. — Ma7'tin Chuzzleiuit, Chap. 27. 

LIFE— Its declining- years. 

I am not a young woman ; and they do say, 
that as life steals on toward its final close, the 
last short remnant, worthless as it may seem to 
all beside, is dearer to its possessor than all the 
years that have gone before, connected though 
they be with the recollection of old friends long 
since dead, and young ones — children perhaps — 
who have fallen off from, and forgotten one as 
completely as if they had died too. My natu- 
ral term of life cannot be many years longer, 
and should be dear on that account ; but I would 
lay it down without a sigh — with cheerfulness — 
with joy — if what I tell you now were only 
false or imaginary. — Tales, Chap. 6. 

LIFE— Its stations. 

Philosophy would have taught her that the 
degradation was on the side of those who had 
sunk so low as to display such passions habitu- 
ally, and without cause ; but she was too young 
for such consolation, and her honest feeling was 
hurt. May not the complaint, that common peo- 
ple are above their station, often take its rise 
in the fact of z/;zcommon people being below 
theirs? — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 17. 

LIFE— The influence of events. 

That was a memorable day to me, for it made 
great changes in me. But it is the same with 
any life. Imagine one selected day struck out 
of it, and think how different its course would 
have been. Pause, you who read this, and think 
for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, 
of thorns or flowers, that would never have 
bound you, but for the formation of the first 
link on one memorable day. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 9. 

LIFE— Tlie melancholy side of. 

" And my advice to all men is, that if ever they 
become hipped and melancholy from similar 
causes (as very many men do), they look at both 
sides of the question, applying a magnifying 
glass to the best one ; and if they still feel 
tempted to retire \\'ithout leave, that they smoke 
a large pipe and drink a full bottle first, and 
profit by the laudable example of the baron of 
Grogzwig." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6. 



LIFE— The revenges of. 

Tom was far from being sage enough to know, 
that, having been disappointed in one man, it 
would have been a strictly rational and eminently 
wise proceeding to have revenged himself upon 
mankind in general, by mistrusting them one 
and all. Indeed, this piece of justice, though it 
is upheld by the authority of divers profound 
poets and honorable men, bears a nearer resem- 
blance to the justice of that good Vizier in the 
Thousand-and-one Nights, who issues orders for 
the destruction of all the Porters in Bagdad 
because one of that unfortunate fraternity is sup- 
posed to have misconducted himself, than to any 
logical, not to say Christian, system of conduct, 
known to the world in later times. 

Martin Chiizzlewit, CJiap. 36. 

LIFE— The river of. 

He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad 
and deep, which was always silently rolling on 
to a vast undiscovered ocean. It had rolled on, 
ever since the world began. It had changed its 
course sometimes, and turned into new channels, 
leaving its old ways dry and barren ; but it had 
ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow 
until Time should be no more. Against its 
strong, unfathomable stream, nothing made head. 
No living creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle 
of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed 
back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide of 
the river set resistlessly towards it ; and the tide 
never stopped, any more than the earth stops in 
its circling round the sun. 

Nobody's Story. Reprinted Pieces. 

LIFE— The social distinctions of. 

" Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so 
many partings welded together, as I may say, 
and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a white- 
smith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a cop- 
persmith. Diwisions among such must come, 
and must be met as they come. If there's been 
any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me 
is not two figures to be together in London ; nor 
yet anywheres else but what is private and be- 
known, and understood among friends. It ain't 
that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as 
you shall never see me no more in these clothes. 
I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of 
the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You 
won't find half so much fault in me if you think 
of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my 
hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so 
much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever 
wish to see me, you come and put your head in 
at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, 
there, at the old anvil, in the old bunit apron, 
sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I 
hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of 
this at last. And so God bless you, dear old 
Pip, old chap, God bless you ! " 

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that 
there was a simple dignity in him. The fashion 
of his dress could no more come in its way when 
he spoke these words, than it could come in its 
way in Heaven. — Great Expectations, Chap. 27. 

LIFE— The transitions in real and mimic. 

It is the custom on the stage, in all good mur- 
derous melo-dramas, to present the tragic and 
the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the 
layers of red and white in a side of streaky 



LIFE 



273 



LITERATURE 



well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his 
straw bed, weighed down by fetters and mis- 
fortunes ; and, in the next scene, his faithful but 
unconscious squire regales the audience with a 
comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, 
the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless 
baron ; her virtue and her life alike in danger ; 
drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at 
the cost of the other ; and just as our expecta- 
tions are wrought up to the highest pilch, a 
whistle is heard, and we are straightway trans- 
ported to the great hall of the castle, where a 
grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with 
a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all 
sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and 
roam about in company, carolling perpetually. 

Such changes appear absui'd, but they are not 
so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. 
The transitions in real life from well-spread 
boards to death-beds, and from mourning weeds 
to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling ; 
only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive 
lookers-on ; which makes a vast difference. The 
actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind 
to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of 
passion or feeling, which, presented before the 
eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned 
as outrageous and preposterous. 

Oliver Twisty Chap. 17. 

LIPE— To be protected from inxpositions. 

There are degrees in murder. Life must be 
held sacred among us in more ways than one — 
sacred, not merely from the murderous weapon, 
or the subtle poison, or the cruel blow, but 
sacred from preventible diseases, distortions, and 
pains. That is the first great end we have to 
set against this miserable imposition. Physical 
life respected, moral life comes next. What 
will not content a Begging-Letter Writer for a 
week, would educate a score of children for a 
year. 

The Begging-Letter Writer. Reprinted Pieces, 

LIFE— Pancks' pMlosophy of its duties. 

" A fresh night ! " said Arthur. 

" Yes, it's pretty fresh," assented Pancks. 
" As a stranger, you feel the climate more than 
I do, I dare say. Indeed, I haven't got time to 
feel it." 

" You lead such a busy life ? " 

"Yes, I have always some of 'em to look up, 
or something to look after. But I like business," 
said Pancks, getting on a little faster. '" What's 
a man made for ? " 

" For nothing else?" said Clennam. 

Pancks put the counter-question, ** What 
else?" It packed up, in the smallest compass, 
a weight that had rested on Clennam's life ; and 
he made no answer. 

" That's what I ask our weekly tenants," said 
Pancks. " Some of 'em will pull long faces to 
me, and say. Poor as you see us, master, we're 
always grinding, drudging, toiling, every minute 
we're awake. I say to them, What else are you 
made for? It shuts them up. They haven't a 
word to answer. What else are you made for ? 
That clinches it." 

•* Ah dear, dear, dear ! " sighed Clennam. 

" Here am I," said Pancks, pursuing his argu- 
ment with the weekly tenant. " What else do 
you suppose I think I am made for ? Nothing. 
Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give 



me as short a time as you like to bolt my meals 
in, and keep me at it. Keep me always at it, 
I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody 
else always at it. There you are, with the Whole 
Duty of Man in a commercial country." 

When they had walked a little further in si- 
lence, Clennam said : " Have you no taste for 
anything, Mr. Pancks?" 

" What's taste ? " dryly retorted Pancks. 

" Let us say inclinalion," 

" I have an inclination to get money, sir," 
said Pancks, " if you'll show me how." He 
blew off that sound again, and it occurred to 
his companion for the first time that it was his 
way of laughing. He was a singular man in all 
respects ; he might not have been quite in earn- 
est, but that the short, hard, rapid manner in 
which he shot out these cinders of principles, 
as if it were done by mechanical revolvency, 
seemed irreconcilable with banter. 

" You are no great reader, I suppose ? " said 
Clennam. 

" Never read anything but letters and accounts. 
Never collect anything but advertisements rela- 
tive to next of kin. If thafs a taste, I have 
got that."— ZzV//,? Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 

LIFE- Tig-g's idea of. 

" I wish I may die, if this isn't the queerest 
state of existence that we find ourselves forced 
into, without knowing why or wherefore, Mr. 
Pecksniff! Well, never mind ! Moralize as we 
will, the world goes on. As Hamlet says, Hercu- 
les may lay about him with his club in every 
possible direction, but he can't prevent the cats 
from making a most intolerable row on the roofs 
of the houses, or the dogs from being shot in 
the hot weather if they run about the streets 
unmuzzled. Life's a riddle : a most infernally 
hard riddle to guess, Mr. Pecksniff. My own 
opinion is that like that celebrated conundrum, 
'Why's a man in jail like a man out of jail?' 
there's no answer to it. Upon my soul and 
body, it's the queerest sort of thing altogether 
— but there's no use in talking about it. Ha ! 
h.z.V*— Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 4. 

LIKEITESS-A. 

Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of 
a walking-stick shop. — Bleak House, Chap. 27. 

LITERATURE— Mr. Britain's opinion of. 

" You see I've made a good many investiga- 
tions of one sort and another in my time," pur- 
sued Mr. Britain, with the profundity of a sage ; 
" having been always of an inquiring turn of 
mind ; and I've read a good many books about 
the general Rights of things and Wrongs of 
things, for I went into the literary line myself 
when I began life." 

" Did you, though ! " cried the admiring 
Clemency. 

" Yes," said Mr. Britain ; " I was hid for the 
best part of two years behind a bookstall, ready 
to fly out if anybody pocketed a volume ; and 
after that, I was light porter to a stay and man- 
tua-maker, in which capacity I was employed to 
carry about, in oilskin baskets, nothing but de- 
ceptions — which soured my spirits and disturbed 
my confidence in human nature ; and after that, 
I heard a world of discussions in this house, which 
soured my spirits fresh ; and my opinion after 
all is, that, as a safe and comfortable sweetener 



LITTLE PEOPLE 



274 



LOVE 



of the same, and as a pleasant guide through 
life, there's nothing like a nutmeg-grater." 

Battle of Life, Chap. 2. 

LITTLE PEOPLE. 

Mr. and Mrs, Chirrup are the nice little 
couple in question. Mr. Chirrup has the smart- 
ness, and something of the brisk, quick manner 
of a small bird. Mrs. Chirrup is the prettiest of 
all little women, and has the prettiest little figure 
conceivable. She has the neatest little foot, 
and the softest little voice, and the pleasantest 
little smile, and the tidiest little curls, and the 
brightest little eyes, and the quietest little man- 
ner, and is, in short, altogether one of the most 
engaging of all little women, dead or alive. 
She is a condensation of all the domestic vir- 
tues — a pocket edition of the Young Man's Best 
Companion — a little woman at a very high 
pressure, with an amazing quantity of goodness 
and usefulness in an exceedingly small space. 
Little as she is, Mrs. Chirrup might furnish 
forth matter for the moral equipment of a score 
of housewives, six feet high in their stockings 
— if, in the presence of ladies, we may be al- 
lowed the expression — and of corresponding 
robustness. — Sketches of Couples. 

LITTLE PEOPLE-The quaUties of. 

Whether it is that pleasant qualities, being 
packed more closely in small bodies than in 
large, come more readily to hand than when 
they are diffused over a wider space, and have 
to be gathered together for use, we don't know, 
but as a general rule — strengthened, like all 
other rules, by its exceptions — we hold that lit- 
tle people are sprightly and good-natured. The 
more sprightly and good-natured people we 
have, the better ; therefore let us wish well to 
all nice little couples, and hope that they may 
increase and multiply. — Sketches of Couples. 

LONDON— In coxaparison. 

The shabbiness of our English capital, as 
compared with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, 
Milan, Geneva, — almost any important town on 
the Continent of Europe, — I find very striking 
after an absence of any duration in foreign parts. 
London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, 
with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, 
with a bright little town like Bury St. Edmund's. 
London is shabby in contrast with New York, 
with Boston, with Philadelphia. In detail, one 
would say it can rarely fail to be a disappoint- 
ing piece of shabbiness to a stranger from any 
of those places. There is nothing shabbier 
than Drury Lane in Rome itself. The meanness 
of Regent street, set against the great line of 
Boulevards in Paris, is as striking as the abor- 
tive ugliness of Trafalgar Square set against the 
gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. 
London is shabby by daylight, and shabbier by 
gaslight. No Englishman knows what gaslight 
is until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais 
Royal after dark. 

The mass of London people are shabby. The 
absence of distinctive dress has, no doubt, 
something to do with it. The porters of the 
Vintners' Company, the draymen, and the butch- 
ers, are about the only people who wear distinc- 
tive dresses ; and even these do not wear them 
on holidays. We have nothing which for cheap- 
ness, cleanliness, convenience, or picturesque- 



ness, can compare with the belted blouse. As to 
our women ; — next Easter or Whitsuntide look 
at the bonnets at the British Museum or the 
National Galleiy, and think of the pretty white 
French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the Gen 
oese mezzero. 

Uncommercial Traveller , Chap. 23. 

LOST— Search for the. 

There, he mounts a high tower in his mind, 
and looks out far and wide. Many solitary fig- 
ures he perceives, creeping through the streets ; 
many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, 
and lying under haystacks. But the figure that 
he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he 
perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over ; 
and in shadowed places down by the river's 
level ; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drift- 
ing with the tide, more solitary than all, clings 
with a drowning hold on his attention. 

Where is she ? Living or dead, where is she ? 
If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully 
puts it up, it were able, with an enchanted 
power, to bring before him the place where she 
found it, and the night landscape near the cot- 
tage where it covered the little child, would he 
descry her there? On the waste, where the 
brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare ; 
where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in 
which the bricks are made, are being scattered 
by the wind ; where the clay and water are hard 
frozen, and the mill in which the gaunt blind 
horse goes round all day, looks like an instru- 
ment of human torture ; traversing this desert- 
ed, blighted spot, there is a lonely figure, with 
the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and 
driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, 
from all companionship. It is the figure of a 
woman, too ; but it is miserably dressed, and no 
such clothes ever came through the hall, and out 
at the great door, of the Dedlock mansion. 

Bleak House, Chap 56. 

LOOM— The household. 

A weaving country, too ; for in the way-side 
cottages the loom goes wearily, — rattle and click, 
rattle and click, — and, looking in, I see the poor 
weaving peasant, man or woman, bending at the 
work, while the child, working too, turns a lit- 
tle hand-wheel put upon the ground to suit its 
height. An unconscionable monster, the loom, 
in a small dwelling, asserting himself ungener- 
ously as the bread-winner, straddling over the 
children's straw-beds, cramping the family in 
space and air, and making himself generally ob- 
jectionable and tyrannical. He is tributary, too, 
to ugly mills and factories and bleaching- 
grounds, rising out of the sluiced fields in an 
abrupt bare way, disdaining, like himself, to be 
ornamental or accommodating. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 25. 

LOVE— A schoolmistress in. 

Little Miss Peecher, from her little official 
dwelling-house, with its little windows like the 
eyes in needles, and its little doors like the 
covers of school-books, was very observant in- 
deed of the object of her quiet affections. Love, 
though said to be afflicted with blindness, is a 
vigilant watchman, and Miss Peecher kept him 
on double duty over Mr. Bradley Headstone. 
It was not that she was naturally given to play- 
ing the spy — it was not that she was at all 



LOVE 



276 



LOVE 



secret, plotting, or mean — it was simply that she 
loved the irresponsive Bradley with all the 
primitive and homely stock of love that had 
never been examined or certificated out of her. 
If her faithful slate had had the latent qualities 
of sympathetic paper, and its pencil those of in- 
visible ink, many a little treatise calculated to 
astonish the pupils would have come bursting 
through the dry sums in school-time under the 
warming influence of Miss Peecher's bosom. 
***** 

Though all unseen and unsuspected by the 
pupils, Bradley Headstone even pervaded the 
school exercises. Was Geography in question ? 
He would come triumphantly flying out of Ve- 
suvius and ^tna ahead of the lava, and would 
boil unharmed in the hot springs of Iceland, and 
would float majestically down the Ganges and 
the Nile. Did History chronicle a king of 
men? Behold him in pepper-and-salt panta- 
loons, with his watch-guard round his neck. 
Were copies to be written ? In capital B's and 
H's most of the girl's under Miss Peecher's tui- 
tion were half a year ahead of every other letter 
in the alphabet. And Mental Arithmetic, ad- 
ministered by Miss Peecher, often devoted itself 
to providing Bradley Headstone with a wardrobe 
of fabulous extent ; fourscore and four neck-ties 
at two and ninepence-halfpenny, two gross of 
silver watches at four pounds fifteen and six- 
pence, seventy-four black hats at eighteen shil- 
lings ; and many similar superfluities. 

Our Mutual Friend^ Book II., Chap. ir. 

LOVE— A smouldering: fire. 

Love at first sight is a trite expression, quite 
sufficiently discussed ; enough that, in certain 
smouldering natures like this man's, that passion 
leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire 
does in a rage of wind, when other passions, 
but for its mastery, could be held in chains. As 
a multitude of weak, imitative natures are al- 
ways lying by, ready to go mad upon the next 
wrong idea that may be broached — in these 
times, generally some form of tribute to Some- 
body from something that never was done, or, 
if ever done, that was done by Somebody Else 
— so these less ordinary natures may lie by for 
years, ready on the touch of an instant to burst 
into flame. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. ii. 

LOVE- Alienated. 

Into her mind, as into all others contending 
with the great affliction of our mortal nature, 
there had stolen solemn wonderings and hopes, 
arising in the dim world beyond the present life, 
and murmuring, like faint music, of recognition 
in the far-off land between her brother and her 
mother ; of some present consciousness in both 
of her : some love and commiseration for her : 
and some knowledge of her as she went her way 
upon the earth. It was a soothing consolation 
to Florence to give shelter to these thoughts, 
until one day — it was soon after she had last 
seen her father in his own room, late at night — 
the fancy came upon her, that, in weeping for 
his alienated heart, she might stir the spirits of 
the dead against him. Wild, weak, childish, 
as it may have been to think so, and to tremble 
at the half-formed thought, it was the impulse 
of her loving nature ; and from that hour Flor- 
ence strove against the cruel wound in her 



breast, and tried to think of him whose hand 
had made it only with hope. 

Her father did not know — she held to it from 
that time — how much she loved him. She was 
very young, and had no mother, and had never 
learned, by some fault or misfortune, how to ex- 
press to him that she loved him. She would be 
patient, and would try to gain that art in time, 
and win him to a better knowledge of his only 
child. 

This became the purpose of her life. The 
morning sun shone down upon the faded house, 
and found the resolution bright and fresh within 
the bosom of its solitary mistress. Through all 
the duties of the day it animated her ; for Flor- 
ence hoped that the more she knew, and the 
more accomplished she became, the more glad 
he would be when he came to know and like 
her. Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling 
heart and rising tear, whether she was proficient 
enough in anything to surprise him when they 
should become companions. Sometimes she 
tried to think if there were any kind of know- 
ledge that would bespeak his interest more read- 
ily than another. Always — at her books, her 
music, and her work : in her morning walks, 
and in her nightly prayers — she had her engross- 
ing aim in view. Strange study for a child, to 

learn the road to a hard parent's heart ! 
***** 

How few who saw sweet Florence, in her 
spring of womanhood, the modest little queen 
of those small revels, imagined what a load of 
sacred care lay heavy in her breast ! How few 
of those who stiffened in her father's freezing 
atmosphere, suspected what a heap of fiery coals 
was piled upon his head ! 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 24. 

LOVE— The consolations of disappointed. 

It is not in the nature of pure love to burn 
so fiercely and unkindly long. The flame that 
in its grosser composition has the taint of earth, 
may prey upon the breast that gives it shelter ; 
but the sacred fire from heaven is as gentle in the 
heart, as when it rested on the heads of the as- 
sembled twelve, and showed each man his broth- 
er, brightened and unhurt. The image conjured 
up, there soon returned the placid face, the soft- 
ened voice, the loving looks, the quiet trustful- 
ness and peace ; and Florence, though she wept 
still, wept more tranquilly, and courted the re- 
membrance. 

It was not very long before the golden water, 
dancing on the wall, in the old place, at the old 
serene time, had her calm eye fixed upon it as it 
ebbed away. It was not very long before that 
room again knew her, often ; sitting there alone, 
as patient and as mild as when she had watched 
beside the little bed. When any sharp sense of 
its being empty smote upon her, she could kneel 
beside it, and pray God — it was the pouring out 
of her full heart — to let one angel love her and 
remember her. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 18. 

LOVE— TJnreqtiited— Of Toots. 

" Bear a hand and cheer up," said the Cap- 
tain, patting him on the back, •' What ! There's 
more than one sweet creetur in the world ! " 

" Not to me. Captain Gills," replied Mr. Toots 
gravely. " Not to me, I assure you. The state 
of my feelings towards Miss Dombey is cif that 
unspeakable description, that iry heart is a desert 



LOVE 



276 



LOVE 



island, and she lives in it alone. I'm getting 
more used up every day, and I'm proud to be so. 
If you could see my legs when I take my boots 
off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited 
affection is. I have been prescribed bark, but I 
don't take it, for I don't wish to have any tone 
whatever given to my constitution." 

Dotnbey ^ Son, Chap. 48. 

LOVE— Oppressiveness of. 

" Upon my word I — it's a hard thing, Captain 
Gills, not to be able to mention Miss Dombey. 
I really have got such a dreadful load here ! " — 
Mr. Toots pathetically touched his shirt front 
with both hands — " that I feel night and day, 
exactly as if somebody was sitting upon me." 
Dombey ^sr' Son, Chap. 39. 

"You know. Captain Gills, I — I positively 
adore Miss Dombey ; — I — I am perfectly sore 
with loving her ;" the burst with which this 
confession forced itself out of the unhappy Mr. 
Toots, bespoke the vehemence of his feelings ; 
" but what would be the good of my regarding 
her in this manner, if I wasn't truly sorry for 
her feeling pain, whatever was the cause of it. 
Mine an't a selfish affection, you know," said 
Mr. Toots, in the confidence engendered by his 
having been a witness of the Captain's tender- 
ness. " It's the sort of thing with roe, Captain 
Gills, that if I could be run over — or — or tram- 
pled upon — or — or thrown off a very high place 
— or anything of that sort — for Miss Dombey's 
sake, it would be the most delightful thing that 
could happen to me." 

***** 

" As I said before, I really want a friend, and 
should be glad to have your acquaintance. Al- 
though I am very well off," said Mr. Toots, with 
energy, " you can't think what a miserable Beast 
I am. The hollow crowd, you know, when they 
see me with the Chicken, and characters of dis- 
tinction like that, suppose me to be happy ; but 
I'm wretched. I suffer for Miss Dombey, Cap- 
tain Gills. I can't get through my meals ; I 
have no pleasure in my tailor ; I often cry when 
I'm alone. I assure you it'll be a satisfaction to 
me to come back to-morrow, or to come back 
fifty times." — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 32. 

" I beg your pardon. Captain Gills, but you 
don't happen to see anything particular in me, 
do you ? " 

" No, my lad," returned the Captain. " No." 

" Because you know," said Mr. Toots with a 
chuckle, *' I KNOW I'm wasting away. You 
needn't at all mind alluding to that. I — I should 
like it. Burgess and Co. have altered my mea- 
sure, I'm in that state of thinness. It's a gratifi- 
cation to me. I — I'm glad of it. I — I'd a great 
deal rather go into a decline, if I could. I'm a 
mere brute you know, grazing upon the face of 
the earth, Captain Gills." 

***** 

" As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now. 
I might be a Watchman, except that I don't get 
any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind." 
Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 48. 

Mr. Toots, as usual, when he informed her 
and the Captain, on the way back, that now he 
was sure he had no hope, you know, he felt 
more comfortable — at least not exactly more 



comfortable, but more comfortably and com- 
pletely miserable. — Dombey df Son, Chap. 56. 

" Well said, my lad," observed the Captain, 
nodding his head thoughtfully ; " and true. 
Now look'ee here : You've made some observa- 
tions to me, which gives me to understand as 
you admire a certain sweet creetur. Hey?" 

" Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots, gesticulating 
violently with the hand in which he held his hat, 
" Admiration is not the word. Upon my honor, 
you have no conception what my feelings are. 
If I could be dyed black, and made Miss Dom- 
bey's slave, I should consider it a compliment. 
If, at the sacrifice of all my property, I could 
get transmigrated into Miss Dombey's dog — I 
— I really think I should never leave off wag- 
ging my tail. I should be so perfectly happy, 
Captain Gills ! " 

Mr. Toots said it with watery eyes, and pressed 
his hat against his bosom with deep emotion. 

" My lad," returned the Captain, moved to 
compassion, " if you're in arnest — " 

" Captain Gills," cried Mr. Toots, " I'm in 
such a state of mind, and am so dreadfully in 
earnest, that if I could swear to it upon a hot 
piece of iron, or a live coal, or melted lead, or 
burning sealing-wax, or anything of that sort, I 
should be glad to hurt myself, as a relief to my 
feelings." And Mr. Toots looked hurriedly 
about the room, as if for some sufficiently painful 
means of accomplishing his dread purpose. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 39. 

LOVE— An outcast from a parent's. 

" Not an orphan in the wide world can be so 
deserted as the child who is an outcast from a 
living parent's love." — Dombey dr' Son, Chap. 24. 

LOVE— And appetite. 

In my love-lorn condition, my appetite lan- 
guished ; and I was glad of it, for I felt as 
though it would have been an act of perfidy 
towards Dora to have a natural relish for my 
dinner. — David Copperjield, Chap. 28. 

LOVE— And tight boots. 

Within the first week of my passion, I bought 
four sumptuous waistcoats — not for myself: /had 
no pride in them ; for Dora — and took to wear- 
ing straw-colored kid gloves in the streets, and 
laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever 
had. If the boots I wore at that period could 
only be produced and compared with the natu- 
ral size of my feet, they would show what the 
state of my heart was, in a most affecting man- 
ner. — David Copperfield, Chap. 26. 

LOVE— Csnnon Tugrgs in. 

"Walter will return to-morrow," .said Mrs. 
Captain Waters, mournfully breaking silence. 

Mr. Cymon Tuggs sighed like a gust of wind 
through a forest of gooseberry bushes, as he re- 
plied, " Alas, he will," 

" Oh, Cymon ! " resumed Belinda, " the chaste 
delight, the calm happiness, of this one week of 
Platonic love, is too much for me ! " 

Cymon was about to suggest that it was too 
little for him, but he stopped himself, and mur- 
mured unintelligibly. 

" And to think that even this glimpse of hap- 
piness, innocent as it is," exclaimed Belinda, 
" is now to be lost for ever ! " 



LOVE 



277 



LOVE 



" Oh, do not say for ever, Belinda," exclaimed 
the excitable Cymon, as two strongly-defined 
tears chased each other down his pale face — it 
was so long that there was plenty of room for 
a chase— " Do not say for ever ! " 

"I must," replied Belinda.— Ta/^j, Chap. 4. 

LOVE— First— Of David Copperfleld. 

All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled 
my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I 
loved Dora Spenlow to distraction ! 

She was more than human to me. She was a 
Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was — 
anything that no one ever saw, and everything 
that, every body ever wanted. I was swallowed 
up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was 
no pausing on the brink ; no looking down, or 
looking back ; I was gone, headlong, before I 
had sense to say a word to her. 

***** 

What a state of mind I was in ! I was jeal- 
ous of everybody. I couldn't bear the idea of 
anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than I 
did. It was torturing to me to hear them talk of 
occurrences in which I had had no share. When 
a most amiable person, with a highly polished 
bald head, asked me across the dinner-table, 
if that were the first occasion of my seeing the 
grounds, I could have done anything to him 
that was savage and revengeful. 

I don't remember who was there, except Dora. 
I have not the least idea what we had for din- 
ner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I 
dined off Dora entirely, and sent away half-a- 
dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her, I 
talked to her. She had the most delightful lit- 
tle voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest 
and most fascinating little ways that ever led a 
lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was 
rather diminutive altogether. So much the 
more precious, I thought. 

All T know of the rest of the evening is, that 
I heard the empress of my heart sing enchant- 
ing ballads in the French language, generally to 
the eflect that whatever was the matter, we 
ought always to dance, Ta ra la, Ta ra la ! ac- 
companying herself on a glorified instrument, 
resembling a guitar. That I was lost in blissful 
delirium. That I refused refreshment. That 
my soul recoiled from punch particularly. That 
when Miss Murdstone took her into custody and 
led her away, she smiled and gave me her deli- 
cious hand. That I caught a view of myself in 
a mirror, looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic. 
That I retired to bed in a most maudlin state 
of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatu- 
ation. — David Copperfleld, Chap. 26. 

There was dust, I believe. There was a good 
deal of dust, I believe. I have a faint impression 
that Mr. Spenlow remonstrated with me for riding 
in it ; but I knew of none, I was sensible of a 
mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of no- 
thing else. He stood up sometimes, and asked me 
what I thought of the prospect. I said it was de- 
lightful, and I dare say it was ; but it was all Dora 
to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang 
Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wild 
flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud. 
My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me. Miss 
Mills alone could enter into my feelings thor- 
oughly. — David Copperjieldy Chap. 33. 



LOVE-For Littie NeU. 

The people of the village, too, of whom there 
was not one but grew to have a fondness for 
poor Nell ; even among them there was the 
same feeling ; a tenderness towards her — a 
compassionate regard for her, increasing every 
day. The very schoolboys, light-hearted and 
thoughtless as they were, even they cared for her. 
The roughest among them was sorry if he 
missed her in the usual place upon his way to 
school, and would turn out of the path to ask 
for her at the latticed window. If she were 
sitting in the church, they perhaps might peep 
in softly at the open door ; but they never spoke 
to her, unless she rose and went to speak to 
them. Some feeling was abroad which raised 
the child above them all. 

So, when Sunday came. They were all poor 
country people in the church, for the castle in 
which the old family had lived was an empty 
ruin, and there were none but humble folks for 
seven miles around. There, as elsewhere, they 
had an interest in Nell. They would gather 
round her in the porch, before and after service ; 
young children would cluster at her skirts, and 
aged men and women forsake their gossips, to 
give her kindly greeting. None of them, young 
or old, thought of passing the child without a 
friendly word. Many who came from three or 
four miles distant, brought her little presents ; 
the humblest and rudest had good wishes to 
bestow. 

She had sought out the young children whom 
she first saw playing in the churchyard. One 
of these — he who had spoken of his brother 
— was her little favorite and friend, and often 
sat by her side in the church, or climbed with 
her to the tower-top. It was his delight to 
help her, or to fancy that he did so, and 
they soon became close companions. 

It happened, that, as she was reading in the 
old spot by herself one day, this child came 
running in with his eyes full of tears, and after 
holding her from him, and looking at her eagerly 
for a moment, clasped his little arms passion- 
ately about her neck. 

" What now ? " said Nell, soothing him. 
"What is the matter?" 

'• She is not one yet," cried the boy, embracing 
her still more closely. *' No, no. Not yet." 

She looked at him wonderingly, and putting 
his hair back from his face, and kissing him, 
asked what he meant. 

" You must not be one, dear Nell," cried the 
boy, " We can't see them. They never come 
to play with us, or talk to us. Be what you are. 
You are better so." 

" I do not understand you," said the child. 
" Tell me what you mean." 

" Why, they say," replied the boy, looking up 
into her face, " that you will be an Angel before 
the birds sing again. But you won't be, will 
you ? Don't leave us, Nell, though the sky is 
bright. Do not leave us ! " 

The child dropped her head, and put her 
hands before her face. 

•* She cannot bear the thought ! " cried the 
boy, exulting through his tears. " You will not 
go. You know how sorry we should be. Dear 
Nell, tell me that you'll stay among us. Oh ! 
pray, pray, tell me that you will." 

The little creature folded his hands, and 
knelt down at her feet. 



LOVE 



278 



liOVE 



" Only look at me, Nell," said the boy, " and 
tell me that you'll stop, and then I shall know- 
that they are wrong, and will cry no more. 
Won't you say yes, Nell ? " 

Still the drooping head and hidden face, and 
the child quite silent — save for her sobs. 

" After a time," pursued the boy, tiying to 
draw away her hand, " the kind angels will be 
glad to think that you are not among them, and 
that you stayed here to be with us. Willie went 
away, to join them ; but if he had known how 
I should miss him in our little bed at night, he 
never would have left me, I am sure." 

Yet the child could make him no answer, and 
sobbed as though her heart were bursting. 

" Why would you go, dear Nell ? I know 
you would not be happy when you heard that 
we were crying for your loss. They say that 
Willie is in Heaven now, and that it's always 
summer there, and yet I'm sure he grieves when 
I lie down upon his garden bed, and he cannot 
turn to kiss me. But if you do go, Nell," said 
the boy, caressing her, and pressing his face to 
hers, " be fond of him for my sake. Tell him 
how I love him still, and how much I loved 
you ; and when I think that you two are to- 
gether, and are happy, I'll try to bear it, and 
never give you pain by doing wrong — indeed I 
never will ! " 

The child suffered him to move her hands, 
and put them round his neck. There was a 
tearful silence, but it was not long before she 
looked upon him with a smile, and promised 
him, in a very gentle, quiet voice, that she would 
stay, and be his friend, as long as Heaven would 
let her. He clapped his hands for joy, and 
thanked her many times ; and being charged to 
tell no person what had passed between them, 
gave her an earnest promise that he never would. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 55. 

LOVE— Its sorcery. 

Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic 
art that still remains to us, the magic of devoted, 
deathless love, Nature had been the mistress of 
his study ; and from her teaching all the won- 
der came. 

The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were 
discolored, walls blotched and bare of plaster 
here and there, high crevices unstopped and 
widening every day, beams mouldering and tend- 
ing downward. The Blind Girl never knew that 
iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling 
off ; the size, and shape, and true proportion of 
the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl 
never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earth- 
enware were on the board ; that sorrow and 
faint-heartedness were in the house ; that Caleb's 
scanty hairs were turning grayer and more gray, 
before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never 
knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and un- 
interested — never knew that Tackleton was 
Tackleton, in short ; but lived in the belief of 
an eccentric humorist who loved to have his jest 
with them, and who, while he was the Guardian 
Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one w^ord 
of thankfulness. 

And all was Caleb's doing ; all the doing of 
her simple father ! But he too had a Cricket on 
his Hearth ; and listening sadly to its music 
when the motherless Blind Child was very young, 
that Spirit had inspired him with the thought 
that even her great deprivation might be almost 



changed into a blessing, and the girl made happy 
by these little means. For all the Cricket tribe 
are potent Spirits, even though the people who 
hold converse with them do not know it (which 
is frequently the case), and there are not in the 
unseen world voices more gentle and more true, 
that may be so implicitly relied on, or that are 
so certain to give none but tenderest counsel, 
as the Voices in which the Spirits of the Fire- 
side and the Hearth address themselves to hu- 
man kind. — Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2. 

LOVE-MAKING— Pickwick's advice on. 

" I should feel very much obliged to you for 
any advice, sir," said Mr. Magnus, taking another 
look at the clock ; the hand of which was verg- 
ing on the five minutes past. 

" Well, sir," said Mr. Pickwick, with the pro- 
found solemnity with which that great man could, 
when he pleased, render his remarks so deeply 
impressive : " I should commence, sir, with a 
tribute to the lady's beauty and excellent quali- 
ties ; from them, sir, I should diverge to my own 
unworthiness." 

" Very good," said Mr. Magnus. 

" Unworthiness for her only, mind, sir," re- 
sumed Mr. Pickwick ; ** for to show that I was 
not wholly unworthy, sir, I should take a brief 
review of my past life, and present condition. I , -, 
should argue, by analogy, that to anybody else, I 1 1 
must be a very desirable object. I should then '1 
expatiate on the warmth of my love, and the 
depth of my devotion. Perhaps I might then 
be tempted to seize her hand." 

" Yes, I see," said Mr. Magnus : " that would 
be a very great point." 

" I should then, sir," continued Mr. Pickwick, 
growing warmer as the subject presented itself 
in more glowing colors before him : " I should 
then, sir, come to the plain and simple question, 
' Will you have me ? ' I think I am justified in 
assuming that, upon this, she would turn away 
her head." 

" You think that may be taken for granted ? " 
said Mr. Magnus ; " because, if she did not do 
that at the right place, it would be embarrass- 
ing." 

" I think she would," said Mr. Pickwick. J | 
" Upon this, sir, I should squeeze her hand, and • | 
I think — I think, Mr. Magnus — that after I had 
done that, supposing there was no refusal, I 
should gently draw away the handkerchief, which 
my slight knowledge of human nature leads me 
to suppose the lady would be applying to her 
eyes at the moment, and steal a respectful kiss. 
I think I should kiss her, Mr. Magnus ; and at 
this particular point, I am decidedly of opinion 
that if the lady were going to take me at all, 
she would murmur into my ears a bashful ac- 
ceptance." — Pickwick, Chap. 24. 

LOVE— John Chivery in. 

She preceded the visitor into a little parlor 
behind the shop, with a little window in it com- 
manding a very little dull back-yard. In this 
yard, a wash of sheets and table-cloths tried (in 
vain, for want of air) to get itself dried on a 
line or two ; and among those flapping articles 
was, sitting in a chair, like the last mariner left 
alive on the deck of a damp ship without the 
power of furling the sails, a little woe begone 
young man. 

" Our John," said Mrs. Chivery. 



liOVE 



279 



LOVE 



Not to be deficient in interest, Clennam asked 
what he might be doing there? 

" It's the only change he takes," said Mrs. 
Chivery, shaking her head afresh. '* He won't 
go out, even in the back yard, when there's no 
linen ; but when there's linen to keep the neigh- 
bors' eyes off, he'll sit there, hours. Hours he 
will. Says he feels as if it was groves ! " Mrs. 
Chivery shook her head again, put her apron in 
a motherly way to her eyes, and reconducted her 
visitor into the regions of the business. 

" Please to take a seat, sir," said Mrs. Chivery. 
" Miss Dorrit is the matter with Our John, sir ; 
he's a breaking his heart for her, and I would 
wish to take the liberty to ask how it's to be 
made good to his parents when bust ? " 

Little Dorrit, Book /, Chap. 22. 

liOVE— Of Kutli and Jolm "Westlock. 

Ah, but it would have been a good thing to 
have had a coat of invisibility, wherein to have 
watched little Ruth, when she was left to herself 
in John Westlock's chambers, and John and her 
brother were talking thus, over their wine ! The 
gentle way in which she tried to get up a little 
conversation with the fiery-faced matron in the 
crunched bonnet, who was .waiting to attend her ; 
after making a desperate rally in regard of her 
dress, and attiring herself in a washed-out yel- 
low gown with sprigs of the same upon it, so 
that it looked like a tesselated work of pats of 
butter. That would have been pleasant. The 
grim and griffin-like inflexibility with which the 
fiery-faced matron repelled these engaging ad- 
vances, as proceeding from a hostile and danger- 
ous power, who could have no business there, 
unless it were to deprive her of a customer, or 
suggest what became of the self-consuming tea 
and sugar, and other general trifles. That would 
have been agreeable. The bashful, winning, 
glorious curiosity, with which little Ruth, when 
fiery face was gone, peeped into the books and 
nick-nacks that were lying about, and had a 
particular interest in some delicate paper-matches 
on the chimney-piece, wondering who could have 
made them. That would have been worth see- 
ing. The faltering hand with which she tied 
those flowers together ; with which, almost blush- 
ing at her own fair self as imaged in the glass, 
she arranged them in her breast, and looking at 
them with her head aside, now half resolved to 
take them out again, now half resolved to leave 
them where they were. That would have been 
delightful ! 

John seemed to think it all delightful : for, 
coming in with Tom to tea, he took his seat be- 
side her like a man enchanted. And when the 
tea-service had been removed, and Tom, sitting 
down at the piano, became absorbed in some of 
his old organ tunes, he was still beside her at 
the open window, looking out upon the twi- 
light. 

There is little enough to see in Furnival's 
Inn. It is a shady, quiet place, echoing to the 
footsteps of the stragglers who have business 
there ; and rather monotonous and gloomy on 
summer evenings. What gave it such a charm 
to them, that they remained at the window as 
unconscious of the flight of time as Tom himsdf, 
the dreamer, while the melodies which had so 
often soothed his spirit, were hovering again 
about him ? What power infused into the fad- 
ing light, the gathering darkness ; the stars that 



here and there appeared ; the evening air ; the 
City's hum and stir ; the very chiming of the old 
church clocks ; such exquisite enthralment, that 
the divinest regions of the earth spread out be- 
fore their eyes could not have held them captive 
in a stronger chain ? 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 45. 

Brilliantly the Temple Fountain sparkled in 
the sun, and laughingly its liquid music played, 
and merrily the idle drops of water danced and 
danced, and peeping out in sport among the 
trees, plunged lightly down to hide themselves, 
as little Ruth and her companion came towards 
it. 

What a good old place it was ! John said, 
with quite an earnest affection for it. 

•* A pleasant place, indeed," said little Ruth. 
'* So shady ! " 

Oh, wicked little Ruth. 

They came to a stop when John began to 
praise it. The day was exquisite ; and stopping 
at all, it was quite natural — nothing could be 
more so — that they should glance down Garden 
Court ; because Garden Court ends in the Gar- 
den, and the Garden ends in the River, and that 
glimpse is very bright and fresh and shining on 
a summer's day. Then, oh little Ruth, why not 
look boldly at it ? Why fit that tiny, precious, 
blessed little foot into the cracked corner of an 
insensible old flagstone in the pavement ; and 
be so very anxious to adjust it to a nicety ? 

If the Fiery-faced matron in the crunched 
bonnet could have seen them as they walked 
away, how many years' purchase might Fiery 
Face have been disposed to take for her situa- 
tion in Furnival's Inn as laundress to Mr. West- 
lock? 

They went away, but not through London's 
streets ! Through some enchanted city, where 
the pavements were of air ; where all the rough 
sounds of a stirring town were softened into 
gentle music ; where everything was happy ; 
where there was no distance, and no time. 
There were two good-tempered burly draymen 
letting down big butts of beer into a cellar, 
somewhere ; and when John helped her — almost 
lifted her — the lightest, easiest, neatest thing 
you ever saw — across the rope, they said he 
owed them a good turn for giving him the 
chance. Celestial draymen ! 

Green pastures in the summer tide, deep lit- 
tered straw-yards in the winter, no stint of corn 
and clover, ever, to that noble horse who would 
dance on the pavement with a gig behind him, 
and who frightened her, and made her clasp his 
arm with both hands (both hands : meeting one 
upon the other, so endearingly !), and caused her 
to implore him to take refuge in the pastry- 
cook's ; and afterwards to peep out at the door 
so shrinkingly ; and then — looking at him with 
those eyes — to ask him was he sure — now was 
he sure — they might go safely on ! Oh for a 
string of rampant horses ! For a lion, for a 
bear, for a mad bull, for anything to bring the 
little hands together on his arm, again ! 

Martin Chuzzleivit, Chap. 53. 

LOVE— The disappointment of Dick Swivel- 
ler. 
" I came here," said Dick, rather oblivious of 
the purpose with which he had really come. 



LOVE 



280 



LOVELINESS IN WOMAN 



" with my bosom expanded, my heart dilated, 
and my sentiments of a corresponding descrip- 
tion. I go away with feelings that may be con- 
ceived, but cannot be described ; feeling within 
myself the desolating truth that my best affec- 
tions have experienced, this night, a stifler ! " 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap, 8. 

A day or two after the Quilp tea-party at the 
Wilderness, Mr. Swiveller walked into Sampson 
Brass's ofBce at the usual hour, and being alone 
in that Temple of Probity, placed his hat upon 
the desk, and taking from his pocket a small 
parcel of black crape, applied himself to folding 
and pinning the same upon it, after the manner 
of a hatband. Having completed the construc- 
tion of this appendage, he surveyed his work 
with great complacency, and put his hat on 
again — very much over one eye, to increase the 
mourn fulness of the effect. These arrange- 
ments perfected to his entire satisfaction, he 
thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked 
up and down the office with measured steps. 

" It has always been the same with me," said 
Mr. Swiveller, " always. 'Twas ever thus, from 
childhood's hour, I've seen my fondest hopes 
decay, I never loved a tree or flower but 'twas 
the first to fade away ; I never nursed a dear 
Gazelle, to glad me with its soft black eye, but 
when it came to know me well, and love me, it 
was sure to marry a market-gardener." 

Overpowered by these reflections, Mr. Swiv- 
eller stopped short at the clients' chair, and 
flung himself into its open arms. 

"And this," said Mr. Swiveller, with a kind 
of bantering composure, " is life, I believe. Oh, 
certainly ! ' Why not ! I'm quite satisfied. I 
shall wear," added Richard, taking off his hat 
again, and looking hard at it, as if he were only 
deterred by pecuniary considerations from spurn- 
ing it with his foot, " I shall wear this emblem 
of woman's perfidy, in remembrance of her with 
whom I shall never again thread the windings 
of the mazy ; whom I shall never more pledge 
in the rosy ; who, during the short remainder 
of my existence, will murder the balmy. Ha, 
ha, ha I " — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56. _ 

LOVE— The disappointment of John Chiv- 
ery. 

" And good-bye, John," said Little Dorrit. 
" And I hope you will have a good wife one 
day, and be a happy man. I am sure you will 
deserve to be happy, and you will be, John." 

As she held out her hand to him with these 
words, the heart that was under the waistcoat 
of sprigs — mere slop-work, if the truth must be 
known — swelled to the size of the heart of a 
gentleman ; and the poor, common little fellow, 
having no room to hold it, burst into tears. 

"O don't cry," said Little Dorrit, piteously. 
•• Don't, don't ! Good-bye, John. God bless you! " 

" Good-bye, Miss Amy. Good-bye !" 

It was an affecting illustration of the fallacy 
of human projects, to behold her lover, with the 
great hat pulled over his eyes, the velvet collar 
turned up as if it rained, the plum-colored coat 
buttoned to conceal the silken waistcoat of 
golden sprigs, and the little direction-post 
pointing inexorably home, creeping along by 
the worst back-streets, and composing as he 
went, the following new inscription for a tomb- 
Ktone in Saint George's Churchyard : 



" Here lie the mortal remains of John Chiv- 
ERY, Never anything worth mentioning. Who 
died about the end of the year one thousand 
eight hundred and twenty-six, Of a broken 
heart, Requesting with his last breath that the 
word Amy might be inscribed over his ashes, 
Which was accordingly directed to be done, By 
his afflicted Parents." 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 18, 

LOVE— The elements of its growth. 

Mystery and disappointment are not absolute- 
ly indispensable to the growth of love, but they 
are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries. " Out 
of sight, out of mind," is well enough as a pro- 
verb applicable to cases of friendship, though 
absence is not always necessary to hollowness 
of heart, even between friends, and truth and 
honesty, like precious stones, are perhaps most 
easily imitated at a distance, when the counter- 
feits often pass for real. Love, however, is very 
materially assisted by a warm and active imagi- 
nation, which has a long memory, and will 
thrive for a considerable time on very slight and 
sparing food. Thus it is, that it often attains its 
most luxuriant growth in separation and under 
circumstances of the utmost difficulty ; and thus 
it was, that Nicholas, thinking of nothing but 
the unknown young lady, from day to day and 
from hour to hour, began, at last, to think that 
he was very desperately in love with her, and 
that never was such an ill-used and persecuted 
lover as he. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 40. 

LOVE— The period of. 

What an idle time ! What an unsubstantial, 
happy, foolish time ! Of all the times of mine 
that Time has in his grip, there is none that in 
one retrospect I can smile at half so much, and 
think of half so tenderly. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 33. 

LOVELINESS IN WOMAN-The influence 
of. 

Whether there was life enough left in the 
slow vegetation of Fountain Court for the smoky 
shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest 
and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is 
a question for gardeners, and those who are 
learned in the loves of plants. But, that it was 
a good thing for that same paved yard to have 
such a delicate little figure flitting through it ; 
that it passed like a smile from the grimy old 
houses, and the worn flagstones, and left them 
duller, darker, sterner than before, there is no 
sort of doubt. The Temple fountain might have 
leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of 
hopeful maidenhood, that in her person stole on, 
sparkling, through the dry and dusty channels 
of the Law ; the chirping sparrows, bred in 
Temple chinks and crannies, might have held 
their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks, as so 
fresh a little creature passed : the dingy boughs, 
unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny 
growth, might have bent down in a kindred 
gracefulness, to shed their benedictions on her 
graceful head ; old love letters, shut up in iron 
boxes in the neighboring offices, and made of 
n» account among the heaps of family papers 
into which they had strayed, and of which, in 
their degeneracy, they formed a part, might 
have stirred and fluttered with a moment's recol- 
lection of their ancient tenderness, as she went 



I 



LOVEES 



281 



liTTNATIC 



lightly by. Anything might have happened that 
did not happen, and never will, for the love of 
Ruth. — Martin Chuzzlewit^ Chap. 45. 

LOVERS— Their power of condensation. 

Though lovers are remarkable for leaving a 
great deal unsaid on all occasions, and very 
properly desiring to come back and say it, they 
are remarkable also for a wonderful power of 
condensation ; and can, in one way or other, 
give utterance to more language — eloquent lan- 
guage — in any given short space of time, than 
all the six hundred and fifty-eight members in 
the Commons House of Parliament of the 
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ; 
who are strong lovers, no doubt, but of their 
country only, which makes all the difference ; 
for in a passion of that kind (which is not al- 
ways returned) it is the custom to use as many 
words as possible, and express nothing what- 
ever. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43. 

LUNATIC. 

" He's a deal pleasanter without his senses 
than with 'em. He was the cruellest, wicked- 
est, out-and-outerest old flint that ever drawed 
breath." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41. 

LUNATIC ASYLUM-An American. 

One day, during my stay in New York, I paid 
a visit to the different public Institutions on 
Long Island, or Rhode Island, I forget which. 
One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The build- 
ing is handsome, and is remarkable for a spacious 
and elegant staircase. The whole structure is 
not yet finished, but it is already one of con- 
siderable size and extent, and is capable of ac- 
commodating a very large number of patients. 

I cannot say that t derived much comfort 
from the inspection of this charity. The differ- 
ent wards might have been cleaner and better 
ordered ; I saw nothing of that salutary system 
which had impressed me so favorably elsewhere ; 
and everything had a lounging, listless, mad- 
house air, which was very painful. The moping 
idiot, cowering down, with long dishevelled hair ; 
the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh 
and pointed finger: the vacant eye, the fierce 
wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands and 
lips, and munching of the nails ; there they were 
all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and hor- 
ror. In the dining-room, a bare, dull, dreary 
place, with nothing for the eye to rest on but 
the empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. 
She was bent, they told me, on committing sui- 
cide. If anything could have strengthened her 
in her resolution, it would certainly have been 
the insupportable monotony of such an exist- 
ence. 

The terrible crowd with which these halls and 
galleries were filled so shocked me, that I 
abridged my stay within the shortest limits, and 
declined to see that portion of the building in 
which the refractory and violent were under 
closer restraint. I have no doubt that the gen- 
tleman who presided over this establishment at 
the time I write of was competent to manage it, 
and had done all in his power to promote its 
usefulness ; but will it be believed that the mis- 
erable strife of Party feeling is carried even into 
this sad refuge of aflllcted and degraded human- 
ity? Will it be believed that the eyes which 
are to watch over and control the wanderings 



of minds 01: which the most dreadful visitation 
to which our nature is expose'd has fallen, must 
wear the glasses of some wretched side in Poll, 
tics? Will it be believed that the governor of 
such a house as this is appointed and deposed 
and changed perpetually, as Parties fluctuate 
and vary, and as their despicable weathercocks 
are blown this way or that ? A hundred times 
in every week some new, most paltry, exhibition 
of that narrow-minded and injurious Party 
Spirit which is the Simoom of America, sicken- 
ing and blighting everything of wholesome life 
within its reach, was forced upon my notice ; 
but I never turned my back upon it with feel- 
ings of such deep disgust and measureless con- 
tempt as when I crossed the threshold of this 
madhouse. — American Notes, Chap. 6. 

LUNATIC -His courtship of Mrs. Nickleby. 

Kate looked very much perplexed, and was 
apparently about to ask for further explanation, 
when a shouting and scuffling noise, as of an 
elderly gentleman whooping, and kicking up his 
legs on loose gravel, with great violence, was 
heard to proceed from the same direction as the 
former sounds ; and, before they had subsided, a 
large cucumber was seen to shoot up in the air 
with the velocity of a sky-rocket, whence it de- 
scended, tumbling over and over, until it fell at 
Mrs. Nickleby's feet. 

This remarkable appearance was succeeded 
by another of a precisely similar description ; 
then a fine vegetable marrow, of unusually large 
dimensions, was seen to whirl aloft, and come 
toppling down ; then, several cucumbers shot 
up together ; finally, the air was darkened by a 
shower of onions, turnip-radishes, and other 
small vegetables, which fell, rolling and scatter- 
ing, and bumping about in all directions. 

As Kate rose from her seat, in some alarm, 
and caught her mother's hand to run with her 
into the house, she felt herself rather retarded 
than assisted in her intention ; and following 
the direction of Mrs. Nickleby's eyes, was quite 
terrified by the apparition of an old black velvet 
cap, which, by slow degrees, as if its wearer were 
ascending a ladder or pair of steps, rose above 
the wall dividing their garden from that of the 
next cottage (which, like their own, was a de- 
tached building), and was gradually followed by 
a very large head, and an old face in which were 
a pair of most extraordinary gray eyes : very 
wild, very wide open, and rolling in their 
sockets, with a dull, languishing, leering look, 
most ugly to behold. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41. 

"Very good," said the old gentleman, raising 
his voice, " then bring in the bottled lightning, 
a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew." 

Nobody executing this order, the old gentle- 
man, after a short pause, raised his voice again 
and demanded a thunder sandwich. This arti- 
cle not being forthcoming either, he requested 
to be served with a fricassee of boot tops and 
goldfish sauce, and then, laughing heartily, grati- 
fied his hearers with a very long, very loud, and 
most melodious bellow. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 49. 

" I have estates, ma'am," said the old gentle- 
man, flourishing his right hand negligently, aa 
if he made very light of such matters, and speak- 



LYONS 



282 



KADMAN 



ing very fast ; "jewels, light-houses, fish-ponds, a 
whalery of my own in the North Sea, and several 
oyster-beds of great profit in the Pacific Ocean. 
If you will have the kindness to step down to 
the Royal Exchange and to take the cocked hat 
off the stoutest beadle's head, you will find my 
card in the lining of the crown, wrapped up in 
a piece of blue paper. My walking-stick is also 
to be seen on application to the chaplain of the 
House of Commons, who is strictly forbidden to 
take any money for showing it. I have enemies 
about me, ma'am," he looked towards his house 
and spoke very low, " who attack me on all oc- 
casions, and wish to secure my property. If you 
bless me with your hand and heart, you can 
apply to the Lord Chancellor or call out the 
military if necessary — sending my toothpick to 
the commander-in-chief will be sufficient — and 
so clear the house of them before the ceremony 
is performed. After that, love, bliss, and rap- 
ture ; rapture, love, and bliss. Be mine, be 
mine ! " — Nicholas Nickleby^ Chap. 41. 

liYONS. 

What a city Lyons is ! Talk about people 
feeling, at certain unlucky times, as if they had 
tumbled from the clouds ! Here is a whole 
town that has tumbled, anyhow, out of the sky ; 
having been first caught up, like other stones 
that tumble down from that region, out of fens 
and barren places, dismal to behold ! The two 
great streets through which the two great rivers 
dash, and all the little streets whose name is 
Legion, were scorching, blistering, and swelter- 
ing. The houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, 
rotten as old cheeses, and as thickly peopled. 
All up the hills that hem the city in, these houses 
swarm ; and the mites inside were lolling out of 
the windows, and drying their ragged clothes 
on poles, and crawling in and out at the doors, 
and coming out to pant and gasp upon the pave- 
ment, and creeping in and out among huge piles 
and bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods : and 
living, or rather not dying till their time should 
come, in an exhausted receiver. Every manu- 
facturing town, melted into one, would hardly 
convey an impression of Lyons as it presented 
itself to me : for all the undrained, unscaven- 
gered qualities of a foreign town, seemed grafted 
there, upon the native miseries of a manufactur- 
ing one ; and it bears such fruit as I would go 
some miles out of my way to avoid encounter- 
ing again. — Pictures from Italy. 



M 



MACHINERY-Oar Making. 

I have no present time to think about it, for I 
am going to see the workshops where they make 
all the oars used in the British Navy. A pretty 
large pile of building, I opine, and a pretty long 
job ! As to the building, I am soon disappoint- 
ed, because the work is all done in one loft. 
And as to a long job — what is this? Two 
rather large mangles, with a swarm of butterflies 
hovering over them ! What can there be in the 
mangles that attracts butterflies ? 



Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not 
mangles, but intricate machines, set with knives 
and saws and planes, which cut smooth and 
straight here, and slantwise there, and now cut 
such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether, 
according to the predestined requirements of the 
pieces of wood that are pushed on below them, 
— each of which pieces is to be an oar, and is 
roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes 
its final leave of far-off forests, and sails 
for England. Likewise I discern that the but- 
terflies are not true butterflies, but wooden 
shavings, which, being spirted up from the 
wood by the violence of the machinery, and kept 
in rapid and not equal movement by the impulse 
of its rotation on the air, flutter and play, and 
rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like 
butterflies as heart could wish. Suddenly the 
noise and motion cease, and the butterflies drop 
dead. An oar has been made since I came in, 
wanting the shaped handle. As quickly as I 
can follow it with my eye and thought, the same 
oar is carried to a turning-lathe. A whirl and a 
nick ! Handle made. Oar finished. 

The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this 
machinery need no illustration, but happen to 
have a pointed illustration to-day. A pair of 
oars of unusual size chance to be wanted for a 
special purpose, and they have to be made by 
hand. Side by side with the subtle and facile 
machine, and side by side with the fast-growing 
pile of oars on the floor, a man shapes out these 
special oars with an axe. Attended by no butter- 
flies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison, 
as leisurely as if he were a laboring Pagan get- 
ting them ready against his decease, at three- 
score and ten, to take with him as a present to 
Charon for his boat, the man (aged about thirty) 
plies his task. The machine would make a 
regulation oar while the man wipes his forehead. 
The man might be buried in a mound made of 
the strips of thin, broad, wooden ribbon torn 
from the wood whirled into oars as the minutes 
fall from the clock, before he had done a fore- 
noon's work with his axe. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24. 

MADMAN— The raving" of a. 

" Yes ! — a madman's ! How that word would 
have struck to my heart, many years ago ! How 
it would have roused the terror that used to 
come upon me sometimes ; sending the blood 
hissing and tingling through my veins, till the 
cold dew of fear stood in large drops upon my 
skin, and my knees knocked together with 
fright ! I like it now though. It's a fine name. 
Show me the monarch whose angry frown was 
ever feared like the glare of a madman's eye — 
whose cord and axe were ever half so sure as a 
madman's gripe. Ho ! ho ! It's a grand thing 
to be mad ! to be peeped at like a wild lion 
through the iron bars — to gnash one's teeth and 
howl, through the long still night, to the merry 
ring of a heavy chain — and to roll and twine 
among the straw, transported with such brave 
music. Hurrah for the madhouse ! Oh, it's a 
rare place ! 

" I remember days when I was afraid of be- 
ing mad ; when I used to start from my sleep, 
and fall upon my knees, and pray to be spared 
from the curse of my race ; when I rushed from 
the sight of merriment or happiness, to hide 
myself in some lonely place, and spend the 



MAGNATE 



283 



SCAN 



weary hours in watching the progress of the 
fever that was to consume my brain; I knew 
that madness was mixed up with my very blood 
and the marrow of my bones ; that one genera- 
tion had passed away without the pestilence 
appearing among them, and that I was the first 
in whom it would revive. I knew it must be 
so, that so it always had been, and so it ever 
would be ; and when I cowered in some obscure 
corner of a crowded room, and saw men whis- 
per, and point, and turn their eyes towards me, 
I knew they were telling each other of the 
doomed madman ; and I slunk away again to 
mope in solitude. 

" At last it came upon me, and I wondered 
how I could ever have feared it. I could go in- 
to the world now, and laugh and shout with the 
best among them. I knew I was mad, but they 
did not even suspect it. How I used to hug my- 
self with delight, when I thought of the fine trick 
I was playing them after their old pointing and 
leering, when I was not mad, but only dreading 
that I might one day become so ! And how I 
used to laugh for joy, when I was alone, and 
thought how well I kept my secret, and how 
quickly my kind friends would have fallen from 
me, if they had known the truth. I could have 
screamed with ecstasy when I dined alone with 
some fine, roaring fellow, to think how pale he 
would have turned, and how fast he would have 
run, if he had known that the dear friend who 
sat close to him, sharpening a bright, glittering 
knife, was a madman, with all the power, and 
half the will, to plunge it in his heart. Oh, it 
was a merry life ! 

***** 

" Straight and swift I ran, and no one dared 
to stop me. I heard the noise of feet behind 
and redoubled my speed. It grew fainter and 
fainter in the distance, and at length died away 
altogether; but on I bounded, through marsh 
and rivulet, over fence and wall, with a wild 
shout which was taken up by the strange beings 
that flocked around me on every side, and 
swelled the sound till it pierced the air. I was 
borne upon the arms of demons who swept along 
upon the wind, and bore down bank and hedge 
before them, and spun me round and round with 
a rustle and a speed that made my head swim, 
until at last they threw me from them with a 
violent shock, and I fell heavily upon the earth. 
When I woke I found myself here — here in this 
gay cell where the sunlight seldom comes, and 
the moon steals in, in rays which only serve to 
show the dark shadows about me and that silent 
figure in its old corner. When I lie awake, I 
can sometimes hear strange shrieks and cries 
from distant parts of this large place. What 
they are, I know not ; but they neither come 
from that pale form nor does it regard them. 
For from the first shades of dusk 'till the earliest 
light of morning, it still stands motionless* in 
the same place, listening to the music of my iron 
chain, and watching my gambols on my straw 
bed." — Pickwick, Chap. ii. 

MAQNATE— Bounderby as a local. 

It was one of the most exasperating attributes 
of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own 
praises but stimulated other men to sing them. 
There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him. 
Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up 



at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite 
a rampant way, of Bounderby. They made him 
out to be the Royal Arms, the Union-Jack, 
Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, 
the Bill of Rights, An Englishman's house is 
his castle. Church and State, and God save the 
Queen, all put together. 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 7. 

MAGISTRATE— An American. 

On our way to Portland we passed a " Magis- 
trate's Office," which amused me, as looking far 
more like a dame school than any police estab- 
lishment ; for this awful institution was nothing 
but a little lazy good-for-nothing front parlor, 
open to the street ; wherein two or three figures 
(I presume the magistrate and his myrmidons) 
were basking in the sunshine, the very effigies 
of languor and repose. It was a perfect picture 
of Justice retired from business for want of cus- 
tomers ; her sword and scales sold off ; napping 
comfortably with her legs upon the table. 

American Notes, Chap. 12. 

MAGISTRATE-Offlce of a. 

Although the presiding Genii in such an office 
as this, exercise a summary and arbitrary power 
over the liberties, the good name, the character, 
almost the lives, of Her Majesty's subjects, es- 
pecially of the poorer class ; and although, with- 
in such walls, enough fantastic tricks are daily 
played to make the angels blind with weeping, 
they are closed to the public, save through the me- 
dium of the daily press. Mr. Fang was conse- 
quently not a little indignant to see an unbid- 
den guest enter in such ii-revei-ent disorder. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 11. 

MAGISTRATE-The PoUce. 

This functionary, being, of course, well used 
to such scenes ; looking on all kinds of robbery, 
from petty larceny up to housebreaking or ven- 
tures on the highway, as matters in the regular 
course of business ; and regarding the perpetra- 
tors in the light of so many customers coming to 
be served at the wholesale and retail shop of 
criminal law where he stood behind the counter ; 
received Mr. Brass's statement of facts with 
about as much interest and surprise as an un- 
dertaker might evince if required to listen to a 
circumstantial account of the last illness of a 
person whom he was called in to wait upon pro- 
fessionally ; and took Kit into custody with a 
decent indifference. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 60. 

MAN— An Emaciated. 

"Think so, sir ! Why, as he is now," said 
the manager, striking his knee emphatically ; 
" without a pad upon his body, and hardly a 
touch of paint upon his face, he'd make such an 
actor for the starved business as was never seen 
in this country. Only let him be tolerably well 
up in the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, with 
the slightest possible dab of red on the tip of his 
nose, and he'd be certain of three rounds the mo- 
ment he put his head out of the practicable 
door in the front grooves O. P." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22. 

MAN-A surly. 

" He is very rich, I have heard," rejoined 
Kate. " I don't know that he is, but I believe so." 



MAN 



284 



MANHOOD 



"Ah, you may depend upon it he is, orjhe 
wouldn't be so surly," remarked Miss La Creevy, 
who was an odd little mixture of shrewdness 
and simplicity. " When a man's a bear, he is 
generally pretty independent." 

" His manner is rough," said Kate. 

" Rough ! " cried Miss La Creevy, " a porcu- 
pine's a feather bed to him ! I never met with 
such a cross-grained old savage." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. lo. 

MAN— Mr. PecksnifPs views of. 

"What are we," said Mr. Pecksniff, "but 
coaches ? Some of us are slow coaches — " 

" Goodness, Pa ! " cried Charity. 

" Some of us, I say," resumed her parent with 
increased emphasis, " are slow coaches ; some of 
us are fast coaches. Our passions are the horses ; 
and rampant animals too ! — " 

" Really, Pa ! " cried both the daughters at 
once. " How very unpleasant ! " 

" And rampant animals too ! " repeated Mr. 
Pecksniff, with so much determination, that he 
may be said to have exhibited, at the moment, a 
sort of moral rampancy himself: " and Virtue is 
the drag. We start from The Mother's Arms, 
and we run to The Dust Shovel." 

When he had said this, Mr. Pecksniff, be- 
ing exhausted, took some further refreshment. 
When he had done that, he corked the bottle 
tight, with the air of a man who had effectually 
corked the subject also ; and went to sleep for 
three stages. 

The tendency of mankind when it falls asleep 
in coaches, is to wake up cross ; to find its legs 
in its way ; and its corns an aggravation. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 8. 

MANHOOD — A vigorous (Sir Lawrence 
BoytJiom). 

Now, who was Boy thorn? we all thought. 
And I dare say we all thought, too — I am sure 
I did, for one — would Boythorn at all interfere 
with what was going forward ? 

" 1 went to school with this fellow, Lawrence 
Boythorn," said Mr. Jarndyce, tapping the let- 
ter as he laid it on the table, " more than five- 
and-forty years ago. He was then the most im- 
petuous boy in the world, and he is now the 
most impetuous man. He was then the loudest 
boy in the world, and he is now the loudest 
man. He was then the heartiest and sturdiest 
boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest 
and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fel- 
low." 

" In stature, sir?" asked Richard. 

" Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," said Mr. 
Jarndyce ; " being some ten years older than I, 
and a couple of inches tallea:, with his head 
thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart 
chest squared, his hands like a clean black- 
smith's, and, his lungs! — there's no simile for 
his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they 
make the beams of the house shake." 

As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of 
his friend Boythorn, we observed the favorable 
omen that there was not the least indication of 
any change in the wind. 

" But it's the inside of the man, the warm 
heart of the man, the passion of the man, the 
fresh blood of the man. Rick — and Ada, and 
little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in 
a visitor] — that I speak of," he pursued. " His 



language is as sounding as his voice. He is al- 
ways in extremes ; perpetually in the superlative 
degree. In his condemnation he is all ferocity. 
You might suppose him to be an Ogre, from 
what he says ; and I believe he has the reputa- 
tion of one with some people. There ! I tell 
you no more of him beforehand. You must 
not be surprised to see him take me under his 
protection ; for he has never forgotten that I 
was a low Ijoy at school, and that our friendship 
began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's 
teeth out (he says six) before breakfast." 

Bleak House^ Chap. 9. 

MANHOOD— A boisterous. 

" By my soul ! " exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, sud- 
denly firing another volley, " that fellow is, 
and his father was, and his grandfather was, 
the most stiff-necked, arrogant, imbecile, pig- 
headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable 
mistake of Nature, born in any station of life 
but a walking-stick's ! The whole of that family 
are the most solemnly conceited and consummate 
blockheads ! — But it's no matter ; he should 
not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets 
melted into one, and living in a hundred Ches- 
ney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory 
balls in a Chinese carving. 

***** 

" The fellow sends a most abandoned villain 
with one eye, to construct a gateway. I play 
upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine, 
until the breath is nearly driven out of his body. 
The fellow erects a gate in the night. I chop it 
down and burn it in the morning. He sends 
his myrmidons to come over the fence, and pass 
and repass. I catch them in humane man traps, 
fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with 
the engine — resolve to free mankind from the 
insupportable burden of the existence of those 
lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass ; 
I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions 
for assault and battery : I defend them, and con- 
tinue to assault and Ijatter. Ha, Ha, Ha ! " 

To hear him say all this with unimaginable 
energy, one might have thought him the angriest 
of mankind. To see him at the very same time, 
looking at' the bird now perched upon his thumb, 
and softly smoothing its feathers with his fore- 
finger, one might have thought him the gentlest. 
To hear him laugh, and see the broad good 
nature of his face then, one might have sup- 
posed that he had not a care in the world, or a 
dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole exis- 
tence was a summer joke. 

Bleak House, Chap. 9. 

" He is a great favorite with my girls," said 
Mr. Jarndyce, " and I have promised for them." 

" Nature forgot to shade him off, I think ! " 
observed Mr. Skimpole to Ada and me. " A lit- 
tle too boisterous — like the sea ! A little too 
vehement — like a bull, who has made up his 
mind to consider every color scarlet ! But, I 
grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him ! " 
Bleak House, Chap. 15. 

MANHOOD— A useful and gentle. 

He had not become a great man ; he had not 
grown rich ; he had not forgotten the scenes and 
friends of his youth ; he had not fulfilled any 
one of the Doctor's old predictions. But, in 
his useful, patient, unknowing visiting of poor 



( 




Mr. Mantalini. — His Characteristics; 



285 



MANTALINI 



MANTALINI 



men's homes : and in his watching of sick beds ; 
and in his daily knowledge of the gentleness and 
goodness flowering the by-paths of this world, 
not to be trodden down beneath the heavy foot 
of poverty, but springing up, elastic, in its track, 
and making its way beautiful ; he had better 
learned and proved, in each succeeding year, 
the truth of his old faith. The manner of his 
life, though quiet and remote, had shown him 
how often men still entertained angels, unawares, 
as in the olden time ; and how the most un- 
likely forms — even some that were mean and 
ugly to the view, and poorly clad — became irra- 
diated by the couch of sorrow, want, and pain, 
and changed to ministering spirits with a glory 
round their heads. — Battle of Life, Chap. 3. 

MANTALINI— His characteristics. 

The dress-maker was a buxom person, hand- 
somely dressed and rather good-looking, but 
much older than the gentleman in the Turkish 
trousers, whom she had wedded some six months 
before. His name was originally Muntle ; but 
it had been converted, by an easy transition, 
into Mantalini ; the lady rightly considering 
that an English appellation would be of serious 
injury to the business. He had married on his 
whiskers ; upon which property he had previ- 
ously subsisted, in a genteel manner, for some 
years ; and which he had recently improved, 
after patient cultivation, by the addition of a 
moustache, which promised to secure him an 
easy independence ; his share in the labors of 
the business being at present confined to spend- 
ing the money, and occasionally, when that ran 
short, driving to Mr. Ralph Nickleby to procure 
discount — at a percentage — for the customers' 
bills. 

" My life," said Mr. Mantalini, " what a demd 
devil of a time you have been ! " 

" I didn't even know Mr. Nickleby was here, 
my love," said Madame Mantalini. 

" Then what a doubly demd infernal rascal 
that footman must be, my soul," remonstrated 
Mr. Mantalini. 

" My dear," said Madame, " that is entirely 
your fault." 

" My fault, my heart's joy ? " 

" Certainly," returned the lady ; " what can 
you expect, dearest, if you will not correct the 
man ? " 

" Correct the man, my soul's delight ? " 

"Yes ; I am. sure he wants speaking to, badly 
enough," said Madame, pouting. 

" Then do not vex itself," said Mr. Mantalini ; 
"he shall be horsewhipped till he cries out 
demnebly." With this promise Mr. Mantalini 
kissed Madame Mantalini, and, after that per- 
formance, Madame Mantalini pulled Mr. Man- 
talini playfully by the ear ; which done, they 
descended to iDUsiness. 

" Now, ma'am," said Ralph, who had looked 
on, at all this, with such scorn as few men can ex- 
press in looks, " this is my niece." 

"Just so, Mr. Nickleby," replied Madame 
Mantalini, surveying Kate from head to foot, 
and back again. " Can you speak French, 
child?" 

"Yes, ma'am," replied Kate, not daring to 
look up ; for she felt that the eyes of the odi- 
ous man in the dressing-gown were directed 
towards her. 

" Like a demd native ? " asked the husband. 



Miss Nickleby offered no reply to this 
inquiry, but turned her back upon the ques- 
tioner, as if addressing herself to make answer 
to what his wife might demand. 

" We keep twenty young women constantly 
employed in the establishment," said Madame. 

" Indeed, ma'am ! " replied Kate, timidly. 

" Yes ; and some of 'em demd handsome, 
too," said the master. 

"Mantalini!" exclaimed his wife, in an aw- 
ful voice. 

" My senses' idol ! " said Mantalini. 

" Do you wish to break my heart ? " 

" Not for twenty thousand hemispheres pop- 
ulated with — with — with little ballet-dancers," 
replied Mantalini, in a poetical strain. 

" Then you will, if you persevere in that 
mode of speaking," said his wife. "What can 
Mr. Nickleby think when he hears you ? " 

" Oh ! Nothing, ma'am, nothing," replied 
Ralph. " I know his amiable nature, and 
yours, — mere little remarks that give a zest to 
your daily intercourse — lovers' quarrels that 
add sweetness to those domestic joys which 
promise to last so long — that's all ; that's all." 
Nicholas* Nickleby^ Chap. 10. 

There was not much to amuse in the room ; 
of which the most attractive feature was, a half- 
length portrait in oil, of Mr. Mantalini, whom 
the artist had depicted scratching his head in an 
easy manner, and thus displaying to advantage 
a diamond ring, the gift of Madame Mantalini 
before her marriage. There was, however, the 
sound of voices in conversation in the next 
room ; and as the conversation was loud and 
the partition thin, Kate could not help dis- 
covering that they belonged to Mr. and Mrs. 
Mantalini. 

" If you will be odiously, demnebly outri- 
geously jealous, my soul," said Mr. Mantalini, 
" you will be very miserable — horrid miserable 
— demnition miserable." And then there was 
a sound as though Mr. Mantalini were sipping 
his coffee. 

" I am miserable," returned Madame Manta- 
lini, evidently pouting. 

" Then you are an ungrateful, unworthy, demd 
unthankful little fairy," said Mr. Mantalini. 

" I am not," returned Madame, with a sob. 

" Do not put itself out of humor," said Mr. 
Mantalini, breaking an egg. " It is a pretty, be- 
witching little demd countenance, and it should 
not be out of humor, for it spoils its loveliness, 
and makes it cross and gloomy like a fright- 
ful, naughty, demd hobgoblin." 

" I am not to be brought round in that way, 
always," rejoined Madame, sulkily. 

" It shall be brought round in any way it likes 
best, and not brought around at all if it likes that 
better," retorted Mr, Mantalini, with his egg- 
spoon in his mouth. 

" It's very easy to talk," said Mrs. Mantalini. 

" Not so easy when one is eating a demnition 
egg," replied Mr. Mantalini : " for the yolk runs 
down the waistcoat, and yolk of egg does not 
match any waistcoat but a yellow waistcoat, 
demmit." 

" You were flirting with her during the whole 
night," said Madame Mantalini, apparently de- 
sirous to lead the conversation back to the point 
from which it had strayed. 

" No, no, my life." 



MANTALINI 



286 



" You wei-e," said Madame ; " I had my eye 
upon you all the time." 

" Bless the little winking, twinkling eye ; was 
it on me all the time? " cried Mantalini, in a sort 
of lazy rapture. " Oh, demmft ! " 

"And I say once more," resumed Madame, 
" that you ought not to waltz with anybody but 
your own wife ; and I will not bear it, Mantalini, 
if I take poison first." 

" She will not take poison and have horrid 
pains, will she?" said Mantalini; who, by the 
altered sound of his voice, seemed to have moved 
his chair, and taken up his position nearer to his 
wife. ** She will not take poison, because she had 
a demd fine husband who might have married 
two countesses and a dowager — " 

" Two countesses," interposed Madame. 
"You told me one before !" 

" Two ! " cried Mantalini. " Two demd fine 
women, real countesses and splendid fortunes, 
demmit." 

"And why didn't you?" asked Madame, 
playfully. 

" Why didn't I ! " replied her husband. " Had 
I not seen, at a morning concert, the demdest 
little fascinator in all the world ; and while that 
little fascinator is my wife, may not all the count- 
esses and dowagers in England be — " 

Mr. Mantalini did not finish the sentence, but 
he gave Madame Mantalini a very loud kiss, 
which Madame Mantalini returned ; after which, 
there seemed to be some more kissing mixed up 
with the progress of the breakfast. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 17. 

" What's the demd total ? " was the first ques- 
tion he asked. 

" Fifteen hundred and twenty-seven pound, 
four and ninepence ha'penny,'.' replied Mr. 
Scaley, without moving a limb. 

" The half-penny be demd," said Mr. Manta- 
lini, impatiently.. 

" By all means, if you vish it," retorted Mr. 
Scaley ; " and the ninepence." 

" It don't matter to us if the fifteen hundred 
and twenty-seven pound went along with it, that 
I know on," observed Mr. Tix. 

* Not a button," said Scaley. 

"Well," said the same gentleman, after a 
pause, " Wot's to be done — anything ? Is it only 
a small crack, or a out-and-out smash ? A break- 
up of the constitootion is it — werry good. Then 
Mr. Tom Tix, esk-vire, you must inform your 
angel wife and lovely family as you won't sleep 
at home for three nights to come, along of being 
in possession here. Wot's the good of the lady 
a fretting herself?" continued Mr. Scaley, as 
Madame Mantalini sobbed. " A good half of 
wot's here isn't paid for, I des-say, and wot 
a consolation oughtn't that to be to her feel- 
ings!" 

With these remarks, combining great pleas- 
antry with sound moral encouragement under 
difficulties, Mr. Scaley proceeded to take the 
inventory, in which delicate task he was mate- 
rially assisted by the uncommon tact and expe- 
rience of Mr. Tix, the broker. 

* * * * * 

" My cup of happiness's sweetener," said 
Mantalini, approaching his wife with a peni- 
tent air ; " will you listen to me for two min- 
utes ?" 

" Oh ! don't speak to me," replied his wife, 



MANTALINI 



"You have ruined me, and that's 



sobbing, 
enough." 

" Ruined ! " cried Mr. Mantalini. " Have I 
brought ruin upon the best and purest creature 
that ever blessed a demnition vagabond ! Dem- 
mit, let me go." At this crisis of his ravings 
Mr. Mantalini made a pluck at the breakfast 
knife, and being restrained by his wife's grasp, 
attempted to dash his head against the wall — 
taking very good care to be at least six feet 
from it. 

•I* •!• "P •{• TT 

Mr. Mantalini put the tips of his whiskers, 
and, by degrees, his head, through the half- 
opened door, and cried in a soft voice — 

" Is my life and soul there ? " ■ 

" No," replied his wife. I 

" How can it say so, when it is blooming in ■ 
the front room like a little rose in a demnition 
flower-pot ? " urged Mantalini. " May its pop- 
pet come in and talk ? " 

" Certainly not," replied Madame : " you 
know I never allow you here. Go along ! " 

The poppet, however, encouraged perhaps by 
the relenting tone of this reply, ventured to 
rebel, and, stealing into the room, made toward 
Madame Mantalini on tiptoe, blowing her a kiss 
as he came along. 

"Why will it vex itself, and twist its little 
face into bewitching nutcrackers?" said Man- 
talini, putting his left arm round the waist of his 
life and soul, and drawing her toward him with 
his right. 

" Oh I I can't bear you," replied his wife. 

" Not — eh, not bear me ! " exclaimed Man- 
talini. "Fibs, fibs. It couldn't be. There's 
not a woman alive that could tell me such a 
thing to my face — to my own face." Mr. Man- 
talini stroked his chin as he said this, and 
glanced complacently at an opposite mirror. 

"Such destructive extravagance," reasoned 
his wife, in a low tone. 

" All in its joy at having gained such a lovely 
creature, such a little Venus, such a demd en- 
chanting, bewitching, engrossing, captivating 
little Venus," said Mantalini. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap, 21. 



" What a demnition long time you have kept 
me ringing at this confounded old cracked tea- 
kettle of a bell, every tinkle of which is enough 
to throw a strong man into blue convulsions, 
upon my life and soul, oh demmit," said Mr. 
Mantalini to Newman Noggs, scraping his boots, 
as he spoke, on Ralph Nickleby's scraper. 

" I didn't hear the bell more than once," re- 
plied Newman. 

" Then you are most immensely and out- 
rageously deaf," said Mr. Mantalini, " as deaf as 
a demnition post." 

Mr. Mantalini had got by this time into the 
passage, and was making his way to the door of 
Ralph's office with very little ceremony, when 
Newman interposed his body ; and hinting that 
Mr. Nickleby was unwilling to be disturbed, in- 
quired whether the client's business was of a 
pressing nature. 

" It is most demnebly particular," said Mr. 
Mantalini. " It is to melt some scraps of dirty 
papef into bright, shining, chinking, tinkling, 
demd mint sauce." 

***** 

" You have brought it upon yourself, Alfred," 



■ 

1 



MANTALINI 



287 



MANTAI.INI 



returned Madame Mantalini — still reproachfully, 
but in a softened tone. 

" I am a demd villain ! " cried Mr. Mantalini, 
smiting himself on the head. " I will fill my 
pockets with change for a sovereign in halfpence 
and drown myself in the Thames ; but I will not 
be angry with her, even then, for I will put a 
note in the twopenny-post as I go along, to 
tell her where the body is. She will be a lovely 
widow. I shall be a body. Some handsome 
women will cry ; she will laugh demnebly." 

"Alfred, you cruel, cruel creature," said Ma- 
dame Mantalini, sobbing at the dreadful picture. 

" She calls me cruel — me — me — who for her 
sake will become a demd, damp, moist, unpleas- 
ant body ! " exclaimed Mr. Mantalini. 

" You know it almost breaks my heart, even 
to hear you talk of such a thing," replied Ma- 
dame Mantalini. 

"Can I live to be mistrusted ? " cried her hus- 
band. " Have I cut my heart into a demd ex- 
traordinary number of little pieces, and given 
them all away, one after another, to the same 
little engrossing demnition captivator, and can I 
live to be suspected by her ! Demmit, no, I can't." 

"Ask Mr. Nickleby whether the sum I have 
mentioned is not a proper one," reasoned Ma- 
dame Mantalini. 

" I don't want any sum," replied her discon- 
solate husband ; " I shall require no demd allow- 
ance. I will be a body. " 

« 4: « ♦ He 

" Oh, you are here," said Madame Mantalini, 
tossing her head. 

" Yes, my life and soul, I am," replied her 
husband, dropping on his knees, and pouncing 
with kitten-like playfulness upon a stray sover- 
eign. " I am here, my soul's delight, upon Tom 
Tiddler's ground, picking up the demnition gold 
and silver." 

" I am ashamed of you," said Madame Man- 
talini, with much indignation. 

" Ashamed ! Of mcy my joy ? It knows it is 
talking demd charming sweetness, but naughty 
fibs," returned Mr. Mantalini. "It knows it is 
not ashamed of its own popolorum tibby," 

Whatever were the circumstances which had 
led to such a result, it certainly appeared as 
though the popok)rum tibby had rather miscal- 
culated, for the nonce, the extent of his lady's 
affection. Madame Mantalini only looked 
scornful in reply, and, turning to Ralph, begged 
him to excuse her intrusion. 

"Which is entirely attributable," said Ma- 
dame, " to the gross misconduct and most im- 
proper behavior of Mr. Mantalini." 

" Of me, my essential juice of pine-apple ! " 

" Of you," returned his wife. " But I will not 
allow it. I will not submit to be ruined by the 
extravagance and profligacy of any man. I call 
Mr. Nickleby to witness the course I intend to 
pursue with you." 

" Pray don't call me to witness anything, 
ma'am," said Ralph. "Settle it between your- 
selves, settle it between yourselves." 

" No, but I must beg you as a favor," said 
Madame Mantalini, " to hear me give him no- 
tice of what it is my fixed intention to do — my 
fixed intention, sir," repeated Madame Manta- 
lini, darting an angry look at her husband. 

" Will she call me, ' Sir ! ' " cried Mantalini. 
" Me, who doat upon her with the demdest ar- 
dor ' She, who coils her fascinations round me 



like a pure and angelic rattlesnake ! It will be 
all up with my feelings ; she will throw me into 
a demd state." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34. 

" Nickleby," sifid Mr. Mantalini in tears, " you 
have been made a witness to this demnition 
cruelty, on the part of the demdest enslaver and 
captivator that never was, oh dem ! I forgive 
that woman." 

" Forgive ! " repeated Madame Mantalini, an- 
grily. 

" I do forgive her, Nickleby," said Mr. Manta- 
lini. " You will blame me, the world will blame 
me, the women will blame me ; everybody will 
laugh, and scoff, and smile, and grin most dem- 
nebly. They will say, ' She had a blessing. She 
did not know it. He was too weak ; he was toe 
good ; he was a demd fine fellow, but he loved 
too strong ; he could not bear her to be cross, 
and call him wicked names. It was a demd 
case, there never was a demder.' But I forgive 
her." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 44. 

" You nasty, idle, vicious, good-for-nothing 
brute," cried the woman, stamping on the ground, 
"why don't you turn the mangle?" 

" So I am, my life and soul ! " replied a man's 
voice. " I am always turning, I am perpetually 
turning, like a demd old horse in a demnition 
mill. My life is one demd horrid grind !" 

" Then why don't you go and list for a sol- 
dier ? " retorted the woman, " you're welcome to." 

" For a soldier ! " cried the man, " For a 
soldier ! Would his joy and gladness see him 
in a coarse red coat with a little tail ? Would 
she hear of his being slapped and beat by drum- 
mers demnebly? Would she have him fire off 
real guns, and have his hair cut, and his whiskers 
shaved, and his eyes turned right and left, and 
his trousers pipeclayed ? " 

" Dear Nicholas," whispered Kate, " you don't 
know who that is." It's Mr. Mantalini, I am 
confident." 

" Do make sure ! Peep at him while I ask 
the way," said Nicholas. " Come down a step 
or two. Come ! " 

Drawing her after him, Nicholas crept down 
the steps, and looked into a small boarded cellar. 
There, amidst clothes-baskets and clothes, strip- 
ped to his shirt-sleeves, but wearing still an old 
patched pair of pantaloons of superlative make, 
a once brilliant waistcoat, and moustache and 
whiskers as of yore, but lacking their lustrous 
dye — there, endeavoring to mollify the wrath of 
a buxom female — not the lawful Madame Mant- 
alini, but the proprietress of the concern — and 
grinding meanwhile as if for very life at the 
mangle, whose creaking noise, mingled with her 
shrill tones, appeared almost to deafen him — 
there was the graceful, elegant, fascinating, and 
once dashing Mantalini. 

" Oh, you false traitor ! " cried the lady, threat- 
ening personal violence on Mr. Mantalini's face. 

" False. Oh dem ! Now, my soul, my gentle, 
captivating, bewitching, and most demnebly en- 
slaving chick-a-biddy, be calm," said Mr. Man- 
talini, humbly. 

" I won't ! " screamed the woman. " I'll tear 
your eyes out ! " 

" Oh ! what a demd savage lamb 1 " cried Mr, 
Mantalini. 

" You're never to be trusted," screamed the 
woman, " you were out all day yesterday, and 



MARK TAPLEY 



288 



MARK TAPLEY 



gallivanting somewhere I know. You know you 
were ! Isn't it enough that I paid two pound 
fourteen for you, and took you out of prison and 
let you live here like a gentleman, but must 
you go on like this ; breaking my heart besides ? " 
" I will never break its heart, I will be a good 
boy, and never do so any more ; I will never be 
naughty again ; I beg its little pardon," said 
Mr. Mantalini, dropping the handle of the man- 
gle, and folding his palms together, " it is all up 
with its handsome friend ! He has gone to the 
demnition bow-wows. It will have pity? It 
will not scratch and claw, but pet and comfort? 
Oh, demmit." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 64. 

MARK TAPLEY— Wants misfortune. 

" I used to think, sometimes," said Mr. Tap- 
ley, " as a desolate island would suit me, but I 
should only have had myself to provide for there, 
and being naterally a easy man to manage, 
there wouldn't have been much credit in that. 
Now here I've got my partner to take care on, 
and he's something like the sort of man for 
the purpose. I want a man as is always a slid- 
ing off his legs when he ought to be on 'em. I 
want a man as is so low down in the school of 
life, that he's always a making figures of one in 
his copy-book, and can't get no further. I want 
a man as is his own great-coat and cloak, and is 
always a wrapping himself up in himself. And 
1 have got him too," said Mr. Tapley, after a 
moment's silence. " What a happiness ! " 

He paused to look round, uncertain to which 
of the log-hou.^es he should repair. 

" I don't know which to take," he observed ; 
"that's the truth. They're equally prepossess- 
ing outside, and equally commodious, no doubt, 
within ; being fitted up with every convenience 
that a Alligator, in a state of natur', could pos- 
sibly require. Let me see ! The citizen as 
turned out last night, lives under water, in the 
right-hand dog-kennel at the corner. I don't 
want to trouble him if I can help it, poor man, 
for he is a melancholy object : a reg'lar Settler 
in every respect. There's a house with a win- 
der, but I am afraid of their being proud. I 
don't know whether a door ain't too aristocratic ; 
but here goes for the first one ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 33. 

MARK TAPLEY— His opinion of Pecksniff. 

"Well, but we know beforehand," returned 
the politic Mr. Tapley, " that Pecksniff is a waga- 
bond, a scoundrel, and a willain." 

" A most pernicious' villain ! " said Martin. 

" A most pernicious willain. We know that 
beforehand, sir : and, consequently, it's no shame 
to be defeated by Pecksniff. Blow Pecksniff ! " 
cried Mr. Tapley, in the fervor of his eloquence, 
"Who's he? It's not in the natur of Peck- 
sniff to shame us, unless he agreed with us, or 
done us a service ; and, in case he offered any 
outdacity of that description, we could express our 
sentiments in the English language, I hope. Peck- 
sniff!" repeated Mr. Tapley, with ineffable dis- 
dain. " What's Pecksniff, who's Pecksniff, where's 
Pecksniff, that he's to be so much considered? 
We're not a calculating for ourselves ; " he laid 
uncommon emphasis on the last syllable of that 
word, and looked full in Martin's face : " we're 
making a effort for a young lady likewise as has 
undergone her share ; and whatever little hope we 
have this here Pecksniff is not to stand in its way, 



I expect. I never heard of any act of Parliament 
as was made by Pecksniff. Pecksniff! Why, 
I wouldn't see the man myself ; I wouldn't hear 
him ; I wouldn't choose to know he was in com- 
pany. I'd scrape my shoes on the scraper of 
the door, and call that Pecksniff, if you liked ; 
but I wouldn't condescend no further." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43. 

MARK TAPLEY— Cannot do himself jus- 
tice. 

" I must look for a private service, I suppose, 
sir. I might be brought out strong, perhaps, in 
a serious family, Mr. Pinch." 

" Perhaps you might come out rather too 
strong for a serious family's taste, Mark." 

" That's possible, sir. If I could get into a 
wicked family, I might do myself justice : but 
the difficulty is to make sure of one's ground, 
because a young man can't very well advertise 
that he wants a place, and wages an't so much 
an object as a wicked sitivation ; can he, sir? " 

" Why no," said Mr. Pinch, " I don't think 
he can." 

" An envious family," pursued Mark, with a 
thoughtful face ; " or a quarrelsome family, or a 
malicious family, or even a good out-and-out 
mean family, would open a field of action as I 
might do something in. The man as would 
have suited me of all other men was that old 
gentleman as was took ill here, for he really was a 
trying customer. Howsever, I must wait and 
see what turns up, sir ; and hope for the worst." 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7. 

MARK TAPLEY— No credit in being jolly. 

Mr. Tapley nodded assent. " Well sir ! But 
bein' at that time full of hopeful wisions, I ar- 
rives at the conclusion that no credit is to be 
got out of such a way of life as that, where every- 
thing agreeable would be ready to one's hand. 
Lookin' on the bright side of human life, in 
short, one of my hopeful wisions is, that there's 
a deal of misery a-waitin' for me ; in the midst 
of which I may come out tolerable strong, and 
be jolly under circumstances as reflects some 
credit. I goes into the world, sir, wery boyant, 
and I tries this. I goes aboard ship first, and 
wery soon discovers (by the ease with which I'm 
jolly, mind you) as there's no credit to be got 
there. I might have took warning by this, and 
gave it up ; but I didn't. I gets to the U-nited 
States ; and then I do begin, I won't deny it, to 
feel some little credit in sustaining my spirits. 
What follows? Jest as I'm a beginning to come 
out, and am a treadin' on the werge, my master 
deceives me." 

" Deceives you ! " cried Tom. 

" Swindles me," retorted Mr. Tapley, with a 
beaming face. " Turns his back on ev'ry- 
thing as made his service a creditable one, and 
leaves me, high and diy, without a leg to stand 
upon. In which state I returns home. Wery 
good. Then all my hopeful wisions be- 
in' crushed ; and findin' that there ain't no 
credit for me nowhere ; I abandons myself to 
despair, and says, ' Let me do that as has the 
least credit in it, of all ; marry a dear, sweet 
creetur, as is wery fond of me : me being, at the 
same time, wery fond of her : lead a happy life, 
and struggle no more again' the blight which 
settles on my prospects.' " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 48. 




Mark Tapley. 



289 



MARK TAPIiEY 



MARK 



MARK TAPIiEY— No credit in being joUy. 

Mr. Pinch was jogging along, full of pleasant 
thoughts and cheerful influences, when he saw, 
upon the path before him, going in the same di- 
rection with himself, a traveller on foot, who 
walked with a light, quick step, and sang as he 
went — for certain in a very loud voice, but not 
unmusically. He was a young fellow, of some 
five or six-and-twenty perhaps, and was dressed 
in such a free and fly-away fashion, that the 
long ends of his loose red. neckcloth were stream- 
ing out behind him quite as often as before ; 
and the bunch of bright winter berries in the 
buttonhole of his velveteen coat, was as visible 
to Mr. Pinch's rearward observation, as if he 
had worn that garment wrong side foremost. 
He continued to sing with so much energy, that 
he did not hear the sound of wheels until it was 
close behind him ; when he turned a whimsical 
face and a very merry pair of blue eyes on Mr. 
Pinch, and checked himself directly. 

" Why, Mark ! " said Tom Pinch, stopping. 
" Who'd have thought of seeing you here ? 
Well I this is surprising ! " 

Mark touched his hat, and said, with a very 
sudden decrease of vivacity, that he was going 
to Salisbury. 

" And how spruce you are, too ! " said Mr. 
Pinch, surveying him with great pleasure. 
*' Really, I didn't think you were half such a 
tight-made fellow, Mark! " 

" Thankee, Mr. Pinch. Pretty well for that, 
I believe. It's not my fault, you know. With 
regard to being spruce, sir, that's where it is, 
you see." And here he looked particularly 
gloomy. 

" Where what is ? " Mr. Pinch demanded. 

" Where the aggravation of it is. Any man 
may be in good spirits and good temper when 
he's well dressed. There ain't much credit in 
that. If I was very ragged and very jolly, then 
I should begin to feel I had gained a point, 
Mr. Pinch." 

" So you were singing just now, to bear up, 
as it were, against being well dressed, eh, 
Mark?" said Pinch. 

" Your conversation's always equal to print, 
sir," rejoined Mark, with a broad grin. " That 
was it." 

***** 

" Lord bless you, sir," said Mark, " you don't 
half know me, though. I don't believe there 
ever was a man as could come out so strong un- 
der circumstances that would make other men 
miserable, as I could, if I could only get a chance. 
But I can't get a chance. It's my opinion, that 
nobody never will know half of what's in me, 
unless something very unexpected turns up. 
And I don't see any prospect of that. I'm a 
going to leave the Dragon, sir." 

" Going to leave the Dragon ! " cried Mr. 
Pinch, looking at him with great astonishment. 
" Why, Mark, you take my breath away ! " 

" Yes, sir," he rejoined, looking straight be- 
fore him and a long way off, as men do some- 
times when they cogitate profoundly. " What's 
the use of my stopping at the Dragon? It ain't 
at all the sort of place for me. When I left 
London (I'm a Kentish man by birth, though), 
and took that sitivation here, I quite made up 
my mind that it was the dullest little out-of-the- 
way corner in England, and that there would be 
8ome credit in being jolly under such circum- 



stances. But, Lord, there's no dullness at the 
Dragon ! Skittles, cricket, quoits, nine-pins, 
comic songs, choruses, company round the 
chimney corner every winter's evening. Any 
man could be jolly at the Dragon. There's no 
credit in that." 

■" But if common report be true for once, 
Mark, as I think it is, being able to confirm it 
by what I know myseJf," said Mr. Pinch, " you 
are the cause of half this merriment, and set it 
going." 

" There may be something in that, too, sir," 
answered Mark. " But that's no consolation." 
***** 

" I'm looking out this morning for something 
new and suitable," he said, nodding towards the 
city. 

"What kind of thing now?" Mr. Pinch de- 
manded. 

" I was thinking," Mark replied, " of some- 
thing in the grave-digging way." 

" Good Gracious, Mark ! " cried Mr. Pinch. 

*' It's a good, damp, wormy sort of business, 
sir," said Mark, shaking his head argumentative- 
ly, " and there might be some credit in being 
jolly, with one's mind in that pursuit, unless 
grave-diggers is usually given that way ; which 
would be a drawback. You don't happen to 
know how that is, in general, do you, sir ? " 

" No," said Mr. Pinch, " I don't indeed. I 
never thought upon the subject." 

" In case of that not turning cut as well as 
one could wish, you know," said Mark, musing 
again, " there's other businesses. Undertaking 
now. That's gloomy. There might be credit to be 
gained there. A broker's man in a poor neigh- 
borhood wouldn't be bad perhaps. A jailor sees 
a deal of misery. A doctor's man is in the very 
niidst of murder. A bailiff's an't a lively office 
nat'rally. Even a tax-gatherer must find his 
feelings rather worked upon, at times. There's 
lots of trades, in which I should have an oppor- 
tunity, I think." 

***** 

" But bless my soul, Mark," said Mr. Pinch, 
who in the progress of his observation just then 
made the discovery that the bosom of his com- 
panion's shirt was as much exposed as if it were 
Midsummer, and was ruffled by every breath of 
air, "why don't you wear a waistcoat?" 

" What's the good of one, sir ? " asked Mark. 

" Good of one ? " said Mr. Pinch. " Why, to 
keep your chest warm." 

" Lord love you, sir ! " cried Mark, " you don't 
know me. My chest don't want no warming. 
Even if it did, what would no waistcoat bring it 
to ? Inflammation of the lungs, perhaps ? Well, 
there'd be some credit in being jolly, with a in- 
flammation of the lungs." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap.^. 

MANHOOD-Modest (Tom Pinch). 

To say that Tom had no idea of playing first 
fiddle in any social orchestra, but was always 
quite satisfied to be set down for the hundred 
and fiftieth violin in the band, or thereabouts, 
is to express his modesty in very inadequate 
terms. — Martin Chiizzle^vit, C/taf>. 12. 

MARK— Up to the. 

" I may not myself," said Mr. Sparkler man- 
fully, " be up to the mark on some other subjects 
at a short notice, and I am aware that if you were 



MARKET 



290 



MARKET-DAY 



to poll Society the general opinion would be 
that I am not ; but on the subject of Amy, I 
AM up to the mark ! " 

Mr. Sparkler kissed her, in witness thereof. 
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 14. 

MARKET-Fleet. 

Fleet Market, at that time, was a long irregu- 
lar row of wooden sheds and pent-houses, occu- 
pying the centre of what is now called Farring- 
don Street. They were jumbled together in a 
most unsightly fashion, in the middle of the road ; 
to the great obstruction of the thoroughfare and 
the annoyance of passengers, who were fain to 
make their way, as they best could, among carts, 
baskets, barrows, trucks, casks, bulks, and 
benches, and to jostle with porters, hucksters, 
wagoners, and a motley crowd of buyers, sellers, 
pickpockets, vagrants, and idlers. The air was 
perfumed with the stench of rotten leaves and 
faded fruit, the refuse of the butchers' stalls, 
and offal and garbage of a hundred kinds. It 
was indispensable to most public conveniences 
in those days, that they should be public nui- 
sances likewise : and Fleet Market maintained 
the principle to admiration. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 60. 

MARKET— A French. 

In the Place d'Armes of this town, a little 
decayed market is held, which seems to slip 
through the old gateway, like water, and go rip- 
pling down the hill, to mingle with the murmur- 
ing market in the lower town, and get lost in its 
movement and bustle. It is very agreeable on 
an idle summer morning to pursue this market- 
stream from the hill-top. It begins dozingly 
and dully, with a few sacks of corn ; starts into a 
surprising collection of boots and shoes ; goes 
brawling down the hill in a diversified channel of 
old cordage, old iron, old crockery, old clothes, 
civil and military, old rags, new cotton goods, 
flaming prints of saints, little looking-glasses and 
incalculable lengths of tape ; dives into a backway, 
keeping out of sight for a little while, as streams 
will, or only sparkling for a moment in the shape 
of a market drinking-shop ; and suddenly reap- 
pears behind the great church, shooting itself 
into a bright confusion of white-capped women 
and blue-bloused men, poultry, vegetables, fruits, 
flowers, pots, pans, praying-chairs, soldiers, 
country butter, umbrellas and other sunshades, 
girl-porters waiting to be hired, with baskets at 
their backs, and one weazen little old man in a 
cocked hat, wearing a cuirass of drinking-glasses, 
and carrying on his shoulder a crimson temple 
fluttering with flags, like a glorified pavior's 
rammer without the handle, who rings a little 
bell in all parts of the scene, and cries his cool- 
ing drink Hola, Hola, H-0-0 ! in a shrill 
cracked voice that somehow makes itself heard 
above all the chaffering and vending hum. 
Early in the afternoon, the whole course of the 
stream is dry. The praying-chairs are put back 
in the church, the umbrellas are folded up, the 
unsold goods are carried away, the stalls and 
stands disappear, the square is swept, the hack- 
ney-coaches lounge there to be hired, and on 
all the country roads (if you walk about as much 
as we do) you will see the peasant women, 
always neatly and comfortably dressed, riding 
home, with the pleasantest saddle furniture of 
clean milkipails, bright butter-kegs, and the 



like, on the jolliest little donkeys in the 

world. 

<)ur French Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces. 

MARKET— A stroU in Covent Garden, 

Many and many a pleasant stroll they had in 
Covent Garden Market : snuffing up the per- 
fume of the fruits and flowers, wondering at the 
magnificence of the pine-apples and melons ; 
catching glimpses down side avenues, of rows 
and rows of old women, seated on inverted 
baskets, shelling peas ; looking unutterable things 
at the fat bundles of asparagus with which the 
dainty shops were fortified as with a breast- 
work ; and, at the herbalists' doors, gratefully 
inhaling scents as of veal-stuffing yet uncooked, 
dreamily mixed up with capsicums, brown-paper, 
seeds : even with hints of lusty snails and fine 
young curly leeches. Many and many a pleas- 
ant stroll they had among the poultry markets 
where ducks and fowls, with necks unnaturally 
long, lay stretched out in pairs, ready for cook- 
ing ; where there were speckled eggs in mossy 
baskets, white country sausages beyond impeach- 
ment by surviving cat or dog, or horse or don- 
key, new cheeses to any wild extent, live birds in 
coops and cages, looking much too big to be 
natural, in consequence of those receptacles be- 
ing much too little ; rabbits, alive and dead, in- 
numerable. Many a pleasant stroll they had 
among the cool, refreshing," silvery fish-stalls, 
with a kind of moonlight effect about their stock 
in trade, excepting always for the ruddy lobsters. 
Many a pleasant stroll among the wagon-loads 
of fragrant hay, beneath which dogs and tired 
wagoners lay fast asleep, oblivious of the pie-man 
and the public-house. But never half so good 
a stroll, as down among the steam-boats on a 
bright morning. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40. 

MARKET— At Salisbury. 

Oh ! what a different town Salisbury was in 
Tom Pinch's eyes to be sure, when the substan- 
tial Pecksniff of his heart melted away into an 
idle dream ! He possessed the same faith in the 
wonderful shops, the same intensified apprecia- 
tion of the mystery and wickedness of the place ; 
made the same exalted estimate of its wealth, 
population, and resources ; and yet it was not 
the old city nor anything like it. He walked 
into the market while they were getting break- 
fast ready for him at the Inn : and though it was 
the same market as of old, crowded by the same 
buyers and sellers ; brisk with the same busi- 
ness ; noisy with the same confusion of tongues 
and cluttering of fowls in coops ; fair with the 
same display of rolls of butter, newly made, set 
forth in linen cloths of dazzling whiteness ; 
green with the same fresh show of dewy vegeta- 
bles ; dainty with the same array in higglers' 
baskets of small shaving-glasses, laces, braces, 
trouser-straps, and hardware ; savory with the 
same unstinted show of delicate pigs' feet, and 
pies made precious by the pork that once had 
walked upon them : still it was strangely changed 
to Tom. For, in the centre of the market-place, 
he missed a statue he had set up there, as in all 
other places of his personal resort ; and it looked 
cold and bare without that ornament. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 36. 

MARKET-DAY— And city scenes. 

Mr. Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury 



ii 



MARKET-DAY 



291 



MARKET-DAYS 



was a very desperate sort of place : an exceed- 
ing wild and dissipated city ; and when he had 
put up the horse, and given the hostler to under- 
stand that he would look in again in the course 
of an hour or two to see him take his corn, he 
set forth on a stroll about the streets with a 
vague and not unpleasant idea that they teemed 
with all kinds of mystery and bedevilment. To 
one of his quiet habits this little delusion was 
greatly assisted by the circumstance of its being 
market-day, and the thoroughfares about the 
market-place being filled with carts, horses, 
donkeys, baskets, wagons, garden-stuff, meat, 
tripe, pies, poultry, and hucksters' wares of 
every opposite description and possible variety 
of character. Then there were young farmers 
and old farmers, with smock-frocks, brown great- 
coats, drab great-coats, red worsted comforters, 
leather-leggings, wonderful shaped hats, hunt- 
ing-whips, and rough sticks, standing about in 
groups, or talking noisily together on the tavern 
steps, or paying and receiving huge amounts of 
greasy wealth, with the assistance of such bulky 
pocket-books that when they were in their 
pockets it was apoplexy to get them out, and 
when they were out it was spasms to get them 
in again. Also there were farmers* wives in 
beaver bonnets and red cloaks, riding shaggy 
horses purged of all earthly passions, who went 
soberly into all manner of places without desir- 
ing to know why, and who, if required, would 
have stood stock still in a china-shop, with a 
complete dinner-service at each hoof. Also a 
great many dogs, who were strongly interested in 
the state of the market and the bargains of their 
masters ; and a great confusion of tongues, both 
brute and human. 

First of all, there were the jewellers' shops, 
with all the treasures of the earth displayed 
therein, and such large silver watches hanging 
up in every pane of glass, that if they were any- 
thing but first-rate goers it certainly was not be- 
cause the works could decently complain of 
want of room. In good sooth, they were big 
enough, and perhaps, as the saying is, ugly 
enough, to be the most correct of all mechanical 
performers ; in Mr. Pinch's eyes, however, they 
were smaller than Geneva ware ; and when he 
saw one very bloated watch announced as a 
repeater, gifted with the uncommon power of 
striking every quarter of an hour inside the 
pocket of its happy owner, he almost wished 
that he were rich enough to buy it. 

But what were even gold and silver, precious 
stones and clockwork, to the bookshops, whence 
a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came 
issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of 
some new grammar had at school, long time 
ago, with, " Master Pinch, Grove House Acad- 
emy," inscribed in faultless writing on the fly- 
leaf! That whiff of Russia leather, too, and all 
those rows on rows of volumes, neatly ranged 
within ; what happiness did they suggest ! And 
in the window were the spick-and-span new 
works from London, with the title-pages, and 
sometimes even the first page of the first chap- 
ter, laid wide open ; tempting unwary men to 
begin to read the book, and then, in the impos- 
sibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and 
buy it ! Here too were the dainty frontispiece 
and trim vignette, pointing like handposts on 
the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of 



incident beyond ; and store of books, with, 
many a grave portrait and time-honored name, 
whose matter he knew well, and would have 
given mines to have, in any form, upon the nar- 
row shelf beside his bed at Mr. Pecksniff's. 
What a heart-breaking shop it was ! 

There was another ; not quite so bad at first, 
but still a trying shop ; where children's books 
were sold, and where poor Robinson Crusoe stood 
alone in his might, with dog and hatchet, goat- 
skin cap and fowling-pieces ; calmly surveying 
Philip Quarll and the host of imitators round 
him, and calling Mr. Pinch to witness that he, 
of all the crowd, impressed one solitary foot- 
print on the shore of boyish memory, whereof 
the tread of generations should not stir the 
lightest grain of sand. And there too were the 
Persian tales, with flying chests and students of 
enchanted books shut up for years in caverns; 
and there too was Abudah, the merchant, with 
the terrible little old woman hobbling out of 
the box in his bed-room ; and there the mighty 
talisman, the rare Arabian Nights, with Cassim 
Baba, divided by four, like the ghost of a dread- 
ful sum, hanging up, all gory, in the robbers' 
cave. Which matchless wonders, coming fast 
on Mr. Pinch's mind, did so rub up and chafe 
that wonderful lamp within him, that when he 
turned his face toward the busy street, a crowd 
of phantoms waited on his pleasure, and he 
lived again, with new delight, the happy days 
before the Pecksniff era. 

He had less interest now in the chemist's 
shops, with their great glowing bottles (with 
smaller repositories of brightness in their very 
stoppers) ; and in their agreeable compromises 
between medicine and perfumery, in the shape 
of toothsome lozenges and virgin honey. Neither 
had he the least regard (but he never had much) 
for the tailors', where the newest metropolitan 
waistcoat patterns were hanging up, which by 
some strange transformation always looked 
amazing there, and never appeared at all like 
the same thing anywhere else. But he stopped 
to read the playbill at the theatre, and surveyed 
the doorway with a kind of awe, which was not 
diminished when a sallow gentleman with long 
dark hair came out, and told a boy to run home 
to his lodgings and bring down his broadsword. 
Mr. Pinch stood rooted to the spot on hearing 
this, and might have stood there until dark, but 
that the old cathedral bell began to ring for ves- 
per service, on which he tore himself away. 

Martin Chuzzlcwit, Chap. 5. 

MARKET-DAYS, 

On market-days alone, its Great Place sudden- 
ly leaped out of bed. On market-days, some 
friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the 
stones of the Great Place, and instantly arose 
the liveliest booths and stalls and sittings and 
standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and 
huckstering from many hundreds of tongues, 
and a pleasant, though peculiar blending of 
colors — white caps, blue blouses, and green 
vegetables — and at last the Knight destined for 
the adventure seemed to have come in earnest, 
and all the Vaubanois sprang up awake. And 
now, by long, low-lying avenues of trees, jolting 
in white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey- 
back, and in tumbril and wagon, and cart and 
cabriolet, and afoot, with barrow and burden^ 
and along the dikes and ditches and canals, iu 



MARKET-MORNINa 



292 



MABBIAGE 



little peak-prowed country boats — came peasant 
men and women in flocks and crowds, bringing 
articles for sale. And here you had boots and 
shoes, and sweetmeats, and stuffs to wear, and 
here (in the cool shade of the Town Hall) you 
had milk and cream and butter and cheese, and 
here you had fruits and onions and carrots, and 
all things needful for your soup, and here you had 
poultry and flowers and protesting pigs, and here 
new shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooks for 
your farming M'ork, and here huge mounds of 
bread, and here your unground grain in sacks, 
and here your children's dolls, and here the cake- 
seller announcing his wares by beat and roll of 
drum. And hark ! fanfaronade of trumpets, and 
here into the Great Place, resplendent in an 
open carriage, with four gorgeously attired servi- 
tors up behind, playing horns, drums, and cym- 
bals, rolled " the Daughter of a Physician," in 
massive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue- 
feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by 
two immense umbrellas of artificial roses, to dis- 
pense (from motives of philanthropy) that small 
and pleasant dose which had cured so many 
thousands ! Toothache, earache, headache, 
heartache, stomach-ache, debility, nervousness, 
fits, fainting, fever, ague, all equally cured by 
the small and pleasant dose of the great Phy- 
sician's great daughter ! 

Somebody s Luggage, Chap. 2. 

MARKET-MORNINGr— Covent Garden. 

Covent Garden Market, when it was market- 
morning, was wonderful company. The great 
wagons of cabbages, with growers' men and boys 
lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs 
from market-garden neighborhoods looking after 
the whole, were as good as a party. But one of 
the worst night sights I know in London is to 
be found in the children who prowl about this 
place ; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the 
offal, dart at any object they think they can lay 
their thieving hands on, dive under the carts 
and barrows, dodge the constables, and are per- 
petually making a blunt pattering on the pave- 
ment of the Piazza with the rain of their naked 
feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of 
the comparison one is forced to institute be- 
tween the growth of corruption as displayed in 
the so much improved and cared for fruits of 
the earth, and the growth of corruption as dis- 
played in these all uncared for (except inasmuch 
as ever hunted) savages. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13. 



It was market-morning. The ground was 
covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire ; 
and a thick steam, perpetually rising from the 
reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with 
the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chim- 
ney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in 
the centre of the large area — and as many tem- 
porary ones as could be crowded into the vacant 
space — were filled with sheep ; tied up to posts 
by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and 
oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, 
drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vaga- 
bonds of every low grade, were mingled together 
in a dense mass ; the whistling of drovers, the 
barking of dogs, the bellowing and plunging of 
oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and 
squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the 
shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides ; the 



ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued 
from every public-house ; the crowding, pushing, 
driving, beating, whooping, and yelling ; the 
hideous and discordant din that resounded from 
every corner of the market ; and the unwashed, 
unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly 
running to and fro, and bursting in and out of 
the throng, rendered it a stunning and bewil- 
dering scene, which quite confounded the senses. 
Oliver Twist, Chap. 21. 

MARRIAGE. 

Marriage is a civil contract ; people marry to 
better their worldly condition and improve ap- 
pearances ; it is an affair of house and furniture, 
of liveries, servants, equipage, and so forth. The 
lady being poor and you pooralso, there is an 
end of the matter. You cannot enter upon these 
considerations, and have no manner of business 
with the ceremony. I drink her health in this 
glass, and respect and honor her for her extreme 
good sense. It is a lesson to you. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 32. 



Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertak- 
ing. Like an overweening predilection for 
brandy-and-water, it is a misfortune into which 
a man easily falls, and from which he finds it 
remarkably difficult to extricate himself It is 
of no use telling a nian who is timorous on these 
points, that it is but one plunge and all is over. 
They say the same thing at the Old Bailey, and 
the imfortunate victims derive as much comfort 
from the assurance in the one case as in the 
other. — Tales, Chap. 10. 



Horses prance and caper ; coachmen and foot- 
men shine in fluttering favors, flowers, and new- 
made liveries. Away they dash and rattle 
through the streets : and as they pass along, a 
thousand heads are turned to look at them, and 
a thousand sober moralists revenge themselves 
for not being married too, that morning, by re- 
flecting that these people little think such hap- 
piness can't last. — Dombey df Son, Chap. 31. 

MARRIAGE— A ceremony of facts. 

Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be 
solemnized in eight weeks' time, and Mr. Bound- 
erby went every evening to Stone Lodge as an 
accepted wooer. Love was made on these occa- 
sions in the form of bracelets ; and, on all occa- 
sions during the period of betrothal, took a 
manufacturing aspect. Dresses were made, jew- 
elry was made, cakes and gloves were made, 
settlements were made, and an extensive assort- 
ment of Facts did appropriate honor to the 
contract. The business was all Fact, from first 
to last. The Hours did not go through any of 
those rosy performances, which foolish poets 
have ascribed to them at such times ; neither 
did the clocks go any faster or any slower than 
at other seasons. The deadly statistical recorder 
in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every 
second on the head as it was born, and buried 
it with his accustomed regularity. 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 15. 

MARRIAGE- After. ^ 

It was a strange condition of things, the 
honey-moon being over, and the bridesmaids 
gone home, when I found myself sitting down 
in my own small house with Dora ; quite thrown 



MABBIAaE 



MAHBIAGE 



out of employment, as I may say, in respect of 
the delicious old occupation of making love. 

It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have 
Dora always there. It was so unaccountable 
not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to 
have any occasion to be tormenting myself about 
her, not to have to write to her, not to be schem- 
ing and devising opportunities of being alone 
with her. Sometimes, of an evening, when I 
looked up from my writing, and saw her seated 
opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and 
think how queer it was that there we were, alone 
together as a matter of course — nobody's busi- 
ness any more — all the romance of our engage- 
ment put away upon a shelf, to rust — no one to 
please but one another — one another to please, 
for life. 

"When there was a debate, and I was kept out 
very late, it seemed so strange to me, as I was 
walking home, to think that Dora was at home ! 
It was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have 
her coming softly down to talk to me as I ate 
my supper. It was such a stupendous thing to 
know for certain that she put her hair in papers. 
It was altogether such an astonishing event to 
see her do it ! 

I doubt whether two young birds could have 
known less about keeping house, than I and my 
pretty Dora did. We had a servant, of course. 
She kept house for us. I have still a latent 
belief that she must have been Mrs. Crupp's 
daughter in disguise, we had such an awful time 
of it with Mary Anne. 

Her name was Paragon. Her nature was 
represented to us, when we engaged her, as be- 
ing feebly expressed in her name. She had a 
written character as large as a proclamation ; 
and, according to this document, could do every- 
thing of a domestic nature that ever I heard of, 
and a great many things that I never did hear 
of. She was a woman in the prime of life ; of a 
severe countenance ; and subject (particularly 
in the arms) to a sort of perpetual measles or 
fiery rash. She had a cousin in the Life Guards, 
with such long legs that he looked like the after- 
noon shadow of somebody else. His shell-jacket 
was as much too little for him as he was too big 
for the premises. He made the cottage smaller 
than it need have been, by being so very 
much out of proportion to it. Besides which, 
the walls were not thick, and whenever he 
passed the evening at our house, we always 
knew of it by hearing one continual growl in the 
kitchen. 

Our treasure was warranted sober and honest. 
I am therefore willing to believe that she was 
in a fit when we found her under the boiler ; 
and that the deficient teaspoons were attributa- 
ble to the dustman. 

But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. 
We felt our inexperience, and were unable to 
help ourselves. We should have been at her 
mercy, if she had had any ; but she was a re- 
morseless woman, and had none. 

David Coppei'fieldy Chap. 44. 

IffAimiAQE— Housekeeping: after. 

The next domestic trial we went through, was 
the Ordeal of Servants. Mary Anne's cousin 
deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought 
out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his 
companions in arms, who took him away hand- 
cuffed in a procession that covered our front- 



garden with ignominy. This nerved me to get 
rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly, on re- 
ceipt of wages, that I was surprised, until I 
found out about the tea-spoons, and also about 
the little sums she had borrowed in my name 
of the trades-people without authority. After 
an interval of Mrs. Kidgerbury — the oldest in- 
habitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went 
out charing, but was too feeble to execute her 
conceptions of that art — we found another treas- 
ure, who was one of the most amiable of women, 
but who generally made a point of falling either 
up or down the kitchen stairs with the tray, and 
almost plunged into the parlor, as into a bath, 
with the tea-things. The ravages committed 
by this unfortunate rendering her dismissal 
necessary, she was succeeded (with intervals of 
Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables ; 
terminating in a young person of genteel ap- 
pearance, who went to Greenwich Fair in 
Dora's bonnet. After whom I remember noth- 
ing but an average equality of failure. 

Everybody we had anything to do with 
seemed to cheat us. Our appearance in a shop 
was a signal for the damaged goods to be 
brought out immediately. If we bought a lob- 
ster, it was full of water. All our meat turned 
out to be tough, and there was hardly any crust 
to our loaves. In search of the principle on 
which joints ought to be roasted, to be roasted 
enough, and not too much, I myself referred to 
the Cookery Book, and found it there estab- 
lished as the allowance of a quarter of an hour 
to every pound, and say a quarter over. But 
the principle always failed us by some curious 
fatality, and we never could hit any medium be- 
tween redness and cinders. 

I had reason to believe that in accomplishing 
these failures we incurred a far greater expense 
than if we had achieved a series of triumphs. 
It appeared to me, on looking over the trades- 
men's books, as if we might have kept the base- 
ment story paved with butter, such was the ex- 
tensive scale of our consumption of that article. 
I don't know whether the Excise returns of the 
period may have exhibited any increase in the 
demand for pepper ; but if our performances did 
not affect the market, I should say several fami- 
lies must have left off using it. And the most 
wonderful fact of all was, that we never had 
anything in the house. 

As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes, 
and coming in a state of penitent intoxication 
to apologize, I suppose that might have hap- 
pened several times to anybody. Also the 
chimney on fire, the parish engine, and perjury 
on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend 
that we were personally unfortunate in enga- 
ging a servant with a taste for cordials, who 
swelled our running account for porter at the 
public-house by such inexplicable items as 
" quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.) ; " " Half-quartern 
gin and cloves (Mrs. C.) ; " " Glass rum and pep- 
permint (Mrs. C.) ; " — the parentheses always 
referring to Dora, who was supposed, it ap- 
peared on explanation, to have imbibed the 
whole of these refreshments. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 44. 

MABBIAGE— In society. 

Mrs. Merdle reviewed the bosom which Soci> 
ety was accustomed to review ; and having as- 
certained that show-window of Mr. Merdle's and 



MARRIAaE 



294 



UABBIAaE 



the London jewellers to be in good order, re- 
plied : 

" As to marriage on the part of a man, my 
dear. Society requires that he should retrieve 
his fortunes by marriage. Society requires that 
he should gain by marriage. Society requires 
that he should found a handsome establishment 
by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise, 
what he has to do with marriage. 

" Young men, and by young men you know 
what I mean, my love — I mean people's sons 
who have the world before them — must place 
themselves in a better position towards Society 
by marriage, or Society really will not have any 
patience with their making fools of themselves. 
Dreadfully worldly all this sounds," said Mrs. 
Merdle, leaning back in her nest and putting 
up her glass again, " does it not ? " 

" But it is true," said Mrs. Gowan, with a high- 
ly moral air. 

" My dear, it is not to be disputed for a mo- 
ment," returned Mrs. Merdle ; " because Soci- 
ety has made up its mind on the subject, and 
there is nothing more to be said. If we were 
in a more primitive state, if we lived under roofs 
of leaves, and kept cows and sheep and crea- 
tures, instead of banker's accounts (which would 
be delicious ; my dear, I am a pastoral to a degree 
by nature), well and good. But we don't live 
under leaves, and keep cows and sheep and 
creatures ! " — Little Dorr it ^ Book I., Chap. 33. 

MARRIAGE— An unequal. 

" Youth has many generous impulses which do 
not last ; and among them are some which, 
being gratified, become only the more fleeting. 
Above all, I think," said the lady, fixing her 
eyes on her son's face, " that if an enthusias- 
tic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife "on 
whose name there is a stain, which, though it 
originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by 
cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his 
children also ; and, in exact proportion to his 
success in the world, be cast in his teeth and 
made the subject of sneers against him ; he 
may, no matter how generous and good his na- 
ture, one day repent of the connection he formed 
in early life. And she may have the pain and 
torture of knowing that he does so." 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 34. 

The barrier between Mr. Dombey and his 
wife was not weakened by time. Ill-assorted 
couple, unhappy in themselves and in each other, 
bound together by no tie but the manacle that 
joined their fettered hands, and straining that 
so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it 
wore and chafed to the bone, Time, consoler of 
affliction and softener of anger, could do noth- 
ing to help them. Their pride, however differ- 
ent in kind and object, was equal in degree ; 
and, in their flinty opposition, struck out fire 
between them which might smoulder or might 
blaze, as circumstances were, but burned up 
everything within their mutual reach, and made 
their marriage way a road of ashes. 

«■ ■» 4c * « 

A marble rock could not have stood more ob- 
durately in his way than she ; and no chilled 
spring, lying uncheered by any ray of light in 
the depths of a deep cave, could be more sul- 
len or more cold than he. 

Dombey df Son, Chap. 47. 



MARRIAGE— Its bickerings. 

In their matrimonial bickerings they were, 
upon the whole, a well-matched, fairly-balanced, 
give-and-take couple. It would have been, gen- 
erally speaking, very difl&cult to have bet- 
ted on the winner. Often when Mr. Chick 
seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start, 
turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of 
Mrs. Chick, and carry all before him. Being 
liable himself to similar unlooked-for checks 
from Mrs. Chick, their little contests usually 
possessed a character of uncertainty that was 
very animating. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. I. 

MARRIAGE— Of Dora and David Copper- 
field. 

The church is calm enough, I am sure ; but 
it might be a steam-power loom in full action, 
for any sedative effect it has on me. I am too 
far gone for that. 

The rest is all a more or less incoherent 
dream. 

A dream of their coming in with Dora ; of 
the pew-opener arranging us, like a drill-ser- 
geant, before the altar rails ; of my wondering, 
even then, why pew-openers must always be the 
most disagreeable females procurable, and whe- 
ther there is any religious dread of a disas- 
trous infection of good-humor which renders it 
indispensable to set those vessels of vinegar 
upon the road to Heaven. 

Of the clergyman and clerk appearing ; of a 
few boatmen and some other people strolling in ; 
of an ancient mariner behind me, strongly fla- 
voring the church with rum ; of the service 
beginning in a deep voice, and our all being 
very attentive. 

Of Miss Lavinia, who acts as a semi-auxiliary 
bridesmaid, being the first to cry, and of her 
doing homage (as I take it) to the memory of 
Pidger, in sobs ; of Miss Clarissa applying a 
smelling-bottle ; of Agnes taking care of Dora ; 
of my aunt endeavoring to represent herself as 
a model of sternness, with tears rolling down 
her face ; of little Dora trembling very much, 
and making her responses in faint whispers. 

Of our kneeling down together, side by side ; 
of Dora's trembling less and less, but always 
clasping Agnes by the hand ; of the service be- 
ing got through, quietly and gravely ; of our all 
looking at each other in an April state of smiles 
and tears, when it is over ; of my young 
wife being hysterical in the vestry, and crying 
for her poor papa, her dear papa. 

David Copper field, Chap. 43. 

MARRIAGE— Of young people. 

" Poor little couple ! And so you think you 

were formed for one another, and are to go 

through a party-supper-table kind of life, like 

two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you. Trot ? ** 

David Copperfield, Chap. 35. 

MARRIAGE— The Anniversary. 

Mr. and Mrs. Wilfer had seen a full quarter 
of a hundred more anniversaries of their wed- 
ding-day than Mr. and Mrs. Lammle had seen 
of theirs, but they still celebrated the occasion 
in the bosom of their family. Not that these 
celebrations ever resulted in anything particu 
larly agreeable, or that the family was ever dis- 
appointed by that circumstance on account of 
having looked forward to the return of the aus- 



AiABBIAaE 



MARRIED COUPLES 



picious day with sanguine anticipations of en- 
joyment. It was kept morally, rather as a Fast 
than a Feast, enabling Mrs. Wilfer to hold a 
sombre, darkling state, which exhibited that im- 
pressive woman in her choicest colors. 

The noble lady's condition on these delight- 
ful occasions was one compounded of heroic en- 
durance and heroic forgiveness. Lurid indica- 
tions of the better marriages she might have 
made, shone athwart the awful gloom of her 
composure, and fitfully revealed the cherub as 
a little monster unaccountably favored by 
Heaven, who had possessed himself of a bless- 
ing for which many of his superiors had sued 
and contended in vain. So firmly had this his 
position towards his treasure become established, 
that when the anniversary arrived, it always 
found him in an apologetic state. It is not im- 
possible that his modest penitence may have 
even gone the length of sometimes severely re- 
proving him for that he ever took the liberty 
of making so exalted a character his wife. 

Our Mutual Frietid, Book III., Chap. 4. 

MARRIAGE-Of Bimsby. 

The Captain made many attempts to accost 
the philosopher, if only in a monosyllable or a 
signal ; but always failed, in consequence of the 
vigilance of the guard, and the difficulty at all 
times peculiar to Bunsby's constitution, of hav- 
ing his attention aroused by any outward and 
visible sign whatever. Thus they approached 
the chapel, a neat whitewashed edifice, recently 
engaged by the Reverend Melchisedech Howler, 
who had consented, on very urgent solicitation, 
to give the world another two years of existence, 
but had informed his followers that, then, it 
must positively go. 

While the Reverend Melchisedech was offer- 
ing up some extemporary orisons, the Captain 
found an opportunity of growling in the bride- 
groom's ear : 

" What cheer, my lad, what cheer ? " 

To which Bunsby replied, with a forgetfulness 
of the Reverend Melchisedech, which nothing 
but his desperate circumstances could have ex- 
cused : 

" D— d bad." 

" Jack Bunsby," whispered the Captain, " do 
you do this here, o' your own free will ? " 

Mr. Bunsby answered " No." 

"Why do you do it then, my lad?" inquired 
the Captain, not unnaturally. 

Bunsby, still looking, and always looking with 
an immoveable countenance, at the opposite side 
of the world, made no reply. 

"Why not sheer off?" said the Captain. 

" Eh ? " whispered Bunsby, with a momentary 
gleam of hope. 

" Sheer off," said the Captain. 

"Where's the good?" retorted the forlorn 
sage. " She'd capter me agen." 

" Try ! " replied the Captain. " Cheer up ! 
Come! Now's your time. Sheer off, Tack 
Bunsby ! " 

Jack Bunsby, however, instead of profiting 
by the advice, said in a doleful whisper : 

" It all began in that there chest o* yourn. Why 
did I ever conwoy her into port that night ? " 

" My lad," faltered the Captain, " I thought 
as you had come over her ; not as she had come 
over you. A man as has got such opinions as 
you have ! " 



Mr. Bunsby merely uttered a suppressed groan. 

" Come ! " said the Captain, nudging him with 
his elbow, "now's your time ! Sheer off! I'll 
cover your retreat. The time's a flying. Buns- 
by ! It's for liberty. Will you once ? " 

Bunsby was immoveable. 

" Bunsby ! " whispered the Captain, " will 
you twice?" 

Bunsby wouldn't twice. 

" Bunsby ! " urged the Captain, " its for liber- 
ty ; will you three times ? Now or never ! " 

Bunsby didn't then, and didn't ever ; for Mrs. 
MacStinger immediately afterwards married 
him. 

One of the most frightful circumstances of the 
ceremony to the Captain, was the deadly interest 
exhibited therein by Juliana MacStinger: and 
the fatal concentration of her faculties, with 
which that promising child, already the image 
of her parent, observed the whole proceedings. 
The Captain saw in this a succession of man- 
traps stretching out infinitely ; a seiies of ages 
of oppression and coercion, through which the 
seafaring line was doomed. It was a more 
memorable sight than the unflinching steadiness 
of Mrs. Bokum and the other lady, the exulta- 
tion of the short gentleman in the tall hat, or 
even the fell inflexibility of Mrs. MacStinger. 
Dombey cr' Son, Chap. 60. 

MARRIED COUPLES— Advice to yotmg. 

Before marriage and afterwards, let them 
learn to centre all their hopes of real and lasting 
happiness in their own fireside ; let them cherish 
the faith that in home, and all the English 
virtues which the love of home engenders, lies 
the only true source of domestic felicity ; let 
them believe that round the household gods 
Contentment and Tranquillity cluster in theii 
gentlest and most graceful forms ; and that many 
weary hunters of happiness through the noisy 
world have learnt this truth too late, and found 
a cheerful spirit and a quiet mind only at home 
at last. 

How much may depend on the education of 
daughters, and the conduct of mothers — how 
much of the brightest part of our old national 
character may be perpetuated by their wisdom 
or frittered away by their folly — how much of it 
may have been lost already, and how much more 
in danger of vanishing every day — are questions 
too weighty for discussion here, but well deserv- 
ing a little serious consideration from all young 
couples, nevertheless. 

To that one young couple on whose bright 
destiny the thoughts of nations are fixed, may 
the youth of England look, and not in vain, for 
an example. From that one couple, blest and 
favored as they are, may they learn, that even 
the glare and glitter of a court, the splendor of 
a palace, and the pomp and glory of a throne, 
yield in their power of conferring happiness to 
domestic worth and virtue. From that one 
young couple may they learn tiiat the crown of 
a great empire, costly and jewelled though it be, 
gives place in the estimation of a Queen to the 
plain gold ring that links her woman's nature to 
that of tens of thousands of her humble subjects, 
and guards in her woman's heart one secret store 
of tenderness, whose proudest boast shall be 
that it knows no Royalty save Nature's own, 
and no pride of birth but being the child oi 
Heaven ! 



MARRIED-LIFE 



MATRIMOin 



So shall the highest young couple in the land 
for once hear the truth, when men throw up 
their caps, and cry with loving shouts — 
God bless them ! 

Sketches of Couples. 

MARRIED lilPE— Betsy Trotwood on. 

" These are early days. Trot," she pursued, 
" and Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year. 
You have chosen freely for yourself ; " a cloud 
passed over her face for a moment, I thought ; 
" and you have chosen a very pretty and a very 
affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and 
it will be your pleasure too — of course I know 
that ; I am not delivering a lecture — to estimate 
her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has, 
and not by the qualities she may not have. The 
latter you must develop in her, if you can. And 
if you cannot, child," here my aunt rubbed her 
nose, " you must just accustom yourself to do 
without 'em. But remember, my dear, your 
future is between you two. No one can assist 
you ; you are to work it out for yourselves. This 
is marriage, Trot ; and Heaven bless you both 
in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you 
are ! " — David Copperfield, Chap. 44. 

MARSEIULAISE-The. 

" When these people howl, they howl to be 
heard." 

" Most people do, I suppose." 

" Ah ! But these people are always howl- 
ing. Never happy otherwise." 

" Do you mean the Marseilles people ? " 

" I mean the French people. They're always 
at it. As to Marseilles, we know what Mar- 
seilles is. It sent the most insurrectionary tune 
into the world that was ever composed. It 
couldn't exist without allonging and marshong- 
ing to something or other — victory or death, or 
blazes, or something." 

The speaker, with a whimsical good humor 
upon him all the time, looked over the parapet- 
wall with the greatest disparagement of Mar- 
seilles ; and taking up a determined position by 
putting his hands in his pockets, and rattling 
his money at it, apostrophised it with a short 
laugh. 

" Allong and marshong, indeed. It would be 
more creditable to you, I think, to let other 
people allong and marshong about their lawful 
business, instead of shutting 'em up in quaran- 
tine ! " — Little Dorrity Book /., Chap. 2. 

MATRIMONIAIi QTJARREL-A. 

In this mood they sat down to breakfast. The 
little Tetterbys were not habituated to regard 
that meal in the light of a sedentary occupation, 
but discussed it as a dance or trot ; rather re- 
sembling a savage ceremony, in the occasional 
shrill whoops, and brandishings of bread and 
butter, with which it was accompanied, as well 
as in the intricate filings off into the street and 
back again, and the hoppings up and down the 
doorsteps, which were incidental to the perform- 
ance. In the present instance, the contentions 
between these Tetterby children for the milk 
and water jug, common to all, which stood upon 
the table, presented so lamentable an instance 
of angry passions risen very high indeed, that it 
was an outrage on the memory of Dr. Watts. 
It was not until Mr. Tetterby had driven the 
whole herd out of the front door, that a mo- 



ment's peace was secured ; and even that was 
broken by the discovery that Johnny had sur- 
reptitiously come back, and was at that instant 
choking in the jug like a ventriloquist, in his 
indecent and rapacious haste. 

Haunted Man^ Chap. 3, 

MATRIMONY-Mr. WeUer on. 

While the old gentleman was thus engaged, a 
very buxom-looking cook, dressed in mourning, 
who had been bustling about in the bar, glided 
into the room, and bestowing many smirks of 
recognition upon Sam, silently stationed herself 
at the back of his father's chair, and announced 
her presence by a slight cough ; the which, 
being disregarded, was followed by a louder 
one. 

" Hallo ! " said the elder Mr. Weller, drop- 
ping the poker as he looked round, and hastily 
drew his chair away. " Wot's the matter now ? " 

" Have a cup of tea, there's a good soul," re- 
plied the buxom female, coaxingly. 

" I von't," replied Mr. Weller, in a somewhat 
boisterous manner. " I'll see you — ." Mr. 
Weller hastily checked himself, and added in a 
low tone, " furder fust." 

" Oh, dear, dear ! How adversity does change 
people ! '' said the lady, looking upwards. 

" It's the only think 'twixt this and the doc- 
tor as shall change my condition," muttered Mr. 
Weller. 

" I really never saw a man so cross," said the 
buxom female. 

" Never mind. It's all for my own good ; 
vicli is the reflection vith wich the penitent 
school-boy comforted his feelin's ven they 
flogged him," rejoined the old gentleman. 

The buxom female shook her head with a 
compassionate and sympathizing air ; and, ap- 
pealing to Sam, inquired whether his father 
really ought not to make an effort to keep up, 
and not give way to that lowness of spirits. 

* * * * * 

" As I don't rekvire any o* your conversation 
just now, mum, vill you have the goodness to 
re-tire ? " inquired Mr. Weller, in a grave and 
steady voice. 

" Well, Mr. Weller," said the buxom female, 
" I'm sure I only spoke to you out of kindness." 

" Wery likely, mum," replied Mr. Weller. 
*' Samivel, show the lady out, and shut the door 
arter her." 

This hint was not lost upon the buxom fe- 
male ; for she at once left the room, and slam- 
med the door behind her, upon which Mr. 
Weller, senior, falling back in his chair in a vio- 
lent perspiration, said : 

" Sammy, if I wos to stop here alone vun 
veek — only vun veek, my boy — that 'ere 'ooman 
'ud marry me by force and wiolence afore it was 
over." 

" Wot ! Is she so wery fond on you ? " in- 
quired Sam. 

" Fond ! " replied his father, " I can't keep 
her avay from me. If I was locked up in a 
fire-proof chest, vith a patent Brahmin, she'd 
find means to get at me, Sammy." 

" Wot a thing it is, to be so sought arter 1 " 
observed Sam, smiling. 

" I don't take no pride out on it, Sammy," 
replied Mr. Weller, poking the fire vehemently, 
•' it's a horrid sitiwation. I'm actiwally drove 
out o' house and home by it. The breath was 



MATRIMONY 



287 



MARBIAGE 



scarcely out o' your poor mother-in-law's body 
ven vun old 'ooman sends me a pot o' jam, and 
another a pot o' jelly, and another brews a 
blessed large jug o' camomile-tea, vich she 
brings in vith her own hands." Mr. Weller 
paused with an aspect of intense disgust, and, 
looking round, added in a whisper : " They 
wos all widders, Sammy, all on 'em, 'cept the 
camomile-tea one, as wos a single young lady o' 
fifty-three." 

Sam gave a comical look in reply, and the 
old gentleman having broken an obstinate lump 
of coal, with a countenance expressive of as 
much earnestness and malice as if it had been 
the head of one of the widows last mentioned, 
said: 

"In short, Sammy, I feel that I ain't safe 
anyveres but on the box." 

" How are you safer there than anyveres 
else ? " interrupted Sam. 

" 'Cos a coachman's a privileged indiwidual," 
replied Mr. Weller, looking fixedly at his son. 
•"Cos a coachman may do vithout suspicion 
wot other men may not ; 'cos a coachman may 
be on the wery amicablest terms with eighty 
mile o' females, and yet nobody think that he 
ever means to marry any vun among 'em. And 
wot other man can say the same, Sammy ? " 

"Veil, there's somethin' in that," said Sam. 

" If your gov'ner had been a coachman," rea- 
soned Mr. Weller, " do you s'pose as that 'ere 
jury 'ud ever ha' conwicted him, s'posin' it pos- 
sible as the matter could ha' gone to that ex- 
tremity? They dustn't ha' done it." 

" Wy not ? " said Sam, rather disparagingly. 

" Wy not ? " rejoined Mr. Weller ; " 'cos it 
*ud ha' gone agin their consciences. A reg'lar 
coachman's a sort o' con-nectin' link betwixt 
singleness and matrimony, and every practica- 
ble man knows it." 

" Wot ! You mean they're gen'ral fav'rites, 
and nobody takes ad wantage on 'em, p'raps ? " 
said Sam. 

His father nodded. 

"How it ever come to that 'ere pass," re- 
sumed the parent Weller, " I can't say. Wy it 
is that long-stage coachmen possess such insini- 
wations, and is always looked up to — a-dored I 
may say — by ev'ry young 'ooman in ev'ry town 
he vurks through, I don't know. I only know 
that so it is. It's a reg'lation of natur — a dis- 
pensary, as your poor mother-in-law used to 
say." 

"A dispensation," said Sam, correcting the 
old gentleman. 

" Wery good, Samivel, a dispensation if you 
like it better," returned Mr. Weller ; "/ call it 
a dispensary, and it's always writ up so, at the 
places vere they gives you physic for nothin' in 
your own bottles ; that's all." 

With these words, Mr. Weller re-filled and 
re-lighted his pipe, and once more summoning 
up a meditative expression of countenance, con- 
tinued as follows : 

" Therefore, my boy, as I do not see the ad- 
wisability o' stoppin' here to be marri'd vether 
I vant to or not, and as at the same time I do 
not vish to separate myself from them interest- 
in' members o' society altogether, I have come 
to the determination o' drivin' the Safety, and 
puttin' up vunce more at the Bell Savage, vich 
is my natural born element, Sammy." 

Pickwick^ Chap. 52. 



MATRIMONY-Mr. WeUer on the mar- 
riag-e of Sam. 

" You are not an advocate for matrimony, I 
think, Mr. Weller?" 

Mr. Weller shook his head. He was wholly 
unable to speak : vague thoughts of some wicked 
widow having been successful in her designs on 
Mr. Pickwick, choked his utterance. 

" Did you happen to see a young girl down 
stairs, when you came in just now with your 
son?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. 

" Yes. I see a young gal," replied Mr. Weller, 
shortly. 

"What did you think of her, now? Candidly, 
Mr. Weller, what did you think of her ? " 

" I thought she wos wery plump, and veil 
made," said Mr. Weller, with a critical air. 

" So she is," said Mr. Pickwick, " so she is. 
What did you think of her manner, from what 
you saw of her ? " 

" Wery pleasant," rejoined Mr. Weller, " Wery 
pleasant and comfortable." 

The precise meaning which Mr. Weller at- 
tached to this last-mentioned adjective, did not 
appear ; but, as it was evident from the tone in 
which he used it that it was a favorable expres- 
sion, Mr. Pickwick was as well satisfied as if he 
had been thoroughly enlightened on the sub- 
ject. 

" I take a great interest in her, Mr. Weller," 
said Mr. Pickwick. 

Mr. Weller coughed. 

" I mean an interest in her doing well," re- 
sumed Mr. Pickwick ; " a desire that she may be 
comfortable and prosperous. You understand ? " 

" Wery clearly," replied Mr. Weller, who un- 
derstood nothing yet. 

" That young person," said Mr. Pickwick 
" is attached to your son." 

" To Samivel Veller ? " exclaimed the parent. 

" Yes," said Mr. Pickwick. 

" It's nat'ral," said Mr. Weller, after some 
consideration, " nat'ral, but rayther alarmin, 
Sammy must be careful." 

" How do you mean ? " inquired Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

" Wery careful that he don't say nothin' to 
her," responded Mr. Weller. " Wery careful that 
he ain't led away, in a innocent moment, to say 
anythink as may lead to a conwiction for breach. 
You're never safe with 'em, Mr. Pickwick, ven 
they vunce has designs on you ; there's no know- 
in' vere to have 'em ; and vile you're a-consid- 
ering of it, they have you. I wos married fust 
that vay myself, sir, and Sammy wos the con- 
sekens o' the manoover." 

Pickwick, Chap. 56. 

MAmHAGE-Mr. Weller's advice. 

" I'm a goin' to leave you, Samivel my boy, 
and there's no telling ven I shall see you again. 
Your mother-in-law may' ha' been too much for 
me, or a thousand things may have happened by 
the time you next hears any news o' the celebrat- 
ed Mr. Veller o' the Bell Savage. The family 
name depends wery much upon you, Samivel, 
and I hope you'll do wot's right by it. Upon all 
little p'ints o' breedin', I know I may trust you 
as veil as if it was my own self. So I've only 
this here one little bit of adwice to give you. If 
ever you gets to up'ards o' fifty, and feels dis- 
posed to go a marryin' anybody — no matter who 
— jist you shut yourself up in your own room, if 



MEANDERING' 



298 



MEMOHt 



you've got one, and pison yourself off hand. 
Hangin's wulgar, so don't you have no thin' to 
say to that. Pison yourself, Samivel, my boy, 
pison yourself, and you're be glad on it arter- 
wards." — Pickwick, Chap. 23. 

** MEANDERING-Let txs have no." 

It is a fact which will be long remembered as 
remarkable down there, that she was never 
drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at 
ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to 
the last, her proudest boast, that she never had 
been on the water in her life, except upon a 
bridge ; and that over her tea (to which she was 
extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her 
indignation at the impiety of mariners and 
others, who had the presumption to go "me- 
andering" about the world. It was in vain to 
represent to her that some conveniences, tea per- 
haps included, resulted from this objectionable 
practice. She always returned, with greater 
emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of 
the strength of her objection, " Let us have no 
meandering," — David Copperjield, Chap. i. 

IffiEANNESS— The difference on two and 

four legs. 

Fledgeby deserved Mr. Alfred Lammle's eu- 

logium. He was the meanest cur existing, with 

a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we 

all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, 

and reason always on two, meanness on four legs 

never attains the perfection of meanness on two. 

Our Mutual Frietid, Book II., Chap. 5. 

MEANNESS. 

" All awry, as if his mean soul griped his 
body." — David Copperjieldy Chap. 25. 

MEANS AND THE END. 

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was 
to fall on the bed of state in the flush of con- 
quest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the 
tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was 
slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the 
slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the 
rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the 
miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All be- 
ing made ready with much labor, and the hour 
come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the 
night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever 
the rope from the great iron ring was put into 
his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope 
parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. 
So, in my case ; all the work, near and afar, that 
tended to the end, had been accomplished ; and 
in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof 
of my stronghold dropped upon me. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 38. 

MEDICAIi STUDENTS— Conversation of. 

" Nothing like dissecting, to give one an ap- 
petite," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, looking round the 
table. 

Mr. Pickwick slightly shuddered. 

" By the bye. Bob," said Mr. Allen, " have you 
finished that leg yet ? " 

" Nearly," replied Sawyer, helping himself to 
half a fowl as he spoke. " It's a very muscular 
one for a child's." 

" Is it? " inquired Mr. Allen, carelessly. 

" Very," said Bob Sawyer, with his mouth 
full. 



" I've put my name down for an arm, at oui 
place," said Mr. Allen. " We're clubbing for a 
subject, and the list is nearly full, only we can't 
get hold of any fellow that want's a head. I 
wish you'd take it." 

" No," replied Bob Sawyer ; " can't afford 
expensive luxuries." 

" Nonsense ! " said Allen. 

" Can't indeed," rejoined Bob Sawyer. " I 
wouldn't mind a brain, but I couldn't stand a 
whole head." — Pickwick, Chap. 30. 

MEDICINE— Mrs. Joe's administration of. 

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me 
up by the hair : saying nothing more than the 
awful words, "You come along and be dosed." 

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in 
those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe al- 
ways kept a supply of it in the cupboard ; hav- 
ing a belief in its virtues correspondent to its 
nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this 
elixir was administered to me as a choice re- 
storative, that I was conscious of going about, 
smelling like a new fence. On this particular 
evening the urgency of my case demanded a 
pint of this mixture, which was poured down 
my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs. 
Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot 
would be held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with 
half a pint ; but he was made to swallow that 
(much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munch- 
ing and meditating before the fire), " because 
he had had a turn." Judging from myself, I 
should say he certainly had a turn afterward, if 
he had had none before. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 2. 

MEEKNESS-Of Dr. ChiUip. 

He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of 
little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to 
take up the less space. He walked as softly as 
the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He car- 
ried his head on one side, partly in modest de- 
preciation of himself, partly in modest propitia- 
tion of everybody else. It is nothing to say 
that he hadn't a word to throw at a dog. He 
couldn't have thrown a word at a mad dog. He 
might have offered him one gently, or half a one, 
or a fragment of one — for he spoke as slowly as 
he walked — but he wouldn't have been rude to 
him, and he couldn't have been quick with him, 
for any earthly consideration. 

David Copperjield, Chap. i. 

MELANCHOLY. 

" In such a lonely, melancholy state, that he 
was more like a pump than a man, and might 
have drawed tears." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 32. 

MELANCHOLY— In contrast with affection. 

You have no idea what it is to have anybody 
wonderful fond of you, unless you have been 
got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings 
that I have mentioned as having once got the 
better of me. — Dr. Marigold. 

MEMORY. 

" Is his memory impaired with age ? " 
'* Not a morsel of it, sir," replied Mr. Wil- 
liam. " He don't know what forgetting means." 
Haunted Man, Chap. I. 



MEMORY 



MICAWBEB 



MEMORY— A retentive. 

" Take care she don't forget what I've been 
saying to her." 

" SJie never forgets," returned Caleb. " It's 
one of the few things she an't clever in." 

"Every man thinks his own geese swans," 
observed the Toy merchant, with a shrug. 
" Poor devil ! " — Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2. 

MEMORY— Its faces recalled. 

After musing for some minutes, the old gen- 
tleman walked, with the same meditative face, 
into a back ante-room opening from the yard ; 
and there, retiring into a corner, called up be- 
fore his mind's eye a vast amphitheatre of faces 
over which a dusky curtain had hung for many 
years, " No," said the old gentleman, shaking 
nis head ; " it must be imagination." 

He wandered over them again. He had 
called them into view ; and it was not easy to 
replace the shroud that had so long concealed 
them. There were the faces of friends, and 
foes, and of many that had been almost stran- 
gers, peering intrusively from the crowd ; there 
were the faces of young and blooming girls that 
were now old women ; there were faces that the 
grave had changed and closed upon, but which 
the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in 
their old freshness and beauty, calling back the 
lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, 
the beaming of the soul through its mask of 
clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, 
changed but to be heightened, and taken from 
earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft 
and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven. 

But the old gentleman could recall no one 
countenance of which Oliver's features bore a 
trace. So, he heaved a sigh over the recollec- 
tions he had awakened ; and being, happily for 
himself, an absent old gentleman, buried them 
again in the pages of the musty book. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. ii. 

MEMORY— Windows in the house of. 

But the windows of the house of Memory, and 
the windows of the house of Mercy, are not so 
easily closed as windows of glass and wood. 
They fly open unexpectedly ; they rattle in the 
night ; they must be nailed up. Mr. The Eng- 
lishman had tried nailing them, but had not 
driven the nails quite home. 

Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2. 

MEN OF THE WORLD-The thoughts of. 

The thoughts of worldly men are forever reg- 
ulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like 
the physical one, holds them down to earth. 
The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders 
of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain. 
There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or 
in the stars, for their reading. They are like some 
wise men, who, learning to know each planet by 
its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small 
heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, 
Universal Love, and Mercy, although they shine 
by night and day so brightly that the blind may 
see them ; and who, looking upward at the 
spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflec- 
tion of their own great wisdom and book- 
learning. 

It is curious to imagine these people of the 
world, busy in thought, turning their eyes toward 
the countless spheres that shine above us, and 



making them reflect the only images their minds 
contain. The man who lives but in the breath 
of princes, has nothing in his sight but stars for 
courtiers* breasts. The envious man beholds 
his neighbors' honors even in the sky ; to the 
money-hoarder, and the mass of worldly folk, 
the whole great universe above glitters with ster- 
ling coin — fresh from the mint — stamped with 
the sovereign's head coming always between 
them and heaven, turn where they may. So do 
the shadows of our own desires stand between 
us and our better angels, and thus their bright- 
ness is eclipsed. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 29. 

MEN OF THE WORLD. 

"Men of the world, my dear sir," Jobling 
whispered to Jonas ; ** thorough men of the 
world ! To a professional person like myself, 
it's quite refreshing to come into this kind of 
society. It's not only agreeable — and nothing 
can be more agreeable — but it's philosophically 
improving. It's character, my dear sir ; charac- 
ter ! " 

It is so pleasant to find real merit appreciated, 
whatever its particular walk in life may be, that 
the general harmony of the company was doubt- 
less much promoted by their knowing that the 
two men of the world were held in great esteem 
by the upper classes of society, and by the gal- 
lant defenders of their country in the army and 
navy, but particularly the former. The least of 
their stories had a colonel in it ; lords were as 
plentiful as oaths ; and even the Blood Royal 
ran in the muddy channel of their personal re- 
collections. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 28. 

MENAGERIE— The wonders of. 

I brought away five wonderments from this 
exhibition. I have wondered ever since, 
whether the beasts ever do get used to those 
small places of confinement ; whether the mon- 
keys have that very horrible flavor in their free 
state ; whether wild animals have a natural ear 
for time and tune, and therefore every four-foot- 
ed creature began to howl in despair when the 
band began to play ; what the giraffe does with 
his neck when his cart is shut up ; and, whether 
the elephant feels ashamed of himself when he 
is brought out of his den to stand on his head 
in the presence of the whole collection. 

Out of Town. Reprinted Pieces. 

MERRY PEOPLE— Dick Swiveller's opinion 
of. 

" There are some people who can be merry and 
can't be wise, and some who can be wise (or 
think they can) and can't be merry. I'm one 
of the first sort. If the proverb's a good 'un, I 
suppose it's better to keep to half of it than 
none ; at all events I'd rather be merry and not 
wise, than be like you — neither one nor t'other." 
Old Curiosity Shop, Oiap. 7. 

MICAWBER— Wilkins - His characteris- 
tics. 
"Gentlemen !" said Mr. Micawber, after the 
first salutations, " you are friends in need, and 
friends indeed. Allow me to offer nw inquiries 
with reference to the physical welfare of Mrs. 
Copperfield in esse, and Mrs. Traddles in posse, 
— presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr. 
Traddles is not yet united to the object of his 
affections, for weal and for woe." 



MICAWBER 



300 



MICAWBEB 



We acknowledged his politeness, and made 
suitable replies. He then directed our atten- 
tion to the wall, and was beginning, " I assure 
you, gentlemen," when I ventured to object to 
that ceremonious form of address, and to beg 
that he would speak to us in the old way. 

" My dear Copperfield," he returned, pressing 
my hand, '* your cordiality overpowers me. 
This reception of a shattered fragment of the 
Temple once called Man — if I may be permitted 
so to express myself — bespeaks a heart that is an 
honor to our common nature. I was about to 
observe that I again behold the serene spot 
where some of the happiest hours of my exist- 
ence fleeted by." 

" Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber," 
said I. " I hope she is well ? " 

« H: 4: 4c 4: 

" I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are 
well, sir," said my aunt. 

Mr. Micawber inclined his head. " They are 
as well, ma'am," he desperately observed, after 
a pause, " as Aliens and Outcasts can ever hope 
to be." 

" Lord bless you, sir," exclaimed my aunt in 
her abrupt way. " What are you talking 
about ? " 

" The subsistence of my family, ma'am," re- 
turned Mr. Micawber, " trembles in the balance. 
My employer — " 

Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off ; and 
began to peel the lemons that had been under 
my directions set before him, together with all 
the other appliances he used in making punch, 

" Your employer, you know," said Mr. Dick, 
jogging his arm as a gentle reminder. 

" My good sir," returned Mr. Micawber, "you 
recall me. I am obliged to you." They shook 
hands again. " My employer, ma'am — Mr. 
Keep — once did me the favor to observe to me, 
that if I were not in the receipt of the stipen- 
diary emoluments appertaining to my engage- 
ment with him, I should probably be a moun- 
tebank about the country, swallowing a sword- 
blade, and eating the devouring element. For 
anything that I can perceive to the cpntrary, 
it is still probable that my children may be re- 
duced to seek a livelihood by personal contor- 
tion, while Mrs. Micawber abets their unnatural 
feats, by playing the barrel organ." 

Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive 
flourish of his knife, signified that these per- 
formances might be expected to take place after 
he was no more ; then resumed his peeling with 
a desperate air. 

My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round 
table that she usually kept beside her, and eyed 
him attentively. Not 'ithstanding the aversion 
with which I regarded the idea of entrapping 
him into any disclosure he was not prepared to 
make voluntarily, I should have taken him up 
at this point, but for the strange proceedings 
in which I saw him engaged : whereof his put- 
ting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into 
the snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug, 
and confidently attempting to pour boiling water 
out of the candle-stick, were among the most 
remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand, 
and it came. 

" Mr. Micawber," said I, " what is the matter? 
Pray speak out. You are among friends." 
" Among friends, sir ! " repeated Mr. Micaw- 



ber ; and all he had reserved came breaking out 
of him. " Good heavens, it is principally because 
I am among friends that my state of mind is what 
it is. What is the matter, gentlemen ? What is 
not the matter? Villany is the matter ; baseness 
is the matter ; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are 
the matter : and the name of the whole atro- 
icous mass is — Heep ! " 

My aunt clapped her hands, and we all start- 
ed up as if we were possessed. 

" The struggle is over ! " said Mr. Micawber, 
violently gesticulating with his pocket-handker- 
chief, and fairly striking out from time to time 
with both arms, as if he were swimming under 
superhuman, difficulties. " I will lead this life no 
longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from 
everything that makes life tolerable. I have been 
under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel's ser- 
vice. Give me back my wife, give me back my 
family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch 
who walks about in the boots at present on my 
feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword to- 
morrow, and I'll do it. With an appetite !" 

I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried 
to calm him, that we might come to something 
rational ; but he got hotter and hotter, and 
wouldn't hear a word. 

" I'll put my hand in no man's hand," said Mr. 
Micawber, gasping, puffing, and sobbing to that 
degree that he was like a man fighting with cold 
water, " until I have — blown to fragments — the — 
a — detestable — serpent — Heep ! I'll partake of 
no one's hospitality, until I have — a — moved — 
Mount Vesuvius — to eruption — on — a — the 
abandoned rascal — Heep ! Refreshment — a — 
underneath this roof — particularly punch — would 
— a — choke me — unless — I had— previously — 
choked the eyes — out of the head — a — of — in- 
terminable cheat, and liar — Heep ! I — a — I'll 
know nobody — and — a — say nothing — and — a 
— live nowhere — until I have crushed — to — a — 
undiscoverable atoms — the — transcendent and 
immortal hypocrite and perjurer — Heep ! " 

I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber's dy- 
ing on the spot. The manner in which he strug- 
gled through these inarticulate sentences, and, 
whenever he found himself getting near the name 
of Heep, fought his way on to it, dashed at it 
in a fainting state, and brought it out with a ve- 
hemence little less than marvellous, was fright- 
ful ; but now, when he sank into a chair, steam- 
ing, and looked at us, with every possible color 
in his face that had no business there, and an 
endless procession of lumps following one an- 
other in hot haste up his throat, whence they 
seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the 
appearance of being in the last extremity. I 
would have gone to his assistance, but he waved 
me off, and wouldn't hear a word. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 49. 

MICAWBER— An Australian dinner speech 
from. 

" Dr. Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, 
then proposed ' Our distinguished Guest, the 
ornament of our town. May he never leave us 
but to better himself, and may his success among 
us be such as to render his bettering himself 
impossible ! ' The cheering with which the 
toast was received defies description. Again 
and again it rose and fell, like the waves of 
ocean. At length all was hushed, and WiLKlNS 
Micawber, Esquire, presented himself to re- 



MICAWBER 



801 



MICAWBER 



turn thanks. Far be it from us, in the present 
comparatively imperfect state of the resources 
of our establishment, to endeavor to follovir our 
distinguished townsman through the smoothly- 
flowing periods of his polished and highly ornate 
address ! Suffice it to observe, that it was a mas- 
terpiece of eloquence ; and that those passages 
in which he more particularly traced his own 
successful career to its source, and warned the 
younger portion of his auditory from the shoals 
of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they 
were unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the 
manliest eye present. 

David Copper/teld, Chap. 63. 

MICAWBER— ''Fallen back for a spring"." 

"You find us, Copperfield," said Mr. Micaw- 
ber, with one eye on Traddles, " at present es- 
tablished, on what may be designated as a small 
and unassuming scale ; but you are aware that 
I have, in the course of my career, surmounted 
difficulties, and conquered obstacles. You are 
no stranger to the fact, that there have been 
periods of my life when it has been requisite 
that I should pause, until certain expected 
events should turn up ; when it has been neces- 
sary that I should fall back, before making what 
I trust 1 shall not be accused of presumption in 
terming — a spring. The present is one of those 
momentous stages in the life of man. You find 
me, fallen back, for a spring ; and I have every 
reason to believe that a vigorous leap will 
shortly be the result." 

# * * * * 

" I am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged 
in the sale of corn upon commission. It is 
not an avocation of a remunerative description 
— in other words, it does not pay — and some 
temporary embarrassments of a- pecuniary na- 
ture have been the consequence. I am, how- 
ever, delighted to add that I have now an 
immediate prospect of something turning up (I 
am not at liberty to say in what direction), 
which I trust will enable me to provide, per- 
manently, both for myself and for your friend 
Traddles, in whom I have an unaffected in- 
terest. You may, perhaps, be prepared to hear 
that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of health which 
renders it not wholly improbable that an addi- 
tion may be ultimately made to those pledges of 
affection which — in short, to the infantine group. 
Mrs. Micawber's family have been so good as to 
express their dissatisfaction at this state of 
things. I have merely to observe, that I am 
not aware it is any business of theirs, and that I 
repel that exhibition of feeling with scorn and 
with defiance ! " — David Copperfield, Chap. 27. 

MICAWBER— His cool reception. 

" I thought you were at Plymouth, ma'am," I 
said to Mrs. Micawber, as he went out. 

•' My dear Master Copperfield," she replied, 
" we went to Plymouth." 

" To be on the spot," I hinted. 

" Just so," said Mrs. Micawber. *• To be on 
the spot. But, the truth is, talent is not wanted 
in the Custom House. The local influence of 
my family was quite unavailing to obtain any 
employment, in that department, for a man of 
Mr. Micawber's abilities. They would rather 
noth^vt a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities. He 
would only show the deficiency of the others. 
Apart from which," said Mrs. Micawber, " I 



will not disguise from you, my dear Master Cop- 
perfield, that when that branch of my family 
which is settled in Plymouth became aware that 
Ml. Micawber was accompanied by myself, and 
by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the twins, 
they did not receive him with that ardor which 
he might have expected, being so newly releas- 
ed from captivity. In fact," said Mrs. Micawber, 
lowering her voice, — " this is between ourselves 
— our reception was cool." 

" Dear me ! " I said. 

" Yes," said Mrs. Micawber. '* It is truly 
painful to contemplate mankind in such an as- 
pect Master Copperfield, but our reception was 
decidedly cool." — David Copperfield, Chap. 17. 

MICAWBER— Observations by. 

Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so 
exceedingly compassionate of any one who 
seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to 
find any such person out, that he shook hands 
with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen times 
in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trou- 
ble, this warmth, on the part of a stranger, was 
so extremely touching, that he could only say, 
on the occasion of each successive shake, " My 
dear sir, you overpower me 1 " Which gratified 
Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it again with 
greater vigor than before. 

" The friendliness of this gentleman," said 
Mr. Micawber to my aunt, '* if you will allow 
me, ma'am, to cull a figure of speech from the 
vocabulary of our coarser national sports — floors 
me. To a man who is struggling with a com- 
plicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such 
a reception is trying, I assure you." 

" My friend Mr. Dick," replied my aunt, 
proudly, ** is not a common man." 

" That I am convinced of," said Mr. Micawber. 
" My dear sir ! " for Mr. Dick was shaking hands 
with him again ; " I am deeply sensible of your 
cordiality." 

" How do you find yourself? " said Mr. Dick, 
with an anxious look. 

" Indifferent, my dear sir," returned Mr. Mi- 
cawber, sighing. 

" You must keep up your spirits," said Mr. 
Dick, "and make yourself as comfortable as 
possible." 

Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these 
friendly words, and by finding Mr. Dick's hand 
again within his own. " It has been my lot," he 
observed, " to meet, in the diversified panorama 
of human existence, with an occasional oasis, 
but never with one so green, so gushing, as the 
present ! " 

« 4c « ♦ ♦ 

" How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber? ** 
said I, after a silence. 

" My dear Copperfield," returned Mr. Micaw- 
ber, bursting into a state of much excitement, 
and turning pale, " if you ask after my employer 
^i's.your friend, I am sorry for it ; if you ask after 
him as my friend, I sardonically smile at it. In 
whatever capacity you ask after my employer, I 
beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to 
this — that whatever his state of health may be, 
his appearance is foxy — not to say diabolical. 
You will allow me, as a private individual, to 
decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me 
to the utmost verge of desperation in my pro- 
fessional capacity. ' 



MICA.WBER 



MICAWBER 



" It is my fate," said Mr. Micawber, unfeign- 
edly sobbing, but doing even that, with the 
shadow of the old expression of doing some- 
thing genteel ; " it is my fate, gentlemen, that 
the finer feelings of our nature have become re- 
proaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield 
is a flight of arrows in my bosom. You had bet- 
ter leave me, if you please, to walk the earth as 
a vagabond. The worm will settle my business 
in double-quick time." 

!|* S> w ^ ^ 

*' Gentlemen," returned Mr. Micawber, " do 
with me as you will ! I am a straw upon the 
surface of the deep, and am tossed in all direc- 
tions by the elephants — I beg your pardon ; I 
should have said the elements." 

David Copperfield^ Chap. 49. 

MICA"WBEIl— On difficxaties. 

" Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir ? " 
I said, to get Mr. Micawber away. 

" If you will do her that favor, Copperfield," 
replied Mr. Micawber, rising. ** I have no scru- 
ple in saying, in the presence of our friends 
here, that I am a man who has, for some years, 
contended against the pressure of pecuniary 
difficulties." I knew he was certain to say some- 
thing of this kind ; he always would be so boast- 
ful about his difficulties. " Sometimes I have 
risen superior to my difficulties. Sometimes my 
difficulties have — in short, have floored me. 
There have been times when I have administer- 
ed a succession of facers to them ; there have 
been times when they have been too many for 
me, and I have given in, and said to Mrs. 
Micawber, in the words of Cato, ' Plato, thou 
reasonest well. It's all up now. I can show 
fight no more.' But at no time of my life," said 
Mr. Micawber, " have I enjoyed a higher degree 
of satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I 
may describe difficulties, chiefly arising out of 
warrants of attorney and promissory notes at 
two and four months, by that word) into the 
bosom of my friend Copperfield." 

Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute 
by saying. " Mr. Heep ! Good evening. Mrs. 
Heep ! Your servant," and then walking out 
with me in his most fashionable manner, making 
a good deal of noise on the pavement with his 
shoes, and humming a tune as he went. 

David Copperfield^ Chap. 17. 

MICAWBER— On corn and coals. 

" As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Cop- 
perfield," said Mrs. Micawber, sipping her punch, 
" Mr. Traddles being a part of our domesticity, 
I should much like to have your opinion on Mr. 
Micawber's prospects. For corn," said Mrs. 
Micawber argumentatively, " as I have repeated- 
ly said to Mr. Micawber, may be gentlemanly, 
but it is not remunerative. Commission to the 
extent of two and ninepence in a fortnight can- 
not, however limited our ideas, be considered 
remunerative." 

We were all agreed upon that. 

" Then," said Mrs. Micawber, who prided her- 
self on taking a clear view of things, and keep- 
ing Mr. Micawber straight by her woman's wis- 
dom, when he might otherwise go a little 
crooked, " then I ask myself this question. If 
corn is not to be relied upon, what is ? Are 
coals to be relied upon ? Not at all. We have 
turned our attention to that experiment, on the 



suggestion of it.y family, and we find it falla- 
cious." 

Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with 
his hands in his pockets, eyed us aside, and - 
nodded his head, as much as to say that the case ■! 
was very clearly put. ^ 

" The articles of corn and coals," said Mrs. 
Micawber, still more argumentatively, " being 
equally out of the question, Mr. Copperfield, I 
naturally look round the world, and say, ' What 
is there in which a person of Mr. Micawber's 
talent is likely to succeed ? ' " 

^ w •}• w ^ 

I found myself afterwards sagely adding, 
alone, that a person must either live or die. 

" Just so," returned Mrs. Micawber. " It is 
precisely that. And the fact is, my dear Mr. 
Copperfield, that we can not live without some- 
thing widely different from existing circum- 
stances shortly turning up. Now I am convinc- 
ed, myself, and this I have pointed out to Mr. 
Micawber several times of late, that things can- 
not be expected to iurn up of themselves. W^e 
must, in a measure, assist to turn them up. I 
may Idc wrong, but I have formed that opinion." 

Both Traddles and I applauded it highly. 

" Very well," said Mrs. Micawber. " Then 
what do I recommend ? Here is Mr. Micawber 
with a variety of qualifications — with great tal- 
ent — " 

" Really, my love," said Mr. Micawber. 

" Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here 
is Mr. Micawber, with a variety of qualifications 
with great talent — / should say, with genius, but 
that may be the partiality of a wife — " 

Traddles and I both murmured " No." 

" And here is Mr. Micawber without any suit- 
able position or employment. Where does that 
responsibility rest ? Clearly on society. Then 
I would make a fact so disgraceful known,, and 
boldly challenge society to set it right. It ap- 
pears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield," said 
Mrs. Micawber. forcibly, " that what Mr. Mi- 
cawber has to do, is to throw down the gauntlet 
to society, and say, in effect, ' Show me who will 
take that up. Let the party immediately step 
forward.'" — David Copperfield, Chap. 28. 

MIC AWBER—" Ready in case of anything 
tnmingr up." 

" On such an occasion I will give you. Mas- 
ter Copperfield," said Mrs. Micawber, " in a 
little more flip," for we had been having some 
already, " the memory of my papa and mamma." 

*• Are they dead, ma'am ? " I inquired, after 
drinking the toast in a wine-glass. 

*' My mamma departed this life," said Mrs. 
Micawber, ** before Mr. Micawber's difficulties 
commenced, or at least before they became 
pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr. Micaw- 
ber several times, and then expired, regretted 
by a numerous circle." 

Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped 
a pious tear upon the twin who happened to be 
in hand. 

As I could hardly hope for a more favorable 
opportunity of putting a question in which I had 
a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber : 

*• May I ask, ma'am, what you and Mr. Mi- 
cawber intend to do, now that Mt. Micawber is 
out of his difficulties, and at liberty ? Have you 
settled yet ? " 

" My family," said Mrs. Micawber, who al- 




Q 
O 

W 
O 



t't/^vy^' ^ (/", 



MICAWBBR 



303 



MICA'WBEIl 



ways said those two words with an air, though 
I never could discover who came under the de- 
nomination, " my family are of opinion that Mr. 
Micawber should quit London, and exert his 
talents in the country. Mr. Micawber is a man 
of great talent. Master Copperfield." 

I said I was sure of that. 

'• Of great talent," repeated Mrs. Micawber. 
" My family are of opinion, that, with a little 
interest, something might be done for a man of 
his ability in the Custom House. The influ- 
ence of my family being local, it is their wish 
that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. 
They think it indispensable that he should be 
upon the spot." 

*' That he may be ready ? " I suggested. 

" Exactly," returned Mrs. Micawber. " That 
he may be ready — in case of anything turning 
up." — David Copperfield, Chap, 12. 

MICAWBER— The family relations. 

" I cannot help thinking," said Mrs. Micaw- 
ber, with an air of deep sagacity, " that there 
are members of my family who have been ap- 
prehensive that Mr. Micawber would solicit 
them for their names. — I do not mean to be 
conferred in Baptism upon our children, but to 
be inscribed on Bills of Exchange, and negotiat- 
ed in the Money Market." 

***** 

" My dear," said Mr. Micawber, with some 
heat, " it may be better for me to state distinct- 
ly, at once, that your family are, in the aggre- 
gate, impertinent Snobs ; and, in detail, unmiti- 
gated Ruffians." 

" All I would say is, that I can go abroad 
without your family coming forward to favor 
me — in short, with a parting Shove of their 
cold shoulders ; and that, upon the whole, I 
would rather leave England with such impetus 
as I possess, than derive any acceleration of it 
from that quarter." 

David Copperfield f Chap. 54. 

MICAWBER— Tiims up. 

I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and 
to wish myself well out of the visit, when a fig- 
ure coming down the street passed the door — it 
stood open to air the room, which was warm, 
the weather being close for the time of year — 
came back again, looked in, and walked in, ex- 
claiming loudly, " Copperfield ! Is it possi- 
ble ? " 

It was Mr. Micawber ! It was Mr. Micaw- 
ber, with his eye-glass, and his walking-stick, 
and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and the 
condescending roll in his voice, all complete ! 

" My dear Copperfield," said Mr. Micawber, 
putting out his hand, " this is indeed a meeting 
which is calculated to impress the mind with a 
sense of the instability and uncertainty of all 
human — in short, it is a most extraordinary 
meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting 
upon the probability of something turning up 
(of which I am at present rather sanguine), I 
find a young but valued friend turn up, who is 
connected with the most eventful period of my 
life ; I may say, with the turning-point of my 
existence. Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do 
you do ? " 

I cannot say — I really canno/ say — that I was 
glad to see Mr. Micawber there ; but I was glad to 



see him too, and shook hands with him heartily 
inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was. 

" Thank you," said Mr. Micawber, waving his 
hand as of old, and settling his chin in his shirt 
collar. " She is tolerably convalescent. The 
twins no longer derive their sustenance from 
Nature's founts — in short," said Mr. Micawber, 
in one of his bursts of confidence, " they are 
weaned — and Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my 
travelling companion. She will be rejoiced, 
Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one 
who has proved himself in all respects a worthy 
minister at the sacred altar of friendship." 
****** 

I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micaw- 
ber away ; and replied, with my hat in my hand, 
and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was 
a pupil at Doctor Strong's. 

" A pupil ? " said Mr. Micawber, raising his 
eyebrows, " I am extremely happy to hear it. 
Although a mind like my friend Copperfield's ; " 
to Uriah and Mrs. Heep ; " does not require 
that cultivation which, without his knowledge of 
men and things, it would require, still it is a 
rich soil, teeming with latent vegetation — in 
short," said Mr. Micawber, smiling in another 
burst of confidence, " it is an intellect capable 
of getting up the classics to any extent." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 17. 

MICAWBER— As an emigrant. 

Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adapta- 
tion of himself to a new state of society, had ac- 
quired a bold, buccaneering air not absolutely 
lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might 
have supposed him a child of the wilderness, 
long accustomed ro live out of the confines of 
civilization, and about to return to his native wilds. 

He had provided himself, among other things, 
with a complete suit of oil-skin, and a straw 
hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked on 
the outside. In this rough clothing, with a com- 
mon mariner's telescope under his arm, and a 
shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky as 
looking out for dirty weather, he was far more 
nautical, after his manner, than Mr. Peggotty. 
His whole family, if I may so express it, were 
cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber in 
the closest and most uncompromising of bonnets, 
made fast under the chin ; and in a sha\vl which 
tied her up (as I had been tied up, when my 
aunt first received me) like a bundle, and was 
secured behind at the waist, in a strong knot. 
Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy 
weather, in the same manner ; with nothing su- 
perfluous about her. Master Micawber was 
hardly visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shag- 
giest suit of slops I ever saw ; and the children 
were done up, like preserved meats, in impervi- 
ous cases. — David Copperfield, Chap. 56. 

MICAWBER— As a law olerk. 

" How do you like the law, Mr. Micaw- 
ber?" 

" My dear Copperfield," he replied. " To a 
man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, 
the objection to legal studies is the amount of 
detail which they involve. Even in our profes- 
sional correspondence," said Mr. Micawber, 
glancing at some letters he was writing, " the 
mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted 
form of expression. Still, it is a great pursuit. 
A great pursuit ! " 



MICAWBER 



804 



MICAWBER 






He then told me that he had become the ten- 
ant of Uriah Ilecp's old house ; and that Mrs. 
Micawber would be delighted to receive me 
once more under her own roof. 

'* It is humble," said Mr. Micawber, " to quote 
a favorite expression of my friend Heep ; but it 
may prove the stepjiiiig stone to more ambitious 
domiciliary accommodation," 

I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to 
be satislied with his friend Ilecp's treatment of 
him? He got up to ascertain if the door were 
close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice : 

" My dear Copperfield, a man who labors un- 
der the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, 
is, with the generality of people, at a disadvan- 
tage. That disadvantage is not diminished, 
when that pressure necessitates the drawing of 
stipendiary emoluments, before those emolu- 
ments are strictly due and payable. All I can 
say is, that my friend Ileep has responded to 
appeals to which I need not more particularly 
refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally 
to the honor of his head and of his heart." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 39. 

MICAWBER-A crisis in his affairs. 

" Master Copperfield," said Mrs. Micawber, 
" I make no stranger of you, and therefore do 
not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber's difficul- 
ties are coming to a crisis." 

It made me very miserable to hear it, and I 
looked at Mrs. Micawber's red eyes with the ut- 
most sympathy. 

" With the exception of the heel of a Dutch 
cheese — which is not adapted to the wants of a 
young family " — said Mrs. Micawber, " there is 
really not a scrap of anything in the larder. I 
was accustomed to speak of the larder when I 
lived with papa and mamma, and I used the 
v/ord almost unconsciously. What I mean to 
express is, that there is nothing to eat in the 
house." 

" Dear me ! " I said, in great concern. 

♦ He 9ic :)e * 

At last Mr. Micawber's difficulties came to a 
crisis, and he was arrested early one morning, 
and carried over to the King's Bench, Prison in 
the Borough. He told me, as he went out of 
the house, that the God of day had now gone 
down upon him — and I really thought his heart 
was broken and mine too. But I heard, after- 
wards, that he was seen to play a lively game at 
skittles, before noon. 

***** 

Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the 
gate, and we went up to his room (top story but 
one), and cried very much. He solemnly con- 
jured me, I remember, to take warning by his 
fate ; and to observe that if a man had twenty 
pounds a year for his income, and spent nine- 
teen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he 
would be happy, but that if he spent twenty 
pounds one he would be miserable. After 
which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, 
gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for 
the amount, and put away his pocket-handker- 
chief, and cheered up. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 11. 

MICAWBER— His mode of paying- debts. 

" To leave this metro])olis," said Mr. Micaw- 
ber, "and my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, 
without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part 



of this obligation, would weigh upon my mind 
to an insupportable extent. I have, therefore, 
prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, 
and I now hold in my hand a document, which 
accomplishes the desired object. I beg to hand 
to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles my I. O. U. 
for forty-one, ten, eleven and a half, and I am 
happy to recover my moral dignity, and to know 
that I can once more walk erect before my 
fellow-man ! " 

With this introduction (which greatly aflfected 
him), Mr. Micawber placed his I. O. U. in the 
hands of Traddles, and said he wished him well 
in every relation of life. I am persuaded, not 
only that this was quite the same to Mr. Micaw- 
ber as paying the money, but that Traddles him- 
self hardly knew the difference until he had had 
time to think about it. 

Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fel- 
low-man, on the strength of this virtuous action, 
that his chest looked half as broad again when 
he lighted us down stairs. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 36. 

MICAWBER— His preparations as an emi- 
g-rant. 

" Madam, what I wish is, to be perfectly busi- 
ness-like, and perfectly punctual. Turning over 
as we are about to turn over, an entirely new 
leaf; and falling back, as we are now in the 
act of falling back, for a Spring of no common 
magnitude ; it is important to my sense of self- 
respect, besides being an example to my son, 
that these arrangements should be concluded as 
between man and man. 

" In reference to our domestic preparations, 
madam," said Mr. Micawber, with some pride, 
" for meeting the destiny to which we are now 
understood to be self-devoted, I beg to report 
them. My eldest daughter attends at five every 
morning in a neighboring establishment, to ac- 
quire the process — if pTocess it may be called — 
of milking cows. My younger children are in- 
structed to observe, as closely as circumstances 
will permit, the habits of the pigs and poultry 
maintained in the poorer parts of this city ; a 
pursuit from which they have, on two occasions, 
been brought home, within an inch of being run 
over. I have myself directed some attention, 
during the past week, to the art of baking; 
and my son Wilkins has issued forth with a 
walking-stick and driven cattle, when permitted, 
by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge, 
to render any voluntary service in that direc- 
tion — which I regret to say, for the credit of our 
nature, was not often ; he being generally 
warned, with imprecations, to desist." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 54. 

MICAWBER— In statu quo. 

I begged Traddles to ask his landlord to walk 
up. Traddles accordingly did so, over the ban- 
ister ; and Mr. Micawber, not a bit changed — 
his tights, his stick, his shirt-collar, and his eye- 
glass, all the same as ever — came into the room 
with a genteel and youthful air. 

" I beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles," said Mr. 
Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, as he 
checked himself in humming a soft tune. ** I 
was not aware that there was any individual, 
alien to this tenement, in your sanctum." 

Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and 
pulled up his shirt-collar. 



MIOAWBER 



300 



MICAWBER 



" How do you do, Mr. Micawber?" said I. 

"Sir," said Mr. Micawber, "you are exceed- 
ingly obliging. I am in statu quo." 

"And Mrs. Micawber?" I pursued. 

" Sir," said Mr. Micawber, " she is also, thank 
God, in statu quo." 

"And the children, Mr. Micawber?" 

" Sir," said Mr. Micawber, " I rejoice to reply 
that they are, likewise, in the enjoyment of 
salubrity." 

All this time, Mr. Micawber had not known 
me in the least, though he had stood face to face 
with me. But now, seeing me smile, he ex- 
amined my features with more attention, fell 
back, cried, " Is it possible ! Have I the pleas- 
ure of again beholding Copperfield ! " and shook 
me by both hands with the utmost fervor. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 27. 

MICAWBEB-Mrs. 

" My dear Mr. Copperfield," said Mrs. Micaw- 
ber, "of your friendly interest in all our affairs, 
I am well assured. My family may consider it 
banishment, if they please ; but I am a wife and 
mother, and I never will desert Mr. Micawber." 

Traddles, appealed to, by Mrs. Micawber's 
eye, feelingly acquiesced. 

"That," said Mrs. Micawber, "that, at least, 
is my view, my dear Mr. Copperfield and Mr. 
Traddles, of the obligation which I took upon 
myself when I repeated the irrevocable words, 
• I, Emma, take thee, Wilkins.' I read the ser- 
vice over with a flat-candle on the previous 
night, and the conclusion I derived from it was, 
that I never could desert Mr. Micawber. And," 
said Mrs. Micawber, " though it is possible I 
may be mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I 
never will ! " — David Copperfield, Chap. 36. 

MICAWBER-His family. 

" Is this all your family, ma'am ? " said my 
aunt. 

" There are no more at present," returned 
Mr.s. Micawber. 

" Good gracious, I didn't mean that, ma'am," 
said my aunt. " I mean are all these yours ? " 

" Madam," replied Mr. Micawber, " it is a 
true bill." — David Copperfield, Chap. 52. 

MICAWBER— Mr. and Mrs. at home. 

Poor Mrs. Micawber ! She said she had tried 
to exert herself, and so, I have no doubt, she 
had. The centre of the street-door was perfect- 
ly covered with a great brass-plate, on which 
was engraved " Mrs, Micawber's Boarding Es- 
tablishment for Young Ladies:" but I never 
found that any young lady had ever been to 
school there ; or that any young lady ever came, 
or proposed to come ; or that the least prepara- 
tion was ever made to receive any young lady. 
The only visitors I ever saw or heard of, were 
creditors. They used to come at all hours, and 
some of them were quite ferocious. One dirty- 
faced man, 1 think he was a boot-maker, used to 
edge himself into the passage as early as seven 
o'clock in the morning, and call up the stairs to 
Mr. Micawber — "Come! You ain't out yet, 
Vou know. Pay us, will you? Don't hide, you 
know ; that's mean. I wouldn't be mean if I 
was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, 
d'ye hear? Come ! " Receiving no answer to 
these taunts, he would mount in his wrath to the 
words " swindlers " and " robbers ; " and these 



being ineffectual too, would sometimes go to 
the extremity of crossing the street, and roaring 
up at the windows of the second floor, where he 
knew Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr. 
Micawber would be transported with grief and 
mortification, even to the length (as I was once 
made aware by a scream from his wife) of mak- 
ing motions at himself with a razor ; but within 
half an hour afterwards, he would polish up his 
shoes with extracjrdiiiary pains, anil go out, luini- 
ming a tune with a greater air of gentility than 
ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as clastic. I 
have known her to be thrown into fainting fits 
by the king's taxes at three o'clock, and to eat 
laml>-chops breaded, and drink warm ale (paid 
for with two teaspoons that had gone to the 
pawnbroker's) at four. On one occasion, when 
an execution had just been put in, coming home 
through some chance as early as six o'clock, I 
saw her lying (of course with a twin) under the 
grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about 
her face ; but I never knew her more cheerful 
than she was, that very same night, over a veal- 
cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories 
about her papa, and mamma, and the com- 
pany they used to keep. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 11. 

MICAWBER— Mra.— Her ''grasp of a sub- 
ject." 

" I must not forget that, when I lived at home 
with my papa and mamma, my papa was in the 
habit of saying, ' Emma's form is fragile, but her 
grasp of a subject is inferior to none.' That my 
papa was too partial. I well know ; but that he 
was an observer of character in some degree, 
my duty and my reason equally forbid me to 
doubt." 

With these words, and resisting our entreaties 
that she would grace the remaining circulation of 
the punch with her presence, Mrs. Micawber re- 
tired to my bedroom. And really I felt that she 
was a noble woman — the sort of woman who 
might have been a Roman matron and done all 
manner of heroic things, in times of public 
trouble. — David Copperfield, Chap. 28. 

MICAWBER— Mrs.— Her opinion of the coal 
trade. 

" The opinion of those other branches of my 
family," pursued Mrs. Micawber, " is, that Mr. 
Micawber should immediately turn his atten- 
tion to coals." 

" To what, ma'am ? " 

" To coals," said Mrs. Micawber. " To the 
coal trade. Mr. Micawber was induced to 
think, on inquiry, that there might be an open- 
ing for a man of his talent in the Medway Coal 
Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very properly 
said, the first step to be taken clearly was, to 
come and see the Medway. Which we came 
and saw. I say * we,' Master Copperfield ; for I 
never will," said Mrs. Micawl)er, with emotion, 
" I never will desert Mr. Micawber." 

I murmured my admiration and approbation. 

" We came," repeated Mrs. Micawber, " and 
saw the Medway. My oj)inion of the coal trade 
on that river, is, that it may require talent, but 
that it certainly requires capital. Talent, Mr. 
Micawber has ; capital, Mr. Micawber has not. 
We saw, I think, the greater part of the Mcd- 
w.ay ; and that is my individual conclusion. Be- 
ing so near here, Mr. Micawber was of opinion 



MICAWBER 



306 



MIQGS 



that it would be rash not to come on, and see 
the Cathedral. Firstly, on account of its being 
so well worth seeing, and our never having seen 
it ; secondly, on account of the great probability 
of something turning up in a cathedral town. 
We have been here," said Mrs. Micawber, " three 
days. Nothing has, as yet, turned up ; and it 
may not surprise you, my dear Master Copper- 
field, so much as it would a stranger, to know 
that we are at present waiting for a remittance 
from London, to discharge our pecuniary obli- 
gations at this hotel. Until the arrival of that 
remittance," said Mrs. Micawber with much 
feeling, " I am cut off from my home (I allude 
to lodgings in Pentonville), from my boy and 
girl, and from my twins." 

I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. 
Micawber in this anxious extremity, and said 
as much to Mr. Micawber, who now returned ; 
adding that I only wished I had money enough, 
to lend them the amount they needed. Mr. 
Micawber's answer expressed the disturbance of 
his mind. He said, shaking hands with me, 
" Copperfield, you are a true friend ; but when 
the worst comes to the worst, no man is without 
a friend who is possessed of shaving materials." 
At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her 
arms round Mr. Micawber's neck and entreated 
him to be calm. He wept ; but so far recovered, 
almost immediately, as to ring the bell for the 
waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and 
a plate of shrimps for breakfast in the morning. 
David Copperfield^ Chap. 17. 

MICAWBEIl— Mrs.— On the law. 

" Only a barrister is eligible for such prefer- 
ments ; and Mr. Micawber could not be a bar- 
rister, without being entered at an inn of court 
as a student for five years." 

"Do I follow you?" said Mrs. Micawber, 
with her most affable air of business. " Do I 
understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that at the 
expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would 
be eligible as a Judge or Chancellor?" 

" He would be eligible" returned Traddles. 
with a strong emphasis on that word. 

" Thank you," said Mrs. Micawber. " That 
is quite sufficient. If such is the case, and Mr. 
Micawber forfeits no privilege by entering on 
these duties, my anxiety is set at rest. I speak," 
said Mrs. Micawber, " as a female, necessarily : 
but I have always been of opinion that Mr. 
Micawber possesses what I have heard my papa 
call, when I lived at home, the judicial mind ; 
and I hope Mr. Micawber is now entering on a 
field where that mind will develop itself, and 
take a commanding station." 

I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw him- 
self, in his judicial mind's eye, on the woolsack. 
He passed his hand complacently over his 
bald head, and said with ostentatious resigna- 
tion : 

" My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees 
of fortune. If I am reserved to wear a wig, I 
am at least prepared, externally," in allusion to 
his baldness, " for that distinction. I do not," 
said Mr. Micawber, " regret my hair, and I may 
have been deprived of it for a specific purpose. 
I cannot say. It is my intention, my dear Cop- 
perfield, to educate my son for the Church ; I 
will not deny that I should be happy, on his 
.account, to attain to eminence." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 36. 



3MEIC AWBER— Mrs.— • 'Will never desert Mr. 
Micawber." 

" And do you go too, ma'am ? " 
The events of the day, in combination with 
the twins, if not with the flip, had made Mrs. 
Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she 
replied : 

" I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. 
Micawber may have concealed his difficulties 
from me in the first instance, but his sanguine 
temper may have led him to expect that he would 
overcome them. The pearl necklace and brace- 
lets which I inherited from mamma, have been 
disposed of for less than half their value ; an4 
the set of coral, which was the wedding-gift of 
my papa, has been actually thrown away for 
nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. 
No ! " cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than 
before, " I never will do it ! It's of no use ask- 
ing me ! " 

I felt quite uncomfortable — as if Mrs. Micaw- 
ber supposed I had asked her to do anything of 
the sort ! — and sat looking at her in alarm. 

" Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not dewj 
that he is improvident. I do not deny that he 
has kept me in the dark as to his resources and 
his liabilities, both," she went on, looking at 
th» wall ! " but I never will desert Mr. Micaws 
ber ! " 

Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voic^ 
into a perfect scream, I was so frightened that 
ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr 
Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table 
and leading the chorus of 

Gee up, Dobbin, 

Gee ho, Dobbin, 

Gee up, Dobbin, 

Gee up, and gee ho— 0—0 ! \ 

— with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was ini 
an alarming state, upon which he immediately 
burst into tears, and came away with me with 
his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimp! 
of which he had been partaking. 

" Emma, my angel ! " cried Mr. Micawbei 
running into the room ; " what is the matter ? ' 

" I never will desert you, Micawber ? " she ex 
claimed. 

" My life ! " said Mr. Micawber, taking her it 
his arms. " I am perfectly aware of it ! " 

" He is the parent of my children ! He is the 

father of my twins ! He is the husband of my 

affections," cried Mrs. Micawber. struggling ; 

" and I ne — ver — will — desert Mr. Micawber ! " 

David Copperfield, Chap. 12. 

MIGGrS— As a basilisk. 

" Miggs, my good girl, go to bed — do go to 
bed. You're really worse than the dripping of a 
hundred water butts outside the window, or the 
scratching of as many mice behind the wainscot. 
I can't bear it. Do go to bed, Miggs. To oblige 
me — do." 

" You haven't got nothing to untie, sir," re- 
turned Miss Miggs, " and therefore your requests 
does not surprise me. But Missis has — and while 
you set up, mim " — she added turning to the 
locksmith's wife, " I couldn't, no not if twenty 
times the quantity of cold water was aperiently^ 
running down my back this moment, go to bee'" 
with a quiet spirit." 

Having spoken these words. Miss Miggs madj 
divers efforts to rub her shoulders in an imposs* 
ble place, and shivered from head to foot ; there 



IfflGGS 



307 



MIND 



by giving the beholders to understand that the 
imaginary cascade was still in full flow, but that 
a sense of duty upheld her under that, and all 
other sufferings, and nerved her to endurance. 

Mrs. Varden being too sleepy to speak, and 
Miss Miggs having, as the phrase is, said her say, 
the locksmith had nothing for it but to s.igh and 
be as quiet as he could. 

But to be quiet with such a basilisk before 
him, was impossible. If he looked another way, 
it was worse to feel that she was rubbing her 
cheek, or twitching her ear, or winking her eye, 
or making all kinds of extraordinary shapes with 
her nose, than to see her do it. If she was for a 
moment free from any of these complaints, it was 
only because of her foot being asleep, or of her 
arm having got the fidgets, or of her leg being 
doubled up with the cramp, or of some other 
horrible disorder which racked her whole frame. 
If she did enjoy a moment's ease, then with her 
eyes shut and her mouth wide open, she would 
be seen to sit very stiff" and upright in her chair ; 
then to nod a little way forward, and stop with a 
jerk ; then to nod a little farther forward, and 
stop with another jerk ; then to recover herself ; 
then to come forward again — lower — lower — 
lower — by very slow degrees, until, just as it 
seemed impossible that she could preserve her 
balance for another instant, and the locksmith 
was about to call out in an agony, to save her 
from dashing down upon her forehead and frac- 
turing her skull, then all of a sudden and with- 
out the smallest notice, she would come upright 
and rigid again with her eyes open, and in her 
countenance an expression of defiance, sleepy 
but yet most obstinate, which plainly said, " I've 
never once closed 'em since I looked at you last, 
and I'll take my oath of it ! " 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 51. 

MIGGS— Her misfortunes. 

" I thank my goodness-gracious-blessed-stars I 
can, miss," returned Miggs, with increased en- 
ergy. " Ally Looyer, good gentlemen ! " 

Even Dolly, cast down and disappointed as 
she was, revived at this, and bade Miggs hold 
her tongue directly. 

" Which, was you pleased to observe. Miss 
Varden ? " said Miggs, with a strong emphasis 
on the irrelative pronoun. 

Dolly repeated her request. 

" Ho, gracious me ! " cried Miggs, with hys- 
terical derision. " Ho, gracious me ! Yes, to be 
sure I will. Ho yes ! I am a abject slave, and 
a toiling, moiling, constant-working, always- 
being- found-fault- with, never-giving-satisfactions, 
nor-having-no-time-to-clean onesself, potter's wes- 
sel — an't I, miss ! Ho yes ! My situations is 
lowly, and my capacities is limited, and my 
duties is to humble myself afore the base degen- 
erating daughters of their blessed mothers as is 
fit to keep companies with holy saints, but is 
born to persecutions from wicked relations — 
and to demean myself before them as is no bet- 
ter than infidels — an't it, miss ! Ho yes ! My 
only becoming occupations is to help young 
flaunting pagins to brush and comb and titiwate 
theirselves into whitening and suppulchres, and 
?*»ave the young men to think that there an't a 
bit of padding in it nor no pinching ins nor fill- 
ings out nor pomatums nor deceits nor earthly 
wanities — an't it, miss ! Yes, to be sure it is — 
ho yes !" — Bamaby Rtidge^ Chap. 71. 



MIIiE-STONES— And roving stones. 

" Roving stones gather no moss, Joe," said 
Gabriel. 

" Nor mile-stones much," replied Joe, " I'm 
little better than one here, and see as much of 
the world." 

" Then, what would you do, Joe," pursued the 
locksmith, stroking his chin reflectively. " What 
could you be ? where could you go, you see ?" 

" I must trust to chance, Mr. Varden." 

" A bad thing to trust to, Joe." 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 3. 

MILITARY REVIEW- A. 

Astounding evolutions they were, one rank 
firing over the heads of au other rank, and then 
running away ^ and then the other rank firing 
over the heads of another rank, and running 
away in their turn ; and then forming squares, 
with officers in the centre : and then descending 
the trench on one side with scaling ladders, and 
ascending it on the other again by the same 
means ; and knocking down barricades of bas- 
kets, and behaving in the most gallant manner 
possible. Then there was such a ramming 
down of the contents of enormous guns on the 
battery, with instruments like magnified mops ; 
such a preparation before they were let off", and 
such an awful noise when they did go, that the 
air resounded with the screams of ladies. 

Pickwick, Chap. 4. 

MIND— "A blunt, broadsword kind." 

That's the plain state of the matter, as it 
points itself out to a mere trooper, with a blunt, 
broadsword kind of a mind. 

Bleak House, Chap. 52. 

MIND— A knock-kneed. 

The sufferings of this young gentleman were 
distressing to witness. If his mind for the 
moment reeled under them, it may be urged, in 
extenuation of its weakness, that it was consti- 
tutionally a knock-kneed mind, and never very 
strong upon its legs. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 4. 

MIND— An tmimproved. 

Mr. Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the 
party. He is in a helpless condition as to his 
lower, and nearly so as to his upper limbs ; but 
his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it 
ever held, the first four rules of arithmetic, and 
a certain small collection of the hardest facts. 
In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and 
other such phrenological attributes, it is no 
worse off than it used to be. Everything that 
Mr. Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in 
his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at 
last. In all his life he has never bred a single 
butterfly. — Bleak House, Chap. 21. 

MIND— Fevers of the. 

Mrs. Gamp shook her head mysteriously, and 
pursed up her lips. " There's fevers of the 
mind," she said, " as well as body. You may 
take your slime drafts till you flies into the air 
with effervvescence ; but you won't cure that." 
Martin Chtizzlewit, Chap. 2g. 

MIND— Influenced by external objects. 

Oliver rose next morning, in better heart, and 
went about his usual early occupations, with 



MIND 



MIND 



more hope and pleasure than he had known for 
many days. The birds were once more hung 
out, to sing, in their old places ; and the sweetest 
wild flowers that could be found, were once 
more gathered to gladden Rose with their beauty. 
The melancholy which had seemed to the sad 
eyes of the anxious boy to hang, for days past, 
over every object, beautiful as all were, was dis- 
pelled by magic. The dew seemed to sparkle 
more brightly on the green leaves ; the air to 
rustle among them with a sweeter music ; and 
the sky itself to look more blue and bright. 
Such is the influence which the condition of our 
own thoughts exercises, even over the appear- 
ance of external objects. Men who look on 
nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is 
dark and gloomy, are in the right ; but the 
sombre colors are reflections from their own 
jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are 
delicate, and need a clearer vision. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 34. 

MIND— A wreck. 

" I fear," returned Mr. Dombey, with much 
philosophy, "that Mrs. Skewton is shaken." 

" Shaken, Dombey ! " said the Major. " Smash- 
ed ! "—Dombey 6^ Sbn, Chap. 40. 

MIND— Its haunting demon. 

The world. What the world thinks of him, 
how it looks at him, what it sees in him, and 
what it says — this is the haunting demon of his 
mind. It is everywhere where he is, and, worse 
than that, it is everywhere where he is not. It 
comes out with him among his servants, and yet 
he leaves it whispering behind ; he sees it point- 
ing after him in the street ; it is waiting for him 
in his counting-house ; it leers over the shoulders 
of rich men among the merchants ; it goes beck- 
oning and babbling among the crowd ; it always 
anticipates him, in every place ; and is always 
busiest, he knows, when he has gone away. 
When he is shut up in his room at night, it is in 
his house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the 
pavement, visible in print upon the table, steam- 
ing to and fro on railroads and in ships ; restless 
and busy everywhere, with nothing else but him. 
Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 51. 



He drank a quantity of wine after dinner, in 
vain. No such artificial means would bring 
sleep to his eyes. His thoughts, more incoher- 
ent, dragged him more unmercifully after them 
— as if a wretch, condemned to such expiation, 
were drawn, at the heels of wild horses. No 

oblivion, and no rest. 

***** 

Strong mental agitation and disturbance was 
no novelty to him, even before his late sufferings. 
It never is, to obstinate and sullen natures, for 
they struggle hard to be such. Ground, long 
undermined, will often fall down in a moment ; 
what was undermined here in so many ways, 
weakened, and crumbled, little by little, more 
and more, as the hand moved on the dial. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 55. 

MIND— A perturbed— Flight of Carker. 

Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture 
gnawed at his heart ; a constant apprehension 
of being overtaken or met — for he was ground- 
lessly afraid even of travellers who came towards 
him by the way he was going — oppressed him 



heavily. The same intolerable awe and 'dread 
that had come upon him in the night, returned 
unweakened in the day. The monotonous ring- 
ing of the bells and trampling of the horses ; 
the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage ; 
the monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and pas- 
sion, he kept turning round and round ; made 
the journey like a vision, in which nothing was 
quite real but his own torment. 

It was a vision of long roads, that stretched 
away to an horizon, always receding, and never 
gained ; of ill-paved towns, up hill and down, 
where faces came to dark doors and ill-glazed 
windows, and where rows of mud-bespattered 
cows and oxen were tied up for sale in the long 
narrow streets, butting and lowing, and receiv- 
ing blows on their blunt heads from bludgeons 
that might have beaten them in ; of bridges, 
crosses, churches, post-yards, new horses being 
put in against their will, and the horses of the 
last stage reeking, panting, and laying their 
drooping heads together dolefully at stable 
doors ; of little cemeteries, with black Crosse's 
settled sideways in the graves, and withei-r.d 
wreaths upon them drooping away ; again of 
long, long roads, dragging themselves out, up 
hill and down, to the treacherous horizon. 

Of morning, noon, and sunset ; night, and the 
rising of an early moon. Of long roads, tempo- 
rarily left behind, and a rough pavement reached ; 
of battering and clattering over it, and looking 
up, among house-roofs, at a great church-tower ; 
of getting out and eating hastily, and drinking 
draughts of wine that had no cheering influence ; 
of coming forth afoot, among a host of beggars 
— blind men with quivering eyelids, led by old 
women holding candles to their faces ; idiot 
girls ; the lame, the epileptic, and the palsied — 
of passing through the clamor, and looking from 
his seat at the upturned countenances and out- 
stretched hands, with a hurried dread of recog- M 
nizing some pursuer pressing forward — of gal- I 
loping away again, upon the long, long road, 
gathered up, dull and stunned, in his corner, or 
rising to see where the moon shone faintly on a 
patch of the same endless road miles away, or 
looking back to see who followed. _ ^ 

Of never sleeping, but sometimes dozing with 
unclosed eyes, and springing up with a start, 
and a reply aloud to an imaginary voice. Of 
cursing himself for being there, for having fled, 
for having let her go, for not having confronted 
and defied him. Of having a deadly quarrel 
with the whole world, but chiefly with himself. 
Of blighting everything with his black mood as 
he was carried on and away. 

It was a fevered vision of things past and 
present all confounded together: his life and 
journey blended into one. Of being madly hur- 
ried somewhere, whither he must go. Of old 
scenes starting up among the novelties through 
which he travelled. Of musing and brooding 
over what was past and distant, and seeming to 
take no notice of the actual objects he encoun- 
tered, but with a wearisome, exhausting con- 
sciousness of being bewildered by them, and 
having their images all crowded in his hot 
brain after they were gone. 

A vision of change upon change, and still 
the same monotony of bells, and wheels, and 
horses' feet, and no rest. Of town and country, 
post-yards, horses, drivers, hill and valley, light 
and darkness, road and pavement, height and 



I 



JSII2TD 



309 



MIBBOBS 



hollow, wet weather and dry, and still the same 
monotony of bells, and wheels, and horses' feet, 
and no rest. A vision of tending on at last, 
towards the distant capital, by busier roads, and 
sweeping round by old cathedrals, and dashing 
through small towns and villages, less thinly 
scattered on the road than formerly, and sitting 
shrouded in his corner, with his cloak up to his 
face, as people passing by looked at him. 

Of rolling on and on, always postponing 
thought, and always racked with thinking ; of 
being unable to reckon up the hours he had been 
upon the road, or to comprehend the points of 
time and place in his journey. Of being parch- 
ed and giddy, and half mad. Of pressing on, 
in spite of all, as if he could not stop, and com- 
ing into Paris, where the turbid river held its 
swift course undisturbed, between two brawling 
.streams of life and motion. 

A troubled vision, then, of bridges, quays, in- 
terminable streets ; of wine-shops, water-carriers, 
great crowds of people, soldiers, coaches, mili- 
tary drums, arcades. Of the monotony of bells, 
and wheels, and horses' feet being at length lost 
in the universal din and uproar. Of the grad- 
ual subsidence of that noise as he passed out 
in another carriage by a different barrier from 
that by which he had entered. Of the restora- 
tion, as he travelled on towards the sea-coast, 
of the monotony of bells, and wheels, and 
horses' feet, and no rest. 

Of sunset once again, and nightfall. Of long 
roads again, and dead of night, and feeble lights 
in windows by the road-side : and still the old 
monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet 
and no rest. Of dawn, and daybreak, and the 
rising of the sun. Of toiling slowly up a hill, 
and feeling on its top the fresh sea-breeze, 
and seeing the morning light upon the edges of 
the distant waves. Of coming down into a 
harbor when the tide was at its full, and seeing 
fishing-boats float in, and glad women and chil- 
dren waiting for them. Of nets and seamen's 
clothes spread out to dry upon the shores ; of 
busy sailors, and their voices high among 
ships* masts and rigging ; of the buoyancy and 
brightness of the water, and the universal spark 
ling. 

Of receding from the coast, and looking back 
upon it from the deck when it was a haze upon 
the water, with here and there a little opening 
of bright land where the Sun struck. Of the 
swell, and flash, and murmur of the calm sea. 
Of another grey line on the ocean, on the ves- 
sel's track, fast growing clearer and higher. 
Of cliff's and buildings, and a windmiil, and a 
church, becoming more and more visible upon 
it. Of steaming on at last into smooth water, and 
mooring to a pier whence groups of people 
looked down, greeting friends on board. Of dis- 
embarking, passing among them quickly, shun- 
ning every one ; and of being, at last, again in 
England. 

He had thought, in his dream, of going down 
into a remote Country-place he knew, and lying 
quiet there, while he secretly informed himself 
of what transpired, and determined how to act. 
Still in the same stunned condition, he remem- 
bered a certain station on the railway, where he 
would have to branch off to his place of desti- 
nation and where there was a quiet Inn. 
***** 

His object was to rest, and recover the com- 



mand of himself, and the balance of his mind. 
Imbecile discomfiture and rage — so that, as he 
walked about his room, he ground his teeth — 
had complete possession of him. His thoughts, 
not to be stopped or directed, still wandered 
where they would, and dragged him after 
them. He was stupefied, and he was wearied 
to death. 

But, as if there were a curse upon him that he 
should never rest again, his drowsy senses would 
not lose their consciousness. He had no more 
influence with them in this regard, than if they 
had been another man's. It was not that they 
forced him to take note of present sounds and 
objects, but that they would not be diverted 
from the whole hurried vision of his journey. 
It was constantly before him all at once. She 
stood there, with her dark disdainful eyes again 
upon him ; and he was riding on, nevertheless, 
through town and country, light and darkness, 
wet weather and dry, over road and pavement, 
hill and valley, height and hollow, jaded and 
scared by the monotony of bells, and wheels, 
and horses' feet, and no rest. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 55. 

MIND— The resxirrection of. 

Black are the brooding clouds and troubled 
the deep waters, when the Sea of Thought, first 
heaving from a calm, gives up its Dead. Mon- 
sters uncouth and wild, arise in premature, im- 
perfect resurrection ; the several parts and shapes 
of different things are joined and mixed by 
chance ; and when, and how, and by what won- 
derful degrees, each separates from each, and 
every sense and object of the mind resumes its 
usual form and lives again, no man — though 
every man is every day the casket of this type 
of the Great Mystery — can tell. 

Chimes^ 2d Quarter. 

MIRRORS-The reflection of. 

The trees were bare of leaves, and the river 
was bare of water-lilies ; but the sky was not 
bare of its beautiful blue, and the water reflected 
it, and a delicious wind ran with the stream, 
touching the surface crisply. Perhaps the old 
mirror was never yet made by human hands, 
which, if all the images it has in its time re- 
flected could pass across its surface again, would 
fail to reveal some scene of hoiTor or distress. 
But the great serene mirror of the river seemed 
as if it might have reproduced all it had ever re- 
flected between those placid banks, and brought 
nothing to the light save what was peaceful, 
pastoral, and blooming. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 9. 

MISANTHROPES AND HYPOCRITES. 

The despisers of mankind — apart from the 
mere fools and mimics, of that creed — are of two 
sorts. They who believe their merit neglected 
and unappreciated, make up one class ; they 
who receive adulation and flattery, knowing 
their own worthlessness, compose the other. 
Be sure that the coldest-hearted misanthropes 
»are ever of this last order. 

Baniaby Rudge, Chap. 24. 

MISANTHROPES AND PIKE-KEEPERS 

-(Mr. Waller). 
" Wery queer life is a pJke-keeper's, sir." 
"A what?" said Mr. Pickwick, 



MISFOBT^'N^ES 



310 



MISSION 



" A pike-keeper." 

" What do you mean by a pike-keeper ? " in- 
quired Mr. Peter Magnus. 

"The old 'un means a turnpike-keeper, 
gen'lm'n," observed Mr. Samuel Weller, in ex- 
planation. 

" Oh," said Mr. Pickwick, " I see. Yes ; very 
curious life. Very uncomfortable." 

"They're all on 'em men as has met vith 
some disappointment in life," said Mr. Weller 
senior. 

" Ay, ay ? " said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Yes. Consequence of vich, they retires from 
the world, and shuts themselves up in pikes ; 
partly vith the view of being solitary, and partly 
to rewenge themselves on mankind, by takin' 
tolls." 

" Dear me," said Mr. Pickwick, " I never knew 
that before." 

" Fact, sir," said Mr. Weller ; " if they was 
gen'lm'n you'd call *em misanthropes, but as it 
is, they only takes to pike-keepin'." 

Pickwick, Chap. 22. 

MISFORTUNES. 

Misfortunes, saith the adage, never come sin- 
gly. There is little doubt that troubles are ex- 
ceedingly gregarious in their nature, and flying 
in flocks, are apt to perch capriciously ; crowding 
on the heads of some poor wights until there is 
not an inch of room left on their unlucky crowns, 
and taking no more notice of others who offer 
as good resting-places for the soles of their feet, 
than if they had no existence. It may have hap- 
pened that a flight of troubles brooding over 
London, and looking out for Joseph Willet, 
whom they couldn't find, darted down hap-haz- 
ard on the first young man that caught their 
fancy, and settled on him instead. However 
this may be, certain it is that on the very day of 
Joe's departure they swarmed about the ears 
of Edward Chester, and did so buzz and flap 
their wings, and persecute him, that he was 
most profoundly wretched. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 32. 

MISFORTUNE— Pancks, a portrait of. 

His steam-like breathings, usually droll in 
their effect, were more tragic than so many 
groans ; while, from head to foot, he was in that 
begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he 
might have been an authentic portrait of Mis- 
fortune, which could scarcely be discerned 
through its want of cleaning. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 26. 

MISFORTUNE— Hope and despair in. 

" Many eyes, that have long since been closed 
in the grave, have looked round upon that scene 
lightly enough, when entering the gate of the old 
Marshalsea Prison for the first time : for despair 
seldom comes with the first severe shock of mis- 
fortune. A man has confidence in untried friends, 
he remembers the many off'ers of service so freely 
made by his boon companions when he wanted 
them not ; he has hope — the hope of happy inex- 
perience — and however he may bend beneath the 
first shock, it springs up in his bosom, and flour- 
ishes there for a brief space, until it droops be- 
neath the blight of disappointment and neglect. 
How soon have those same eyes, deeply sunken 
in the head, glared from faces wasted with fam- 
ine, and sallow from confinement, in days when 



it was no figure of speech to say that debtors 
rotted in prison, with no hope of release, and no 
prospect of liberty ! The atrocity in its full ex- 
tent no longer exists, but there is enough of it 
left to give rise to occurrences that make the 
heart bleed." — Pickwick, Chap. 21. 

MISFORTUNE— Its crushing character. 

When an avalanche bears down a mountain- 
forest, twigs and bushes suffer with the trees, 
and all perish together. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 17. 

MISSIONARY ENTERPRISES-Sam Wel- 
ler on. 

" So you vouldn't subscribe to the flannel 
veskits ? " said Sam, after another interval of 
smoking. 

" Cert'nly not," replied Mr. Weller : " what's 
the good o' flannel veskits to the young niggers 
abroad? But I'll tell you what it is, Sammy," 
said Mr. Weller, lowering his voice, and bend- 
ing across the fire-place ; " I'd come down wery 
handsome towards straight veskits for some 
people at home." 

As Mr. Weller said this, he slowly recovered 
his former position, and winked at his first-bom, 
in a profound manner. 

" It cert'nly seems a queer start to send out 
pocket ankerchers to people as don't know the 
use on 'em," observed Sam. 

" They're always a doin' some gammon of that 
sort, Sammy," replied his father. 

Pickwick, Chap. 27. 

MISSIONS— Of life-Moddle's ideas of the. 

As for him, he more than corroborated the 
account of Mrs. Todgers ; possessing greater 
sensibility than even she had given him . credit 
for. He entertained some terrible notions of 
Destiny, among other matters, and talked much 
about people's " Missions : " upon which hei 
seemed to have some private information not 
generally attainable, as he knew it had been 
poor Merry's mission to crush him in the bud. 
He was very frail and tearful ; for being aware 
that a shepherd's mission was to pipe to his 
flocks, and that a boatswain's mission was to 
pipe all hands, and that one man's mission was 
to be a paid piper, and another man's mission 
was to pay the piper, so he had got it into 
his head that his own peculiar mission was to 
pipe his eye. Which he did perpetually. 

He often informed Mrs. Todgers that the sun 
had set upon him ; that the billows had rolled 
over him ; that the Car of Juggernaut had 
crushed him ; and also that the deadly Upas 
tree of Java had blighted him. His name was 
Moddle. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 32. 

MISSION— Dick Swiveller on a charitable. 

" You'll mention that I called, perhaps," said 
Dick. 

Mr. Quilp nodded, and said he certainly 
would, the very first time he saw them. 

" And say," added Mr. Swiveller, " say, sir, 
that I was wafted here upon the pinions of con- 
cord ; that I came to remove, with the rake of 
friendship, the seeds of mutual wiolence and 
heart-burning, and to sow in their place the 
germs of social harmony. Will you have the 
goodness to charge yourself with that commis 
sion, sir ? " — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 13. 



MISSIONS 



311 



MOB 



MISSIONS.-Mr, JeUyby on. 

I mentioned, in my account of our first visit 
in Thavies' Inn, that Richard described Mr. 
Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after 
dinner without saying anything. It was a habit 
of his. He opened his mouth now, a great 
many times, and shook his head in a melan- 
choly manner. 

" What do you wish me not to have ? Don't 
have what, dear pa?" asked Caddy, coaxing 
him, with her arms round his neck. 

'* Never have a Mission, my dear child." 

Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against 
the wall again ; and this was the only time I 
ever heard him make any approach to express- 
ing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. 
I suppose he had been more talkative and lively, 
once ; but he seemed to have been completely 
exhausted long before I knew him. 

Bleak House, Chap. 30. 

MISSION-Mrs. Pardi&gle's. 

"You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs. 
Pardiggle to these latter. " I enjoy hard work ; 
and the harder you make mine, the better I like 
it." 

•' Then make it easy for her ! " growled the 
man upon the floor. " I wants it done, and over. 
I wants a end of these liberties took with my 
place. I wants a end of being drawed like a 
badger. Now you're a-going to poll-pry and 
question according to custom — I know what 
you're a-going to be up to. Well ! You haven't 
got no occasion to be up to it. I'll save you the 
trouble. Is my daughter a-washin ? Yes, she is 
a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it ! That's 
wot we drinks. How do you like it, and what 
do you think of gin, instead ? An't my place 
dirty ? Yes, it is dirty — it's nat'rally dirty, and 
it's nat'rally onwholesome ; and we've had five 
dirty and unwholesome children, as is all dead 
infants, and so much the better for them, and for 
us besides. Have I read the little book wot you 
left? No, I an't read the little book wot you 
left. There an't nobody here as knows how to 
read it ; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suit- 
able to me. It's a book fit for a babby, and I'm 
not a babby. If you was to leave me a doll, I 
shouldn't nuss it. How have I been conduct- 
ing of myself? Why, I've been drunk for three 
days ; and I'd a been drunk four, if I'd a had 
the money. Don't I never mean for to go to 
church ? No, I don't never mean for to go to 
church. I shouldn't be expected there, if I did ; 
the beadle's too genteel for me. And how did 
my wife get that black eye ? Why, I giv' it her ; 
and if she says I didn't, she's a Lie ! " 

He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to 
say all this, and he now turned over on his other 
side, and smoked again. Mrs. Pardiggle, who 
had been regarding him through her spectacles 
with a forcible composure, calculated, I could not 
help thinking, to increase his antagonism, pulled 
out a good book, as if it were a constable's staff, 
and took the whole family into custody. I mean 
into religious custody, of course ; but she really 
did it as if she were an inexorable moral Po- 
liceman, carrying them all off to a stationhouse. 
Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

MOB. 

They had torches among them, and the chief 
faces were distinctly visible. That they had been 



engaged in the destruction of some building was 
sufficiently apparent, and that it was a Catholic 
place of worship was evident from the spoils 
they bore as trophies, which were easily recognis- 
able for the vestments of priests, and rich frag- 
ments of altar furniture. Covered with soot, 
and dirt, and dust, and lime ; their garments torn 
to rags ; their hair hanging wildly about them ; 
their hands and faces jagged and bleeding with 
the wounds of rusty nails ; Barnaby, Hugh, and 
Dennis hurried on before them all, like hideous 
madmen. After them, the dense throng came 
fighting on ; some singing ; some shouting in tri- 
umph ; some quarrelling among themselves ; 
some menacing the spectators as they passed ; 
some with great wooden fragments, on which they 
spent their rage as if they had been alive, rend- 
ing them limb from limb, and hurling the scat- 
tered morsels high into the air ; some in a drunk- 
en state, unconscious of the hurts they had re- 
ceived from falling bricks, and stones, and 
beams ; one borne upon a shutter, in the very 
midst, covered with a dingy cloth, a senseless, 
ghastly heap. Thus — a vision of coarse faces, 
with here and there a blot of flaring smoky light ; 
a dream of demon heads and savage eyes, and 
sticks and iron bars uplifted in the air, and 
whirled about ; a bewildering horror, in which 
so much was seen, and yet so little, which seemed 
so long and yet so short, in which there were so 
many phantoms, not to be forgotten all through 
life, and yet so many things that could not be 
observed in one distracting glimpse — it flitted 
onward and was gone. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 50. 

A mob is usually a creature of very mysterious 
existence, particularly in a large city. Where it 
comes from or whither it goes, few men can tell. 
Assembling and dispersing with equal sudden- 
ness, it is as difficult to follow to its various 
sources as the sea itself ; nor does the parallel 
stop here, for the ocean is not more fickle ancj 
uncertain, more terrible when roused, more un- 
reasonable, or more cruel. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 52. 

MOB— Shout with the largest. 

" Slumkey for ever ! " echoed Mr. Pickwick, 
taking off his hat. 

" No Fizkin ! " roared the crowd. 

'* Certainly not !" shouted Mr. Pickwick. 

" Hurrah ! " And then there was another 
roaring like that of a ^ylole menagerie when 
the elephant has rung tne bell for the cold 
meat. 

" Who is Slumkey ? " whispered Mr. Tup- 
man. 

" I don't know," replied Mr. Pickwick, in the 
same tone. " Hush. Don't ask any questions. 
It's always best on these occasions to do what 
the mob do." 

" But suppose there are two mobs ? " sug- 
gested Mr. Snodgrass. 

" Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

Volumes could not have said more. 

Pickwick, CJuip. 13. 

MOB— A revolutionary. 

Presently she heard a troubled movement, 
and a shouting coming along which filled her 
with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng 



MODELS 



312 



MODELS 



of people came pouring round the corner by the 
prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood- 
sawyer, hand in hand with The Vengeance. 
There could not be fewer than five hundred 
people, and they were dancing like five thou- 
sand demons. There was no other music than 
their own singing. They danced to the popu- 
lar Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time, 
that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. 
Men and women danced together, women 
danced together, men danced together, as haz- 
ard had brought them together. At first, they 
were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse 
woollen rags ; but, as they filled the place, and 
stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly ap- 
parition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose 
among them. They advanced, retreated, struck 
at one another's hands, clutched at one another's 
heads, spun round alone, caught one another and 
spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. 
While those were down, the rest linked hand in 
hand, and all spun round together ; then the 
ring broke, and in separate rings of two and 
four they turned and turned until they all 
stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, 
and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all 
spun round another way. Suddenly they 
stopped again, paused, struck out the time 
afresh, formed into lines the width of the public 
way, and, with their heads low down, and their 
hands high up, swooped screaming off. No 
fight could have been half so terrible as this 
dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport 
— a something, once innocent, delivered over to 
all devilry — a healthy pastime changed into a 
means of angering the blood, bewildering the 
senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as 
was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how 
warped and perverted all things good by nature 
were become. The maidenly bosom bared to 
this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distract- 
ed, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of 
blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time. 
Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 5. 

MODELS— Hair as an auxiliary of art. 

"What is this?" I exclaimed involuntarily, 
" and what have you become ? " 

" I am the Ghost of Art ! " said he. 

The effect of these words, slowly uttered in 
the thunder-storm at midnight, was appalling to 
the last degree. More dead than alive, I sur- 
veyed him in silence. 

"The German taste came up," said he, "and 
threw me out of bread. I am ready for the taste 
now." 

He made his beard a little jagged with his 
hands, folded his arms, and said, 

" Severity ! " 

I shuddered. It was so severe. 

He made his beard flowing on his breast, and 
leaning both hands on the staff of a carpet- 
broom which Mrs. Parkins had left among my 
books, said : 

" Benevolence." 

I stood transfixed. The change of sentiment 
was entirely in the beard. The man might have 
left his face alone, or had no face. The beard 
did everything. 

He lay down, on his back, on my table, and 
with that action of his head threw up his beard 
at the chin. 

" That's Death ! " said he. 



He got off my table, and, looking up at the 
ceiling, cocked his beard a little awry ; at the 
same time making it stick out before him. 

" Adoration, or a vow of vengeance," he ob- 
served. 

He turned his profile to me, making his up- 
per lip very bulgy with the upper part of his 
beard. 

" Romantic character," said he. 

He looked sideways out of his beard, as if it 
were an ivy-bush. "Jealousy," said he. He 
gave it an ingenious twist in the air, and in- 
formed me that he was carousing. He made it 
shaggy with his fingers — and it was Despair ; 
lank — and it was Avarice ; tossed it all kinds 
of ways — and it was Rage. The beard did 
everything. 

" I am the Ghost of Art," said he. " Two bob 
a day now, and more when it's longeV ! Hair's 
the true expression. There is no other. I SAID 
I'd grow it, and I've grown it, and it shall 
haunt you ! " 

He may have tumbled down stairs in the dark, 
but he never walked down or ran down. I 
looked over the banisters, and I was alone with 
the thunder. 

Need I add more of my terrific fate ? It HAS 
haunted me ever since. It glares upon me from 
the walls of the Royal Academy (except when 
Maclise subdues it to his genius), it fills my 
soul with terror at the British Institution, it 
lures young artists on to their destruction. Go 
where I will, the Ghost of Art, eternally work- 
ing the passions in hair, and expressing every- 
thing by beard, pursues me. The prediction is 
accomplished, and the victim has no rest. 

The Ghost of Art. Reprinted Pieces. 

MODELS— Artists'— (Rome) . 

Among what may be called the Cubs or minor 
Lions of Rome, there was one that amused me 
mightily. It is always to be found there ; and 
its den is on the great flight of steps that lead 
from the Piazza di Sp&gna, to the church of 
Trinita del Monte. In plainer words, these steps 
are the great place of resort for the artists' 
" Models," and there they are constantly wait- 
ing to be hired. The first time I went up there 
I could not conceive why the faces seemed fa- 
miliar to me ; why they appeared to have beset 
me, for years, in every possible variety of action 
and costume ; and how it came to pass that they 
started up before me, in Rome, in the broad day, 
like so many saddled and bridled nightmares. 
I soon found that we had made acquaintance, 
and improved it, for several years, on the walls 
of various Exhibition Galleries. There is one 
old gentleman, with long white hair and an im 
mense beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone 
half through the catalogue of the Royal Acad- 
emy. This is the venerable, or patriarchal 
model. He carries a long staff ; and every knot 
and twist in that staff I have seen, faithfully 
delineated, innumerable times. There is another 
man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to be 
asleep in the sun (when there is any), and who, 
I need not say, is always very wide awake, and 
very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This 
is the dolce far' niente model. There is another 
man in a brown cloak, who leans against the 
wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and 
looks out of the corners of his eyes ; which are 
just visible beneath his broad slouched hat. 



MODEST aHEATNESS 



313 



MONEY 



This is the assassin model. There is another 
man, who constantly looks over his own shoul- 
der, and is always going away, but never goes. 
This is the haughty, or scornful model. As to 
Domestic Happiness, and Holy Families, they 
should come very cheap, for there are lumps of 
them, all up the steps ; and then the cream of 
the thing is, that they are all the falsest vaga- 
bonds in the world, especially made up for the 
purpose, and having no counterparts in Rome 
or any other part of the habitable globe. 

Pictures from Italy. 

MODEST GREATNESS. 

So modest was Mr. Merdle withal, in the 
midst of these splendid achievements, that he 
looked more like a man in possession of his 
house under a distraint, than a commercial Co- 
lossus bestriding his own hearth-rug while the 
little ships were sailing in to dinner. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. I2. 

MODESTY-Of Mig-gs. 

" I wouldn't," cried Miggs, folding her hands 
and looking upwards with a kind of devout 
blankness, " I wouldn't lay myself out as she 
does ; I wouldn't be as bold as her ; I wouldn't 
seem to say to all male creeturs ' come and kiss 
me ' " — and here a shudder quite convulsed her 
frame — " for any earthly crowns as might be 
offered. Worlds," Miggs added solemnly, 
"should not reduce me. No. Not if I was 
Wenis." 

" Well, but you are Wenus, you know," said 
Mr. Dennis, confidentially. 

" No, I am not, good gentlemen," answered 
Miggs, shaking her head with an air of self-de- 
nial which seemed to imply that she might be 
if she chose, but she hoped she knew better. 
" No, I am not, good gentlemen. Don't charge 
me with it." — Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 70. 

MONEY— And its uses. 

*' For the same reason that I am not a hoarder 
of money," said the old man, " I am not lavish 
of it. Some people find their gratification in 
storing it up : and others theirs in parting with 
it ; but I have no gratification connected with 
the thing. Pain and bitterness are the only goods 
it ever could procure for me. I hate it. It is a 
spectre walking before me through the world, 
and making every social pleasure hideous." 

A thought arose in Mr. Pecksniff's mind, 
which must have instantly mounted to his face, 
or Martin Chuzzlewit would not have resumed 
as quickly and sternly as he did : 

" You would advise me for my peace of mind, 
to get rid of this source of misery, and transfer it 
to some one who could bear it better. Even 
you, perhaps, would rid me of a burden under 
which I suffer so grievously. But, kind stranger," 
said the old man, whose every feature darkened 
as he spoke, " good Christian stranger, that is 
a main part of my trouble. In other hands, I 
have known money do good ; in other hands 
I have known it triumphed in, and boasted of, 
with reason, as the master-key to all the brazen 
gates that close upon the paths to worldly honor, 
fortune, and enjoyment. To what man or woman, 
to what worthy, honest, incorruptible creature, 
shall I confide such a talisman, either now, or 
when I die ? Do you know of any such per- 
son? Your virtues are of course inestimable, 



but can you tell me of any other living crea- 
ture who will bear the test of contact with 
myself? " 

"Of contact with yourself, sir?" echoed Mr. 
Pecksniff. 

" Ay," returned the old man, " the test of con- 
tact with me — with me. You have heard of him 
whose misery (the gratification of his own foolish 
wish) was, that he turned everything he touched 
into gold. The curse of my existence, and the 
realization of my own mad desire, is, that by the 
golden standard which I bear about me I am 
doomed to try the metal of all other men, and 
find it false and hollow. 

" I tell you, that I have gone, a rich man, 
among people of all grades and kinds ; relatives, 
friends, and strangers ; among people in whom, 
when I was poor, I had confidence, and justly, 
for they never once deceived me then, or, to me, 
wronged each other. But I have never found 
one nature, no, not one, in which, being wealthy 
and alone, I was not forced to detect the latent 
corruption that lay hid within it, waiting for such 
as I to bring it forth. Treachery, deceit, and 
low design ; hatred of competitors, real or fan- 
cied, for my favor ; meanness, falsehood, base- 
ness, and servility ; or," and here he looked 
closely in his cousin's eyes, " or an assumption 
of honest independence, almost worse than all ; 
these are the beauties which my wealth has 
brought to light. Brother against brother, child 
against parent, friends treading on the faces of 
friends, this is the social company by whom my 
way has been attended. There are stories told 
— they may be true or false — of rich men, who, 
in the garb of poverty, have found out virtue 
and rewarded it. They were dolts and idiots 
for their pains. They should have made the 
search in their own characters. They should 
have shown themselves fit objects to be robbed 
and preyed upon and plotted against and adu- 
lated by any knaves, who, but for joy, would 
have spat upon their coffins when they died their 
dupes ; and then their search would have ended 
as mine has done, and they would be what 1 
am." — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3. 

MONEY— Bamaby' s dream of. 

" By stay-at-homes ! " cried Barnaby, pluckmg 
at his sleeve. " But I am not one. Now, there 
you mistake. I am often out before the sun, and 
travel home when he has gone to rest. I am 
away in the woods before the day has reached 
the shady places, and am often there when the 
bright moon is peeping through the boughs, and 
looking down upon the other moon that lives in 
water. As I walk along, I try to find, among 
the grass and moss, some of that small money 
for which she works so hard and used to shed 
so many tears. As I lie asleep in the shade, I 
dream of it — dream of digging it up in heaps ; 
and spying it out, hidden under bushes ; and 
seeing it sparkle, as the dew-drops do, among 
the leaves. But I never find it ; tell me where it 
is. I'd go there, if the journey were a whole 
year long, because I know she would be happier 
when I came home and brought some with me. 
Speak again. I'll listen to you if you talk all 
night." — Barnaby Rudge, C/iap. 46. 

MONEY-A child's idea of. 

" Papa ! what's money ? " 

The abrupt question had such immediate ret 



MONEY 



314 



MORNING 



erence to the subject of Mr. Dombey's thoughts, 
that Mr. Dombey was quite disconcerted. 

"What is money, Paul?" he answered. 
" Money ? " 

" Yes," said the child, laying his hands upon 
the elbows of his little chair, and turning the 
old face up towards Mr. Dombey's ; " what is 
money ? " 

Mr. Dombey was in a difficulty. He would 
have liked to give him some explanation involv- 
ing the terms circulating-medium, currency, de- 
preciation of currency, paper, bullion, rates of 
exchange, value of precious metals in the mar- 
ket, and so forth ; but looking down at the little 
chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, 
he answered ; " Gold, and silver, and copper. 
Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what 
they are ? " 

" Oh yes, I know what they are," said Paul. 
" I don't mean that, Papa. I mean what's 
money after all." 

Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as 
he turned it up again towards his father's ! 

" What is money after all ? " said Mr. Dombey, 
backing his chair a little, that he might the 
better gaze in sheer amazement at the pre- 
sumptuous atom that propounded such an in- 
quiry. 

" I mean, Papa, what can it do ? " returned 
Paul, folding his arms (they were hardly long 
enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up 
at him, and at the fire, and up at him again. 

Mr. Dombey drew his chair back to its former 
place, and patted him on the head. "You'll 
know better by-and-bye, my man," he said. 
" Money, Paul, can do anything." He took hold 
of the little hand, and beat it softly against one 
of his own, as he said so. 

But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could, 
and rubbing it gently to and fro on the elbow 
of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, and 
he were sharpening it — and looking at the fire 
again, as though the fire had been his adviser 
and prompter — repeated, after a short pause : 

" Anything, Papa ? " 

" Yes. Anything — almost," said Mr. Dombey. 

" Anything means everything, don't it. Papa? " 
asked his son : not observing, or possibly not 
understanding, the qualification, 

" It includes it : yes," said Mr. Dombey. 

"Why didn't money save me my Mamma?" 
returned the child. " It isn't cruel, is it ? " 

" Cruel ! " said Mr. Dombey, settling his neck- 
cloth, and seeming to resent the idea. " No. 
A good thing can't be cruel." 

" If it's a good thing, and can do anything," 
said the little fellow, thoughtfully, as he looked 
back at the fire, " I wonder why it didn't save 
me my Mamma?" 

He didn't ask the question of his father this 
time. Perhaps he had seen, with a child's quick- 
ness, that it had already made his father uncom- 
fortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as 
if it were quite an old one to him, and had trou- 
bled him very much ; and sat with his chin rest- 
ing on his hand, still cogitating and looking for 
an explanation in the fire. 

Mr. Dombey having recovered from his sur- 
prise, not to say his alarm (for it was the very 
first occasion on which the child had ever 
broached the subject of his mother to him, 
though he had had him sitting by his side, in 
this same manner, evening after evening), ex- 



pounded to him how that money, though a very 
potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any ac- 
count whatever, could not keep people alive 
whose time was come to die ; and how that we 
must all die, unfortunately, even in the City, 
though we were never so rich. But how that 
money caused us to be honored, feared, re- 
spected, courted, and admired, and made us 
powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men ; 
and how that it could, very often, even keep off 
death, for a long time together. How, for ex- 
ample, it had secured to his Mamma the services 
of Mr. Pilkins, by which he, Paul, had often 
profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor 
Parker Peps, whom he had never known. And 
how it could do all that could be done. This, 
with more to the same purpose, Mr. Dombey 
instilled into the mind of his son, who listened 
attentively, and seemed to understand the 
greater part of what was said to him. 

" It can't make me strong and quite well, 
either. Papa ; can it ? " asked Paul, after a short 
silence, rubbing his tiny hands. 

" Why, you are strong and quite well," re- 
turned Mr. Dombey. " Are you not ? " 

Oh ! the age of the face that was turned up 
again, with an expression, half of melancholy, 
half of slyness, on it ! 

"You are as strong and well as such little 
people usually are? Eh?" said Mr. Dombey. 

" Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as 
strong and well as Florence, I know," returned 
the child ; " but I believe that when Florence 
was as little as me, she could play a great deal 
longer at a time without tiring herself, I am so 
tired sometimes," said Little Paul, warming his 
hands, and looking in between the bars of the 
grate, as if some ghostly puppet-show were per- 
forming there, " and my bones ache so (Wickam 
says it's my bones), that I don't know what to 
do." 

" Aye ! But that's at night," said Mr. Dom- 
bey, drawing his own chair closer to his son's, 
and laying his hand gently on his back ; " little 
people should be tired at night, for then they 
sleep well." 

"Oh, it's not at night, Papa," returned the 
child, " it's in the day ; and I lie down in Flor- 
ence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I 
dream about such cu-ri-ous things ! " 

And he went on, warming his hands again, 
and thinking about them, like an old man or a 
young goblin. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 8. 

MONEY-LENDER. 

"'Yours, Joshua Smallweed.' — What do 
you make of that, Phil ? " 

" Mischief, guv'ner." 

"Why?" 

" Guv'ner," says Phil, with exceeding gravity, 
"he's a leech in his dispositions, he's a screw 
and a wice in his action, a snake in his twist- 
ings, and a lobster in his claws." 

Bleak House, Chap. 34. 

MORNING. 

Morning drew on apace. The air became 
more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue — 
the death of night, rather than the birth of day — 
glimmered faintly in the sky. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 28. 



The day came creeping on, halting and whim- 



MORNINa 



315 



MOBNING 



pering and shivering, and wrapped in patches of 
cloud and rags of mist, like a beggar. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 43. 

The great black velvet pall, shot with grey. 
Great Expectations, Chap. 2. 

MORNING— A damp. 

The next was a very unpropitious morning 
for a journey — muggy, damp, and drizzly. The 
horses in the stages that were going out, and 
had come through the city, were smoking so, 
that the outside passengers were invisible. The 
newspaper sellers looked moist, and smelt 
mouldy ; the wet ran off the hats of the orange- 
venders as they thrust their heads into the coach 
windows, and diluted the insides in a refreshing 
manner. The Jews with the fifty-bladed pen- 
knives shut them up in despair ; the men with 
the pocket-books made pocket-books of them. 
Watch-guards and toasting-forks were alike at a 
discount, and pencil-cases and sponge were a 
drug in the market. — Pickwick, Chap. 35. 

MORNING-A dismal. 

He was up before day-break, and came upon 
the Park with the morning, which was clad in 
the least engaging of the three hundred and 
sixty-five dresses in the wardrobe of the year. 
It was raw, damp, dark, and dismal ; the clouds 
were as muddy as the ground ; and the short 
perspective of every street and avenue, was 
closed up by the mist as by a filthy curtain 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 14. 



The day comes like a phantom. Cold, color- 
less, and vague, it sends a warning streak before 
it of a deathlike hue, as if it cried out, " Look 
what I am bringing, you who watch there ! " 
Bleak House, Chap. 58. 

MORNINO-A fickle Spring:. 

It was on one of those mornings, common in 
early spring, when the year, fickle and change- 
able in its youth, like all other created things, is 
undecided whether to step backward into winter 
or forward into summer, and in its uncertainty 
inclines now to the one and now to the other, 
and now to both at once— wooing summer, in 
the sunshine, and lingering still with winter in 
the shade — it was, in short, on one of those 
mornings, when it is hot and cold, wet and dry, 
bright and lowering, sad and cheerful, withering 
and genial, in the compass of one short hour. 
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 10. 

MORNINO-A foggy Winter. 

It was a cold, dry, foggy morning in early 
spring. A few meagre shadows flitted to and 
fro in the misty streets, and occasionally there 
loomed through the dull vapor, the heavy outline 
of some hackney-coach wending homewards, 
which, drawing slowly nearer, rolled jangling 
by, scattering the thin crust of frost from its 
whitened roof, and soon was lost again in the 
cloud. At intervals were heard the tread of 
slipshod feet, and the chilly cry of the poor 
sweep as he crept, shivering, to his early toil ; 
the heavy footfall of the official watcher of the 
night, pacing slowly up and down, and cursing 
the tardy hours that still intervened between 
him and sleep ; the rumbling of ponderous 
carts and wagons ; the roll of the lighter vehi- 



cles which carried buyers and sellers to the 
different markets ; the sound of ineffectual 
knocking at the doors of heavy sleepers — all 
these noises fell upon the ear from time to time, 
but all seemed muffled by the fog, and to be ren- 
dered almost as indistinct to the ear as was 
every object to the sight. The sluggish dark- 
ness thickened as the day came on ; and those 
who had the courage to rise and peep at the 
gloomy street from their curtained windows, 
crept back to bed again, and coiled themselves 
up to ^^0,"^.— Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22. 

MORNINGr— A gloomy. 

The morning which broke upon Mr. Pick- 
wick's sight, at eight o'clock, was not at all cal- 
culated to elevate his spirits, or to lessen the de- 
pression which the unlooked-for result of his 
embassy inspired. The sky was dark and 
gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets 
were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung slug- 
gishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the 
courage to rise, and the rain came slowly and 
doggedly down, as if it had not even the spirit 
to pour. A game-cock in the stable-yard, de- 
prived of every spark of his accustomed anima- 
tion, balanced himself dismally on one leg in a 
corner ; a donkey, moping with drooping head 
under the narrow roof of an outhouse, appeared 
from his meditative and miserable countenance 
to be contemplating suicide. In the street, um- 
brellas were the only things to be seen, and the 
clicking of pattens and splashing of rain-drops 
were the only sounds to be heard. 

Pickwick, Chap. 51. 

MORNINa-A Summer. 

" It was a bright and sunny morning in the 
pleasant time of summer, when one of those 
black monks emerged from the abbey portal, 
and bent his steps towards the house of the fair 
sisters. Heaven above was blue, and earth be. 
neath was green ; the river glistened like a path 
of diamonds in the sun ; the birds poured forth 
their songs from the shady trees ; the lark soared 
high above the waving corn ; and the deep buzz 
of insects filled the air." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6. 

MORNING-A Winter. 

How well I recollect the kind of day it was ! 
I smell the fog that hung about the place ; I see 
the hoar frost, ghostly, through it ; I feel my 
rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek ; I look 
along the dim perspective of the school-room, 
with a sputtering candle here and there to light 
up the foggy morning, and the breath of the 
boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as 
they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet 
upon the floor. — David Copperjicld, Chap. 9. 

MORNING- An early Autumn. 

It was a fine morning — so fine that you would 
scarcely have believed that the few months of an 
English summer had yet flown by. Hedges, 
fields, and trees, hill and moorland, presented 
to the eye their ever-varying shades of deep 
rich green ; scarce a leaf had fallen, scarce a 
sprinkle of yellow mingled with the hues of 
summer, warned you that autumn had begun. 
The sky was cloudless ; the sun shone out 
bright and warm ; the songs of birds, and hum 
of myriads of summer insects, filled the air ; 



MORNING 



316 



MORNING 



and the cottage gardens, crowded with flowers 
of every rich and beautiful tint, sparkled, in the 
heavy dew, like beds of glittering jewels. 
Everything bore the stamp of summer, and 
none of its beautiful colors had yet faded from 
the die. — Pickwick, Chap. 19. 

MORNING— In London. 

The appearance presented by the streets of 
London an hour before sunrise, on a summer's 
morning, is most striking, even to the few whose 
unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less 
unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to 
be well acquainted with the scene. There is an 
air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless 
streets which we are accustomed to see thronged 
at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over 
the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which through- 
out the day are swarming with life and bustle, 
that is very impressive. 

The last drunken man who shall find his way 
home before sun-light, has just staggered heavily 
along, roaring out the burden of the drinking- 
song of the previous night: the last houseless 
vagrant whom penury and police have left in the 
streets, has coiled up his chilly limbs in some 
paved corner, to dream of food and warmth. The 
drunken, the dissipated, and the wretched have 
disappeared ; the more sober and orderly part of 
the population have not yet awakened to the 
labors of the day, and the stillness of death is 
over the streets ; its very hue seems to be im- 
parted to them, cold and lifeless as they look in 
the grey, sombre light of daybreak. The coach- 
stands in the larger thoroughfares are de- 
serted : the night-houses are closed ; and the 
chosen promenades of profligate misery are 
empty. 

An occasional policeman may alone be seen 
at the street-corners, listlessly gazing on the de- 
serted prospect before him ; and now and then 
a rakish-looking cat runs stealthily across the 
road and descends his own area with as much 
caution and slyness — bounding first on the water- 
butt, then on the dust-hole, and then alighting 
on the flag-stones — as if he were conscious that 
his character depended on his gallantry of the 
preceding night escaping public observation. 
A partially-opened bedroom-window, here and 
there, bespeaks the heat of the weather, and the 
uneasy slumbers of its occupant : and the dim, 
scanty flicker of the rush-light, through the win- 
dow-blind, denotes the chamber of watching or 
sickness. With these few exceptions, the streets 
present no signs of life, nor the houses of habi- 
tation. 

An hour wears away ; the spires of the churches 
and roofs of the principal buildings are faintly 
tinged with the light of the rising sun ; and the 
streets, by almost imperceptible degrees, begin to 
resume their bustle and animation. Market-carts 
roll slowly along : the sleepy wagoner impa- 
tiently urging on his tired horses, or vainly en- 
deavoring to awaken the boy, who, luxuriously 
stretched on the top of the fruit-baskets, forgets, 
in happy oblivion, his long-cherished curiosity to 
behold the wonders of London. 

Rough, sleepy-looking animals of strange ap- 
pearance, something between ostlers and hack- 
ney-coachmen, begin to take down the shutters 
of early public-houses ; and little deal-tables, with 
the ordinary preparations for a street breakfast, 
make their appearance at the customary stations. 



Numbers of men and women (principally the lat- 
ter), carrying upon their heads heavy baskets of 
fruit, toil down the park side of Piccadilly, on 
their way to Covent Garden, and, following each 
other in rapid succession, form a long, straggling 
line from thence to the turn of the road at 
Knightsbridge. 

Here and there, a bricklayer's laborer, with 
the day's dinner tied up in a handkerchief, walks 
briskly to his work, and occasionally a little knot 
of three or four schoolboys on a stolen bathing 
expedition rattle merrily over the pavement, their 
boisterous mirth contrasting forcibly with the de- 
meanor of the little sweep, who, having knocked 
and rung till his arm aches, and being interdicted 
by a merciful legislature from endangering his 
lungs by calling out, sits patiently down on the 
door-step until the housemaid may happen to 
awake. 

Covent Garden Market, and the avenues lead- 
ing to it, are thronged with carts of all sorts, 
sizes, and descriptions, from the heavy lumbering 
wagon, with its four stout horses, to the jing- 
ling costermonger's cart, with its consumptive 
donkey. The pavement is already strewed with 
decayed cabbage-leaves, broken haybands, and all 
the indescribable litter of a vegetable market ; 
men are shouting, carts backing, horses neighing, 
boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen ex- 
patiating on the excellence of their pastry, and 
donkeys braying. These and a hundred other 
sounds form a compound discordant enough to a 
Londoner's ears, and remarkably disagreeable to 
those of country gentlemen who are sleeping at 
the Hummums for the first time. 

Sketches {Scenes), Chap. i. 

MORNTNO— In the country. 

The sun shone from out the clear blue sky, 
the water sparkled beneath his rays, and the 
trees looked greener, and the flowers more gay, 
beneath his cheering influence. The water rip- 
pled on, with a pleasant sound ; the trees rustled 
in the light wind that murmured among their 
leaves ; the birds sang upon the boughs ; and the 
lark carolled on high her welcome to the morn- 
ing. Yes, it was morning : the bright, balmy morn- 
ing of summer ; the minutest leaf, the smallest 
blade of grass, was instinct with life. The ant 
crept forth to her daily toil, the butterfly flut- 
tered and basked in the warm rays of the sun ; 
myriads of insects spread their transparent wings, 
and revelled in their brief but happy existence. 
Man walked forth, elated with the scene ; and 
all was brightness and splendor. 

Pickwick, Chap. 29. 

MORNINGh-Early. 

No day yet in the sky, but there was day in 
the resounding stones of the streets ; in the wag- 
ons, carts and coaches ; in the workers going 
to various occupations ; in the opening of early 
shops ; in the traffic at markets ; in the stir of the 
river-side. There was coming day in the flaring 
lights, with a feebler color in them than they 
would have had at another time ; coming day in 
the increased sharpness of the air, and the ghast- 
ly dying of the night. 

Little Dorrtt, Book I., Chap. 14. 

MORNTNG-Sunshine. 

The white face of the winter day came slug- 
gishly on, veiled in a frosty mist ; and the shad- 




Morning in London. 



316 



MORNING 



317 



MOTHER 



owy ships in the river slowly changed to black 
substances ; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern 
marshes, behind dark masts and yards, seemed 
filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on 
fire. — Our Multml Friend^ Book I., Chap. 6. 

MORNING SXJNSHINE-The. 

A brilliant morning shines on the old city. 
Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beauti- 
ful, with the lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and 
the ricli trees waving in the balmy air. Changes 
of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of 
birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields, — 
or, rather, from one great garden of the whole 
cultivated island in its yielding-time, — penetrate 
into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odor, and 
preach the Resurrection and the Life. The 
cold stone tombs of centuries ago grow warm : 
and flecks of brightness dart into the sternest 
marble corners of the building, fluttering there 
like wings. — Edwin Drood, Chap. 23. 

[The last beautiful thought written by Dickens two 
hours before his death.] 

MORNING— The break of day. 

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the 
bridge listening to the water as it splashed the 
river- walls of the Island of Paris, where the pic- 
turesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone 
bright in the light of the moon, the day came 
coldly, looking like a dead face, out of the sky. 
Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, 
turned pale and died, and for a little while it 
seemed as if Creation were delivered over to 
Death's dominion. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 9. 

.MORNING^— The time for exertion. 

Although, to restless and ardent minds, morn- 
ing may be the fitting season for exertion and 
activity, it is not always at that time that hope is 
strongest or the spirit most sanguine and buoy- 
ant. In trying and doubtful positions, you?th, 
custom, a steady contemplation of the difficulties 
which surround us, and a familiarity with them, 
imperceptibly diminish our apprehensions and 
beget comparative indifference, if not a vague 
and reckless confidence in some relief the means 
or nature of which we care not to foresee. But 
when we come, fresh, upon such things in the 
morning, with that dark and silent gap between 
us and yesterday ; with every link in the brittle 
chain of hope, to rivet afresh ; our hot enthusi- 
asm subdued, and cool, calm reason substituted 
in its stead ; doubt and misgiving revive. As 
the traveller sees farthest by day, and becomes 
aware of rugged mountains and trackless plains 
which the friendly darkness had shrouded from 
his sight and mind together, so, the wayfarer in 
the toilsome path of human life, sees, with each 
returning sun, some new obstacle to surmount, 
some new height to be attained. Distances 
stretch out before him which, last night, were 
scarcely taken into account, and the light which 
gilds all nature with its cheerful beams, seems 
but to shine upon the weary obstacles that yet 
lie strewn between him and the grave. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 53. 

MORNING— The mist of the. 

Day was breaking at Plash water Weir-Mill 
Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull 
light in the east that was not the light of night. 



The moon had gone down, and a mist crept 
along the banks of the river, seen through which 
the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water 
was the ghost of water. This earth looked 
spectral, and so did the pale stars ; while the cold 
eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or color, 
with the eye of the firmament quenched, might 
have been likened to the stare of the dead. 
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 7. 

MORNING- Winter. 

Soon, now, the distant line on the horizon 
brightened, the darkness faded, the sun rose red 
and glorious, and the chimney-stacks and gables 
of the ancient building gleamed in the clear air, 
which turned the smoke and vapor of the city 
into a cloud of gold. The very sundial in his 
shady corner, where the wind \vas used to spin 
with such un-windy constancy, shook off the 
finer particles of snow that had accumulated on 
his dull old face in the night, and looked out at 
the little white wreaths eddying round and 
round him. Doubtless some blind groping of the 
morning made its way down into the forgotten 
crypt so cold and earthy, where the Norman 
arches were half buried in the ground, and stir- 
red the dull sap in the lazy vegetation hanging 
to the walls, and quickened the slow principle 
of life within the little world of wonderful and 
delicate creation which existed there, with some 
faint knowledge that the sun was up. 

Haunted Man, Chap. 3. 

MOTHER— Duty to a. 

" See there, my boy," says George, very gently 
smoothing the mother's hair with his hand, 
" there's a good loving forehead for you ! All 
bright with love of you, my boy. A little 
touched by the sun and weather, through fol- 
lowing your father about and taking care of you, 
but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a 
tree." 

Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its 
wooden material lies, the highest approbation 
and acquiescence. 

" The time will come, my boy," pursues the 
trooper, " when this hair of your mother's will 
be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re- 
crossed with wrinkles — and a fine old lady she'll 
be then. Take care, while you are young, that 
you can think in those days, ' / never whitened a 
hair of her dear head — / never marked a sor- 
rowful line in her face ! ' For of all the many 
things that you can think of when you are a 
man, you had better have that by you, Wool- 
wich ! " — Bleak House, Chap. 34. 

MOTHER— Her pride in her children. 

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins ; but it 
cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, 
for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues 
— faith and hope. — Nicholas Nicklehy, Chap. 43. 

MOTHERS— After marriagre. 

** It's very much to be wished that some 
mothers would leave their daughters alone after 
marriage, and not be so violently affectionate. 
They seem to think the only return that 
can be made them for bringing an unfortunate 
young woman into the world — God bless my 
soul, as if she asked to be brought, or wanted 
to come ! — is full liberty to worry her out of it 
again." — David Copperfield, Chap. 45. 



MOTHER 



818 



MXmEEHEIl 



MOTHER— Love of a. 

" There's such a difference between a father 
and a mother, sir," said Rob, after faltering for 
a moment. " He couldn't hardly believe yet 
that I was going to do better — though I know 
he'd try to ; but a mother — she always believes 
what's good, sir ; or at least I know my mother 
does, God bless her ! " 

Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 22. 

MOTHER— Mrs. Toots a. 

But here is Mr. Toots descending on the Mid- 
shipman, with violent rapidity, and Mr. Toots's 
face is very red as he bursts into the little 
parlor. 

" Captain Gills," says Mr. Toots, " and Mr. 
Sols, I am happy to inform you that Mrs. Toots 
has had an increase to her family." 

" And it does her credit ! " cries the captain. 

" I give you joy, Mr. Toots ! " says old Sol. 

" Thank'ee," chuckles Mr. Toots, " I'm very 
much obliged to you. I knew that you'd be 
glad to hear, and so I came down myself. We're 
positively getting on, you know. There's Flor- 
ence, and Susan, and now here's another little 
stranger." 

" A female stranger? " inquires the captain. 

" Yes, Captain Gills," says Mr. Toots, " and 
I'm glad of it. The oftener we can repeat that 
most extraordinary woman, my opinion is, the 
better ! " 

" Stand by ! " says the Captain, turning to the 
old case-bottle with no throat — for it is evening, 
and the Midshipman's usual moderate provision 
of pipes and glasses is on the board. " Here's 
to her, and may she have ever so many more ! " 
Dombey and Son, Chap. 62. 

MOTHER— A noun of multitude. 

It then appeared that she had used the word, 
not in its legal or business acceptation, when it 
merely expresses an individual, but as a noun 
of multitude, or signifying many ; for Miss Tox 
escorted a plump, rosy-cheeked, wholesome, ap- 
ple-faced young woman, with an infant in her 
arms ; a younger woman not so plump, but ap- 
ple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced 
child in each hand ; another plump and also 
apple-faced boy who walked by himself; and 
finally, a plump and apple-faced man, who car- 
ried in his arms another plump and apple-faced 
boy, whom he stood down on the floor, and ad- 
monished, in a husky whisper, to "kitch hold 
of his brother Johnny." 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 2. 

MOTHERS— The virtues of. 

I think it must be somewhere written that the 
virtues of the mothers shall, occasionally, be 
visited on the children, as well as the sins of the 
fathers. — Bleak House, Chap. 17. 

MOITNTAINS-Water among the. 

Commend me to the beautiful waters among 
these mountains! Though I was not of their 
mind, they being inveterately bent on getting 
down into the level country, and I ardently de- 
siring to linger where I was. What desperate 
leaps they took ! what dark abysses they plunged 
into ! what rocks they wore away ! what echoes 
they invoked ! In one part where I went they 
were pressed into the service of carrying wood 
down, to be burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in 



Italy. But their fierce, savage nature was not 
to be easily constrained, and they fought with 
every limb of the wood ; whirling it round and 
round, stripping its bark away, dashing it against 
pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and 
roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it 
back again from the bank with long, stout poles. 
Alas ! concurrent streams of time and water car- 
ried me down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely 
clear day, to the Lausanne shore of the Lake of 
Geneva, where I stood looking at the bright 
blue water, the flushed white mountains oppo- 
site, and the boats at my feet with their furled 
Mediterranean sails, showing like enormous 
magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is 
now in my hand. 

Uncojnmercial Traveller, Chap. 7. 

MOURNING GARB -The chilling influ- 
ence of, 

Kate might have said that mourning is some- 
times the coldest wear which mortals can as- 
sume ; that it not only chills the breasts of those 
it clothes, but extending its influence to summer 
friends, freezes up their sources of good -will and 
kindness ; and withering all the buds of prom- 
ise they once so liberally put forth, leaves noth- 
ing but bared and rotten hearts exposed. There 
are few who have lost a friend or relative con- 
stituting in life their sole dependence, who have 
not keenly felt this chilling influence of their 
sable garb. She had felt it acutely, and feeling 
it at the moment, could not quite restrain her 
tears. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 17. 

MRS. MACSTINGER AND CAPTAIN 
CUTTLE. 

In the meantime, Mrs. MacStinger, who never 
entered upon any action of importance without 
previously inverting Alexander MacStinger, to 
bring him within the range of a brisk battery of 
slaps, and then sitting him down to cool as the 
reader first beheld him, performed that solemn 
rite, as if on this occasion it were a sacrifice to 
the Furies. 

***** 

" Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle ! " said 
Mrs. MacStinger, making her chin rigid, and 
shaking it in unison with what, but for the 
weakness of her sex, might be described as her 
fist. "Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle, do 
you dare to look me in the face, and not be 
struck down in the berth ! " 

The Captain, who looked anything but dar- 
ing, feebly muttered " Stand by ! " 

***** 

" And he runs awa-a-a-ay ! " cried Mrs. Mac- 
Stinger, with a lengthening out of the last sylla- 
ble that made the unfortunate Captain regard 
himself as the meanest of men ; " and keeps 
away a twelvemonth 1 From a woman ! Sitch 
is his conscience ! He hasn't the courage to 
meet her hi-i-i-igh ; " long syllable again ; " but 
steals away like a felion. Why, if that baby of 
mine," said Mrs. MacStinger, with sudden ra- 
pidity, " was to offer to go and steal away, I'd 
do my duty as a mother by him, till he was cov- 
ered with wales." — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 39. 

MURDERER— Death of Sikes. 

" Damn you ! " cried the desperate ruffian, 
throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd. 
" Do your worst ! I'll cheat you yet ! " 




SiKES's Last Chance. 



318 



MXTRDERKR 



819 



XTJBDilKJfiK 



Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mor- 
tal ears, none could exceed the cr\' of the infuri- 
ated throng. Some shouted to those who were 
nearest to set the house on fire ; others roared 
to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them 
all, none showed such fury as the man on horse- 
back, who, throwing himself out of the saddle, 
and bursting through the crowd as if he were 
parting water, cried, beneath the window, in a 
voice that rose above all others, ** Twenty guin- 
eas to the man who brings a ladder ! " 

The nearest voices took up the cr\', and hun- 
dreds echoed it. Some called for ladders, some 
for sledge-hammers ; some ran with torches to 
and fro as if to seek tliem, and still came back 
and roared again ; some spent their breath in 
impotent curses and execrations ; some pressed 
forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus im- 
peded the progress of those below ; some among 
the boldest attempted to climb up by the water- 
spout and crevices in the wall ; and all waved 
to and {to, in the darkness beneath, like a field 
of com moved by an angr)- wind : and joined 
from time to time in one loud furious roar. 

** The tide," cried the murderer, as he stag- 
gered back into the room, and shut the faces 
out, " the tide was in as I came up. Give me a 
rope, a long rope. They're all in front. I may 
drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that 
way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more 
murders and kill myself." 

The panic-stricken men pointed to where such 
articles were kept ; the murderer, hastily se- 
lecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried 
up to the housetop. 

All the windows in the rear of the house had 
been long ago bricked up, except one small trap 
in the room where the boy was lOcked, and that 
was too small even for the passage of his body. 
But, from this aperture, he had never ceased to 
call on those without to guard the back ; and 
thus when the murderer emerged at last on the 
housetop by the door in the roof, a loud shout 
proclaimed the fact to those in front, who im- 
mediately began to pour round, pressing upon 
each other in one unbroken stream. 

He planted a board which he had carried up 
with him for the purpose, so firmly against the 
door that it must be matter of great difficulty to 
open it from the inside ; and creeping over the 
tiles, looked over the low parapet. 

The water was out, and the ditch a bed of 
mud. 

The crowd had been hushed during these few 
moments, watching his motions and doubtful of 
his purpose, but the instant they perceived it 
and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of 
triumphant execration to which all their pre- 
vious shouting had been whispers. Again and 
again it rose. Those who were at too great a 
distance to know its meaning, took up the 
sound: it o.l.ocd and ret'choed : it seemed as 
though ihc whole city had poured its popula- 

on out to curse him. 

On pressed the people from the front — on, 

n, on, in a strong struggling current of angrj' 

ices, with here and there a glaring torch to 

k1 show them out in all their 

The houses on the opposite 

^...v . . 11,^ W..V ii iiad been entered by the mob ; 

sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out ; there 

were tiers and tiers of faces in every window ; 

and duster upon cluster of people clinging to 



ever}- house-top. Each little bridge (and there 
were three in sight) bent beneath the weighr of 
the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on 
to find some nook or hole from which to vent 
their shouts, and only for an instant see the 
wretch. 

" They have him now," cried a man on the 
nearest bridge. " Hurrah ! " 

The crowd grew light \\-ith uncovered heads ; 
and again the shouts uprose. 

'* I will give fift)' pounds." cried an old gen- 
tleman from the s.ame quarter, '* to the man who 
takes him alive. I will remain here till he comes 
to ask me for it." 

There was another roar. At this moment the 
word was passed among the crowd that the door 
was forced at last, and that he who had first 
called for the ladder had mounted into the 
room. The stream abruptly turned, as this in- 
telligence ran from mouth to mouth ; and the 
people at the A\-indows, seeing those upon the 
bridges pouring back, quirted their stations, and 
running into the street, joined the concourse 
that now thronged pell-mell to the spot they 
had left : each m.an crushing and striving with 
his neighbor, and all panting with impatience 
to get near the door, and look upon the criminal 
as the officers brought him out. The cries and 
shrieks of those who were pressed almost to 
suffocation, or trampled down and trodden un- 
der foot in the confusion, were dreadful ; the 
narrow ways were completely blocked up ; and 
at this time, between the rush of some to regain 
the sp.ace in front of the house, and the unavail- 
ing struggles of others to extricate themselves 
from the mass, the immediate attention w.is dis- 
tracted from the murderer, although the univer- 
sal eagerness for his capture was, if possible, 
increased. 

The m.an had shrunk down, thoroughly quell- 
ed by the ferocity of the crowd, and the impos- 
sibility of escape ; but seeing this sudden 
change with no less rapidity than it had oc- 
curred, he sprang upon his feet, detennined to 
make one last effort for his life by d napping 
into the ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled, 
endeavoring to creep away in the darkness and 
confusion. 

Roused into new strength and energ}-, and 
stimulated by the noise within the house, which 
announced that an entrance had re.ally been 
effected, he set his foot against the slack of 
chimneys, fastened one end of the rope tightly 
and firmly round it, and with the other made a 
strong running noose by the aid of his hands 
and teeth almost in a second. He could let 
himself down by the cord to within a less dis- 
tance of the ground than his own height, and 
had his knife ready in his hand to cut it then 
and drop. 

At the very instant when he b; ' ' !oop 
over his head previous to slippiii. . his 

arm-pits,and when the old genileu; ,. .v luen- 

tioned (who had clung so tight to the i-ailing of 
the bridge as to resist the force of the crowd, 
and retain his position) earnestly warned those 
about him that the man w.\s about to lower him- 
self down — at that very instant the murderer, 
looking behind him on the roof, threw his arms 
above his head, and uttered a yell of terror. 

" The eyes again 1 " he cried, in an unearthly 
screech. 

Staggering as if struck by lightning,^ he lost 



MURDERER 



MURDERER 



his balance and tumbled over the para- 
pet. The noose was at his neck. It ran up 
with his weight, tight as a bow-string, and swift 
as the arrow it speeds. He fell for five-and- 
thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific 
convulsion of the limbs ; and there he hung, 
with the open knife clinched in his stiffening 
hand. 

The old chimney quivered with the shock, 
but stood it bravely. The murderer swung 
lifeless against the wall ; and the boy, thrusting 
aside the dangling body which obscured his 
view, called to the people to come and take 
him out, for God's sake. 

A dog which had lain concealed till now, ran 
backward and forward on the parapet with a 
dismal howl, and, collecting himself for a 
spring, jumped for the dead man's shoulders. 
Missing his aim, he fell into the ditch, turning 
completely over as he went ; and striking his 
head against a stone, dashed out his brains. 

Oliver Twist, Chap, 50. 

MURDERER— Discovered. 

An irrepressible exclamation burst from the 
lips of Jonas, as Lewsome entered at the door. 
It was not a groan, or a shriek, or a word, but 
was wholly unlike any sound that had ever 
fallen on the ears of those who heard it, while 
at the same time it was the most sharp and ter- 
rible expression of what was working in his 
guilty breast, that nature could have invented. 

He had done murder for this ! He had gir- 
dled himself about with perils, agonies of mind, 
innumerable fears, for this ! He had hidden his 
secret in the wood ; pressed and stamped it 
down into the bloody ground ; and here it 
started up when least expected, miles upon miles 
away ; known to many ; proclaiming itself from 
the lips of an old man, who had renewed his 
strength and vigor as by a miracle, to give it 
voice against him ! 

***** 

Jonas knew that they were on his heels, and 
felt that they were resolute to run him to de- 
struction. Inch by inch the ground beneath 
him was sliding from his feet ; faster and faster 
the encircling min contracted and contracted 
towards himself, its wicked centre, until it should 
close in and crush him. 

And now he heard the voice of his accom- 
plice stating to his face, with every circumstance 
of time and place and incident ; and openly 
proclaiming, with no reserve, suppression, pas- 
sion, or concealment, all the truth. The truth, 
which nothing would keep down ; which blood 
would not smother, and earth would not hide ; 
the truth, whose terrible inspiration seemed to 
change dotards into strong men ; and on whose 
avenging wings, one whom he had supposed to 
be at the extremest corner of the earth came 
swooping down upon him. 

***** 

Nadgett foremost. 

Hark ! It came on, roaring like a sea ! Hawk- 
ers burst into the street, crying it up and down ; 
windows were thrown open that the inhabitants 
might hear it ; people stopped to listen in the 
road and on the pavement ; the bells, the same 
bells, began to ring ; tumbling over one another 
in a dance of boisterous joy at the discovery 
(that was the sound they had in his distempered 



thoughts), and making their airy playground 
rock. 

" That is the man," said Nadgett. " By the 
window ! " 

Three others came in, laid hands upon him, 
and secured him. It was so quickly done, that 
he had not lost sight of the informer's face for 
an instant when his wrists were manacled to- 
gether. 

" Murder," said Nadgett, looking round 
on the astonished group. " Let no one inter- 
fere." 

The sounding street repeated Murder ; bar- 
barous and dreadful Murder ; Murder, Murder, 
Murder. Rolling on from house to house, and 
echoing from stone to stone, until the voices died 
away into the distant hum, which seemed to 
mutter the same word ! 

They all stood silent ; listening, and gazing in 
each other's faces, as the noise passed on. 

***** 

" How do you know much ? " 

" I have not been watching him so long for 
nothing," returned Nadgett. " I never watched 
a man so close as I have watched him." 

Another of the phantom forms of this terrific 
Truth ! Another of the many shapes in which 
it started up about him, out of vacancy. This 
man, of all men in the world, a spy upon him ; 
this man, changing his identity : casting off his 
shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and 
springing up into a watchful enemy ! The dead 
man might have come out of his grave, and not 
confounded and appalled him more. 

The game was up. The race was at an end ; 
the rope was woven for his neck. If by a mira- 
cle, he could escape from this strait, he had but 
to turn his face another way, no matter where, 
and there would rise some new avenger, front 
to front with him ; some infant in an hour grown 
old, or old man in an hour grown young, or 
blind man with his sight restored, or deaf man 
with his hearing given him. There was no 
chance. He sank down in a heap against the 
wall, and never hoped again from that moment. 

***** 

He whined, and cried, and cursed, and en- 
treated them, and struggled, and submitted, in 
the same breath, and had no power to stand. 
They got him away and into the coach, where 
they put him on a seat ; but he soon fell moan- 
ing down among the straw at the bottom, and 
lay there. 

The two men were with him, Slyme being on 
the box with the driver ; and they let him lie. 
Happening to pass a fruiterer's on their way ; 
the door of which was open, though the shop 
was by this time shut ; one of them remarked 
how faint the peaches smelt. 

The other assented at the moment, but pres- 
ently stooped down in quick alarm, and looked 
at the prisoner. 

" Stop the coach ! He has poisoned him- 
self ! The smell comes from this bottle in his 
hand ! " 

The hand had shut upon it tight. With that 
rigidity of grasp with which no living man, in 
the full strength and energy of life, can clutch 
a prize he has won. 

They dragged him out, into the dark street \ 
but jury, judge, and hangman, could have done 
no more, and could do nothing now. Dead, 
dead, dead ! — Martin Chiizzlezuit, Chap. 51. 



MUBDERER 



821 



MURDERER 



MURDERER— His fascination. 

He was aware of their presence, and of the 
rage, discomfiture, and despair they brought 
along with them ; but he thought — of his own 
controlling power and direction he thought— of 
the one dread question only. When they would 
find the body in the wood. 

He tried — he never left oflf trying — not to 
forget it was there, for that was impossible, but 
to forget to weary himself by drawing vivid pic- 
tures of it in his fancy : by going softly about it 
and about it among the leaves, approaching it 
nearer and nearer through a gap in the boughs, 
and startling the very flies that were thickly 
sprinkled all over it, like heaps of dried cur- 
rants. His mind was fixed and fastened on the 
discovery, for intelligence of which he listened 
intently to every cry and shout ; listened when 
any one came in, or went out ; watched from 
the window the people who passed up and down 
the street ; mistrusted his own looks and words. 
And the more his thoughts were set upon the 
discovery, the stronger was the fascination which 
attracted them to the thing itself, lying alone in 
the wood. He was for ever showing and present- 
ing it, as it were, to every creature whom he 
saw. " Look here ! Do you know of this ? Is 
it found ? Do you suspect me ? " If he had 
been condemned to bear the body in his arms, 
and lay it down for recognition at the feet of 
every one he met, it could not have been more 
constantly with him, or a cause of more monoto- 
nous and dismal occupation than it was in this 
state of his mind. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap, 51. 

MURDERER— His fears. 

The passage-way was empty when his mur- 
derer's face looked into it. He stole on, to the 
door, on tiptoe, as if he dreaded to disturb his 
own imaginary rest. 

He listened. Not a sound. As he turned 
the key with a trembling hand, and pushed the 
door softly open with his knee, a monstrous 
fear beset his mind. 

What if the murdered man were there before 
him ! 

He cast a fearful glance all round. But there 
was nothing there. 

He went in, locked the door, drew the key 
through and through the dust and damp in the 
fire-place to sully it again, and hung it up as of 
old. He took off his disguise, tied it up in a 
bundle ready for carrying away and sinking in 
the river before night, and locked it up in a 
cupboard. These precautions taken, he un- 
dressed, and went to bed. 

The raging thirst ; the fire that burnt within 
him as he lay beneath the clothes ; the aug- 
mented horror of the room, when they shut it 
out from his view ; the agony of listening, in 
which he paid enforced regard to every sound, 
and thought the most unlikely one the prelude 
to that knocking which should bring the news ; 
the starts with which he left his couch, and, 
looking in the glass, imagined that his deed 
was broadly written in his face ; and lying down 
and burying himself once more beneath the 
blankets, heard his own heart beating Murder, 
Murder, Murder, in the bed ; what words can 
paint tremendous truths like these ! 

* « * » 4» 

The sun was welcome to him. There were 



life and motion, and a world astir, to divide 
the attention of Day. It was the eye of Night ; 
of wakeful, watchful, silent, and attentive Night, 
with so much leisure for the observation of his 
wicked thoughts, that he dreaded most. There 
is no glare in the night. Even Glory shows to 
small advantage in the night, upon a crowded 
battle-field. How then shows Glory's blood re- 
lation, bastard Murder ! 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 47. 

MURDERER— His purpose. 

Did no men passing through the dim streets 
shrink without knowing why, when he came 
stealing up behind them ? As he glided on, had 
no child in its sleep an indistinct perception of 
a guilty shadow falling on its bed, that troubled 
its innocent rest ? Did no dog howl, and strive 
to break its rattling chain, that it might tear 
him ; no burrowing rat, scenting the work he had 
in hand, essay to gnaw a passage after him, that 
it might hold a greedy revel at the feast of his 
providing? When he looked back, across his 
shoulder, was it to see if his quick footsteps still 
fell dry upon the dusty pavement, or were already 
moist and clogged with the red mire that stained 
the naked feet of Cain ? 

% * * * * 

It is a common fancy that nature seems to 
sleep by night. It is a false fancy, as who should 
know better than he ? 

The fishes slumbered in the cold, bright glis- 
tening streams and rivers, perhaps ; and the birds 
roosted on the branches of the trees ; and in 
their stalls and pastures beasts were quiet ; and 
human creatures slept. But what of that, when 
the solemn night was watching, when it never 
winked, when its darkness watched no less than 
its light ! The stately trees, the moon and shin- 
ing stars, the softly-stirring wind, the over- shad- 
owed lane, the broad, bright country-side, they 
all kept watch. There was not a blade of grow- 
ing grass or corn, but watched ; and the quieter 
it was, the more intent and fixed its watch upon 
him seemed to be. 

And yet he slept. Riding on among those 

sentinels of God, he slept, and did not change 

the purpose of his journey. If he forgot it in 

his troubled dreams, it came up steadily, and 

woke him. But it never woke him to remorse, 

or to abandonment of his design. 

***** 

If there be fluids, as we know there are, 
which, conscious of a coming wind, or rain, or 
frost, will shrink and strive to hide themselves 
in their glass arteries ; may not that subtle liquor 
of the blood perceive by properties within itself, 
that hands are raised to waste and spill it ; and 
in the veins of men run cold and dull as his did, 
in that hour? 

So cold, although the air was warm ; so dull, 
although the sky was bright : that he rose up, 
shivering, from his seat, and hastily resumed his 
walk. He checked himself as hastily : undecid- 
ed whether to pursue the footpath which was 
lonely and retired, or to go back by the road. 

He took the footpath. 

The glory of the departing sun was on his face. 
The music of the birds was in his ears. Sweet 
wild-flowers bloomed about him. Thatched 
roofs of poor men's homes were in the distance ; 
and an old gray spire, surmounted by a Cross, 
rose up between him and the coming night. 



MURDERER Bi 

He had never read the lesson which these 
things conveyed ; he had evermocked and turned 
away from it ; but, before going down into a hol- 
low place, he looked round, once, upon the 
evening prospect, sorrowfully. Then he went 
down, down, down, into the dell. 

* Hi: 4: He * 

The last rays of the sun were shining in, 
jislant, making a path of golden light along the 
stems and branches in its range, which, even as 
he looked, began to die away, yielding gently to 
the twilight that came creeping on. It was so 
very quiet that the soft and stealthy moss about 
the trunks of some old trees, seemed to have 
grown out of the silence, and. to be its proper 
offspring. Those other trees which were subdued 
by blasts of wind in winter-time, had not quite 
tumbled down, but being caught by others, lay 
all bare and scathed across their leafy arms, as 
if unwilling to disturb the general repose by 
the crash of their fall. Vistas of silence opened 
everywhere, into the heart and innermost recesses 
of the wood ; beginning with the likeness of an 
aisle, a cloister, or a ruin open to the sky ; then 
tangling off into a deep, green, rustling mystery, 
through which gnarled trunks, and twisted 
boughs, and ivy-covered stems, and trembling 
leaves, and bark-stripped bodies of old trees 
stretched out at length, were faintly seen in 
beautiful confusion. 

***** 

What had he left within the wood, that he 
sprang out of it, as if it were a hell ! 

The body of a murdered man. In one thick 
solitary spot, it lay among the last year's leaves 
of oak and beech, just as it had fallen headlong 
down. Sopping and soaking in among the leaves 
that formed its pillow ; oozing down into the 
boggy ground, as if to cover itself from human 
sight ; forcing its way between and through the 
curling leaves, as if those senseless things re- 
jected and forswore it, and were coiled up in 
abhorrence, went a dark, dark stain that dyed 
the whole summer night from earth to heaven. 
Martin Chuzzlezvit, Chap. 47. 

MURDERER— The phantom of the. 

He went on doggedly ; but as he left the town 
behind him, and plunged into the solitude and 
darkness of the road, he felt a dread and awe 
creeping upon him which shook him to the core. 
Every object before him, substance or shadow, 
still or moving, took the semblance of some 
fearful thing ; but these fears were nothing com- 
pared to the sense that haunted him of that morn- 
ing's ghastly figure following at his heels. He 
could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the 
smallest item of the outline, and note how stiff 
and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He could 
hear its garments rustling in the leaves ; and 
every breath of wind came laden with that last 
low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If he 
ran, it followed — not running too ; that would 
have been a relief; but like a corpse endowed 
with the mere machinery of life, and borne on 
one slow melancholy wind that never rose or 
fell. 

At times heiturned, with desperate determina- 
tion, resdlved to beat this phantom off, though it 
should look him dead ; but the hair rose on his 
head, and his blood stood still : for it had turned 
with him and was behind him then. He had kept 
it before him that morning, but it was behind 



MURDERER 



4 



him now — always. He leaned his back against a 
bank, and felt that it stood above him, visibly out 
against the cold night-sky. He threw himself 
upon the road — on his back upon the road. At ■ 
his head it stood, silent, erect, and still — a living ■ 
gravestone, with its epitaph in blood. ■ 

Let no man talk of murderers escaping jus- 
tice, and hint that Providence must sleep. There 
were twenty-score of violent deaths in one long 
minute of that agony of fear. 

There was a shed in a field he passed, that 
offered a shelter for the night. Before the door 
were three tall poplar-trees, which made it very 
dark within ; and the wind moaned through 
them with a dismal wail. He could not walk on 
till daylight came again ; and here he stretched 
himself close to the wall — to undergo new tor- 
ture. 

For now, a vision came before him, as con 
stant and more terrible than that from which ht 
had escaped. Those widely staring eyes, so 
lustreless and so glassy, that he had better borne 
to see them than think upon them, appeared in 
the midst of the darkness ; light in themselves, 
but giving light to nothing. There were but two, 
but they were everywhere. If he shut out the 
sight, there came the room with every well- 
known object — some, indeed, that he would 
have forgotten, if he had gone over its contents 
from memory — each in its accustomed place. 
The body was in its place, and its eyes were as 
he saw them when he stole away. He got up, 
and rushed into the field without. The figure 
was behind him. He re-entered the shed, and 
shrank down once more. The eyes were there, 
before he had lain himself along. 

And here he remained in such terror as none 
but he can know, trembling in every limb, and 
the cold sweat starting from every pore, when 
suddenly there arose upon the night-wind the 
noise of distant shouting, and the roar of voices 
mingled in alarm and wonder. Any sound of 
men in that lonely place, even though it con- 
veyed a real cause of alarm, was something to 
him. He regained his strength and energy at 
the prospect of personal danger ; and, springing 
to his feet, rushed into the open air. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 48. 

MURDERER— The philosophy of the. 

The miserable man whom he had released for 
the time, but not for long, went on towards Lon- 
don. Bradley was suspicious of every sound he 
heard, and of every face he saw, but was under 
a spell which very commonly falls upon the shed- 
der of blood, and had no suspicion of the real 
danger that lurked in his life, and would have it 
yet. Riderhood was much in his thoughts — 
had never been out of his thoughts since the 
night-adventure of their first meeting ; but 
Riderhood occupied a very different place there, 
from the place of pursuer ; and Bradley had 
been at the pains of devising so many means of 
fitting that place to him, and of wedging him 
into it, that his mind could not compass the 
possibility of his occupying any other. Ar.d 
this is another spell against which the shedder 
of blood forever strives in vain. There are fifty 
doors by which discovery may enter. With in- 
finite pains and cunning, he double locks and 
bars forty-nine of them, and cannot see the 
fiftieth standing wide open. 

Now, too, was he cursed with a state of mind 



I 



MUSIC 



MUSIC 



more wearing and more wearisome than remorse. 
He had no remorse, but the evil-doer who can 
hold that avenger at bay, cannot escape the 
slower torture of incessantly doing the evil 
deed again and doing it more efficiently. In 
the defensive declarations and pretended con- 
fessions of murderers, the pursuing shadow of 
this torture may be traced through every lie they 
tell. If I had done it as alleged, is it conceiv- 
able that I would have made this and this 
mistake? If I had done it as alleged, should 
I have left that unguarded place which that 
false and wicked witness against me so in- 
famously deposed to ? The state of that wretch 
who continually finds the weak spots in his 
own crime, and strives to strengthen them when 
it is unchangeable, is a state that aggravates 
the offence by doing the deed a thousand times 
instead of once ; but it is a state, too, that 
tauntingly visits the offence upon a sullen, un- 
repentant nature with its heaviest punishment 
every time. 

Bradley toiled on, chained heavily to the idea 
of his hatred and his vengeance, and thinking 
how he might have satiated both in many bet- 
ter ways than the way he had taken. The in- 
strument might have been better, the spot and 
the hour might have been better chosen. To 
batter a man down from behind in the dark, on 
the brink of a river, was well enough, but he 
ought to have been instantly disabled, whereas 
he had turned and seized his assailant ; and so, 
to end it before chance-help came, and to be 
rid of him, he had been hurriedly thrown back- 
ward into the river before the life was fully 
beaten out of him. Now, if it could be done 
again, it must not be so done. Supposing his 
head had been held down under water for a 
while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. 
Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had 
been strangled. Suppose this way, that way, 
the other way. Suppose anything but getting 
unchained from the one idea, for that was in- 
exorably impossible. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 7. 

MUSIC— A melodious snore. 

He had not what may be called a fine ear for 
music, but he knew when it had a tranquillizing 
influence on his soul ; and that was the case 
now, for it sounded to him like a melodious 
snore. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 31. 

MUSIC- A serenade at Todgers'. 

The young ladies were at first so much excit- 
ed by the news, that they vowed they couldn't 
think of going to bed until the serenade was 
over. But half an hour of cool waiting so altered 
their opinion that they not only went to bed, but 
fell asleep ; and were, moreover, not ecstatical- 
ly charmed to be awakened some time afterward 
by certain dulcet strains breaking in upon the 
silent watches of the night. 

It was very affecting, very. Nothing more 
dismal could have been desired by the most fas- 
tidious taste. The gentleman of a vocal turn 
was head mute, or chief mourner ; Jinkins took 
the bass ; and the rest took anything they could 
get. The youngest gentleman blew his melan- 
choly into a flute. He didn't blow much out 
of it, but that was all the better. If the two 
Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished 
by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade 



had been in honor of their ashes, it would have 
been impossible to surpass the unutterable de- 
spair expressed in that one chorus, " Go where 
glory waits thee ! " It was a requiem, a dirge, 
a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of 
everything that is sorrowful and hideous in 
sound. The flute of the youngest gentleman 
was wild and fitful. It came and went in gusts 
like the wind. For a long time together he 
seemed to have left off, and when it was quite 
settled by Mrs. Todgers, and the young ladies, 
that, overcome by his feelings, he had retired in 
tears, he unexpectedly turned up again at the 
very top of the tune, gasping for breath. He 
was a tremendous performer. There was no 
knowing where to have him : and exactly when 
you thought he was doing nothing at all, then 
was he doing the very thing that ought to 
astonish you most. 

There were several of these concerted pieces ; 
perhaps two or three too many, though that, as 
Mrs. Todgers said, was a fault on the right side. 
But even then, even at that solemn moment, 
when the thrilling sounds may be presumed to 
have penetrated into the very depths of his na- 
ture, if he had any depths, Jinkins couldn't 
leave the youngest gentleman alone. He asked 
him distinctly, before the second song began — 
as a personal favor too, mark the villain in that 
— not to play. Yes ; he said so ; not to play. 
The breathing of the youngest gentleman was 
heard through the key-hole of the door. He 
didnt play. What vent was a flute for the pas- 
sions swelling up within his breast ? A trom- 
bone would have been a world too mild. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 11. 

MUSIC— Vocal— Of Sampson Brass. 

Sampson Brass was no sooner left alone than 
he began to write with extreme cheerfulness and 
assiduity ; humming as he did so, in a voice 
that was anything but musical, certain vocal 
snatches which appeared to have reference to 
the union between Church and State, inasmuch 
as they were compounded of the Evening Hymn 
and God save the King. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 56. 

MUSIC— The sympathy of. 

The violoncello lying on the sofa between the 
two chairs, he took it up, without putting away 
the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and 
slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for 
a long, long time. The expression he commu- 
nicated to the instrument at first, though mon- 
strously pathetic and bland, was nothing Lo the 
expression he communicated to his own face, 
and bestowed upon the empty chair ; which was 
so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse 
to Captain Cuttle's remedy more than once, and 
to rub his face with his sleeve. By degrees, 
however, the violoncello, in unison with his own 
frame of mind, glided melodiously into the Har 
monious Blacksmith, which he played over and 
over again, until his ruddy and serene face 
gleamed like true metal on the anvil of a veri- 
table blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello and 
the empty chair were the companions of his 
bachelorhood until nearly midnight ; and when 
he took his supper, the violoncello, set up on 
end in the sofa corner, big with the latent har- 
mony of a whole family full of harmonious 
blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty ch.-nr 



MUSIC 



324 



MYSTEBY 



out of its crooked eyes, with unutterable intel- 
ligence. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 58. 

A certain skillful action of his fingers as he 
hummed some bars, and beat time on the seat 
beside him, seemed to denote the musician ; and 
the extraordinary satisfaction he derived from 
humming something very slow and long, which 
had no recognizable tune, seemed to denote 
that he was a scientific one. 

The gentleman was still twirling a theme, 
which seemed to go round, and round, and 
round, and in, and in, and in, and to involve 
itself like a corkscrew twirled upon a table, 
without getting any nearer to anything. 

Dombey 6^ Soriy Chap, 33. 

MUSIC— An Overture. 

The overture, in fact, was not unlike a race 
between the different instruments ; the piano 
came in first by several bars, and the violoncello 
next, quite distancing the poor flute ; for the 
deaf gentleman too-todd away, quite unconscious 
that he was at all wrong, until apprised, by the 
applause of the audience, that the overture was 
concluded. — Tales, Chap. 9. 

MUSIC— Mrs. Skewton's definition of. 

Undeveloped recollections of a previous state 
of existence. — Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 21. 

MUSIC— Its associations. 

For all that the child observed, and felt, and 
thought, that night — the present and the absent ; 
what was then and what had been — were blend- 
ed like the colors in the rainbow, or in the 
plumage of rich birds when the sun is shining 
on them, or in the softening sky when the same 
sun is setting. The many things be had had to 
think of lately, passed before him in the music ; 
not as claiming his attention over again, or as 
likely ever more to occupy it, but as peacefully 
disposed of and gone. A solitary window, 
gazed through years ago, looked out upon an 
ocean, miles and miles away ; upon its waters, 
fancies, busy with him only yesterday, were 
hushed and lulled to rest like broken waves. 
The same mysterious murmur he had wondered 
at, when lying on his couch upon the beach, he 
thought he still heard sounding through his 
sister's song, and through the hum of voices, 
and the tread of feet, and having some part in 
the faces flitting by, and even in the heavy gen- 
tleness of Mr. Toots, who frequently came up 
to shake him by the hand. Through the uni- 
versal kindness he still thought he heard it, 
speaking to him ; and even his old-fashioned 
reputation seemed to be allied to it, he knew 
not how. Thus little Paul sat musing, listening, 
looking on, and dreaming ; and was very 
happy. 

***** 

When they all drew a little away, that Paul 
might see her ; and when he saw her sitting 
there alone, so young, and good, and beautiful, 
and kind to him ; and heard her thrilling voice, 
so natural and sweet, and such a golden link 
between him and all his life's love and happi- 
ness, rising out of the silence ; he turned his 
face away and hid his tears. Not, as he told 
them when they spoke to him, not that the mu- 
sic was too plaintive or too sorrowful, but it was 
so dear to him. — Dombey 6^ S071. Chap. 14. 



It was not very long before, in the midst of 
the dismal house so wide and dreary, her low 
voice in the twilight, slowly and stopping some- 
times, touched the old air to which he had so 
often listened, with his drooping head upon her 
arm. And after that, and when it was quite 
dark, a little strain of music trembled in the 
room : so softly played and sung, that it was 
more like the mournful recollection of what she 
had done at his request on that last night, than 
the reality repeated. But it was repeated, 
often — very often, in the shadowy solitude ; and 
broken murmurs of the strain still trembled on 
the keys, when the sweet voice was hushed in 
tears. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 18. 

MUSIC— The power of. 

At such a time, the Christmas music he had 
heard before, began to play. He listened to it 
at first, as he had listened in the churchyard ; 
but presently — it playing still, and being borne 
towards him on the night air, in a low, sweet, 
melancholy strain — he rose, and stood stretching 
his hands about him, as if there were some 
friend approaching within his reach, on whom 
his desolate touch might rest, yet do no harm. 
As he did this, his face became less fixed and 
wondering ; a gentle trembling came upon him ; 
and at last his eyes filled with tears, and he put 
his hands before them, and bowed down his 
head. 

His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, 
had not come back to him ; he knew that it was 
not restored ; he had no passing belief or hope 
that it was. But some dumb stir within him 
made him capable, again, of being moved by 
what was hidden, afar off, in the music. If it 
were only that it told him sorrowfully the value 
of what he had lost, he thanked Heaven for 
it with a fervent gratitude. 

Haunted Man, Chap. 3. 

MYSTERY-An enjoyable. 

For a little knot of smokers and solemn gos- 
sips, who had seldom any new topics of discus- 
sion, this was a perfect Godsend. Here was a 
good, dark-looking mystery progressing under 
that very roof — brought home to the fireside as 
it were, and enjoyable without the smallest pains 
or trouble. It is extraordinary what a zest and 
relish it gave to the drink, and how it heightened 
the flavor of the tobacco. Every man smoked 
his pipe with a face of grave and serious delight, 
and looked at his neighbor with a sort of quiet 
congratulation. Nay, it was felt to be such a 
holiday and special night, that, on the motion 
of little Solomon Daisy, every man (including 
John himself) put down his sixpence for a can 
of flip, which grateful beverage was brewed with 
all despatch, and set down in the midst of them 
on the brick floor ; both that it might simmer 
and stew before the fire, and that its fragrant 
steam, rising up among them and mixing with 
the wreaths of vapor from their pipes, might 
shroud them in a delicious atmosphere of their 
own, and shut out all the world. The very fur- 
niture of the room seemed to mellow and deepen 
in its tone : the ceiling and walls looked blacker 
and more highly polished, the curtains of a rud- 
dier red ; the fire burnt clear and high, and the 
crickets in the hearth-stone chirped with a mon^ 
than wonted satisfaction. 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 11. 



MYSTERY 



825 



NAME 



MYSTERY— A respectable. 

Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgment 
of my good opinion, and I felt about eight years 
old. He touched it once more, wishing us a 
good journey ; and we left him standing on the 
pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyra- 
mid in Egypt. — David Copperjield, Chap. 23. 

MYSTERY— Captain Cuttle's. 

The Captain made signals with his hook, 
warning him to avoid the subject. Not that 
the Captain's signals were calculated to have 
proved very comprehensible, however attentively 
observed ; for, like those Chinese sages who are 
said in their conferences to write certain learned 
words in the air that are wholly impossible of 
pronunciation, the Captain made such waves 
and flourishes as nobody without a previous 
knowledge of his mystery would have been at 
all likely to understand. 

Dombey 6r» Son^ Chap. 17. 

MYSTERY-The charm of. 

To surround anything, however monstrous or 
ridiculous, with an air of mystery, is to invest it 
with a secret charm, and power of attraction, 
which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, 
false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false 
prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceed- 
ings in mystery, have always addressed them- 
selves at an immense advantage to the popular 
credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted 
to that resource in gaining and keeping for a 
time the upper hand of Truth and Common 
Sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole 
' catalogue of imposture. Curiosity is, and has 
been from the creation of the world, a master- 
passion. To awaken it, to gratify it by slight 
degrees, and yet leave something always in sus- 
pense, is to establish the surest hold that can be 
had, in wrong, on the unthinking portion of 
mankind. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap, 37. 

MYSTERY— The power of. 

If a man had stood on London Bridge, call- 
ing till he was hoarse, upon the passers-by, to 
join with Lord George Gordon, although for an 
object which no man understood, and which in 
that veiy incident had a charm of its own, — the 
probability is, that he might have influenced a 
score of people in a month. If all zealous 
Protestants had been publicly urged to join an 
association for the avowed purpose of singing a 
hymn or two occasionally, and hearing some in- 
different speeches made, and ultimately of peti- 
tioning Parliament not to pass an act abolishing 
the penal laws against Roman Catholic priests, 
the penalty of perpetual imprisonment de- 
nounced against those who educated children in 
that persuasion, and the disqualification of all 
members of the Romish church to inherit real 
property in the United Kingdom by right of 
purchase or descent, — matters so far removed 
from the business and bosoms of the mass, 
might, perhaps, have called together a hundred 
people. But when vague rumors got abroad, 
that in this Protestant association a secret power 
was mustering against the government for un- 
defined and mighty purposes ; when the air was 
filled with whispers of a confederacy among the 
Popish powers to degrade and enslave England, 
establish an inquisition in London, and turn the 
pens of Smithfield market into stakes and cal- 



drons ; when terrors and alarms which no man 
understood were perpetually broached, both in 
and out of Parliament, by one enthusiast who 
did not understand himself; and bygone bugbears 
which had lain quietly in their graves for cen- 
turies, were raised again to haunt the ignorant 
and credulous ; when all this was done, as it 
were, in the dark, and secret invitations to join 
the Great Protestant Association in defence of 
religion, life, and liberty, were dropped in the 
public ways, thrust under the house-doors, 
tossed in at windows, and pressed into the hands 
of those who trod the streets by night ; when 
they glared from every wall, and shone on every 
post and pillar, so that stocks and stones ap- 
peared infected with the common fear, urging 
all men to join together blindfold in resistance 
of they knew not what, they knew not why : — 
then the mania spread indeed, and the body, 
still increasing every day, grew forty thousand 
strong. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 37. 



]sr 



NAME— A sign. 

They left me, during this time, with a very 
nice man, with a very large head of red hair, 
and a very small shiny hat upon it, who had got 
a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat on, with " Sky- 
lark" in capital letters across the chest. I 
thought it was his name ; and that as he lived 
on board ship, and hadn't a street-door to put 
his name on, he put it there instead ; but when 
I called him Mr. Skylark, he said it meant the 
vessel. — David Copper/ield, Chap. 2. 

NAME— An unchristian. 

" Peggotty ! " repeated Miss Betsey, with 
some indignation. " Do you mean to say, child, 
that any human being has gone into a Christian 
church, and got herself named Peggotty ? " 

David Copperjieldf Chap. i. 

NAME— Betsey Trotwood's objection to a. 

" You remember my aunt, Peggotty ? " said I. 

" For the love of goodness, child," exclaimed 
my aunt, " don't call the woman by that South 
Sea Island name ! If she married and got rid of 
it, which was the best thing she could do, why 
don't you give her the benefit of the change ? 
What's your name now, — P ? " said my aunt, 
as a compromise for the obnoxious appellation. 

" Barkis, ma'am," said Peggotty, with a curt- 
sey. 

" Well ! That's human," said my aunt. " It 
sounds less as if you wanted a Missionary. How 
d'ye do, Barkis? I hope you'ie well?" 

David Copper/ield, Chap. 34. 

NAME— A morsel of grammar. 

" Oh, what an agreeable man he is ! " cried 
Peggotty, holding up her hands. " Then there's 
the sea ; and the boats and ships ; and the 
fishermen ; and the beach ; and Am to play 
with " 

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned 
in my first chapter ; but she spoke of him as a 
morsel of English Grammar. 

David Copper Jield, Chap. 2. 



XASIE 



NAVY STARD 



NAME— An undesirable. 

"Babley— Mr. Richard Babley— that's the 
gentleman's true name." 

'• But don't you call him by it, whatever you 
do. He can't bear his name. That's a pecu- 
liarity of his. Though I don't know that it's 
much of a peculiarity, either ; for he has been 
ill-used enough, by some that bear it, to have a 
mortal antipathy for it. Heaven knows. Mr. 
Dick is his name here, and everywhere else, 
now — if he ever went anywhere else, which he 
don't. So take care, child, you don't call him 
anything but Mr. Dick." 

David Copperfield, Chap. 14. 

NAME-A good. 

" ' Swidge ' is the appellation by which they 
speak of Mrs, William in general, among them- 
selves, I'm told ; but that's what I say, sir. Bet- 
ter be called ever so far out of your name, if it's 
done in real liking, than have it made ever so 
much of, and not cared about ! What's a name 
for ? To know a person by. If Mrs, William 
is known by something better than her name 
— I allude to Mrs, William's qualities and dis- 
position — never mind her name, though it is 
Swidger, by rights," — Haunted Man, CJiap. i. 

NAPOLEONIC FACES-In art. 

As usually happens in almost any collection 
of paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where there 
are many heads, there is, in one of them, a strik- 
ing accidental likeness of Napoleon. At one 
time, I used to please my fancy with the specu- 
lation whether these old painters, at their work, 
had a foreboding knowledge of the man who 
would one day arise to wreak such destruction 
upon art ; whose soldiers would make targets of 
great pictures, and stable their horses among 
triumphs of architecture. But the same Corsi- 
can face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at 
this day, that a more commonplace solution of 
the coincidence is unavoidable. 

Pictures from Italy. 

NATURE— Not responsible for human er- 
rors. 

' Men fall into the very common mistake, of 
charging upon Nature matters with which she has 
not the smallest connection, and for which she 
is in no way responsible. Men talk of nature 
as an abstract thing, and lose sight of what is 
natural while they do so. Here is a poor lad 
who has never felt a parent's care, who has 
scarcely known anything all his life but suffering 
and sorrow, presented to a man who he is told 
is his father, and whose first act is to signify his 
intention of putting an end to his short term of 
happiness, of consigning him to his old fate, and 
taking him from the only friend he has ever had 
— which is yourself. If Nature, in such a case, 
put into that lad's breast but one secret prompt- 
ing which urged him towards his father and 
away from you, she would be a liar and an 
idiot." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 45. 

NATURE— Mr. Squeers' opinion of. 

" It only shows what Natur is, sir," said Mr. 
Squeers. " She's a rum 'un, is Natur." 

" She is a holy thing, sir," remarked Snawley, 

'* I believe you," added Mr, Squeers, with a 

moral sigh, " I should like to know how we 

should ever get on without her, Natur," said Mr, 



Squeers, solemnly, " is more easier conceived 
than described. Oh what a blessed thing, sir, 
to be in a state of natur I " 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 45. 

NATURE-The chUd's love of. 

So, he played with that child, the whole day 
long, and they were very merry. The sky was 
so blue, the sun was so bright, the water was so 
sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers 
were so lovely, and they heard such singing- 
birds and saw so many butterflies, that every- 
thing was beautiful. This was in fine weather. 
When it rained, they loved to watch the falling 
drops, and to smell the fresh scents. When it 
blew, it was delightful to listen to the wind, and 
fancy what it said, as it came rushing from its 
home — where was that, they wondered ! — whist- 
ling and howling, driving the clouds before it, 
bending .the trees, rumbling in the chimneys, 
shaking the house, and making the sea roar in 
fury. But when it snowed, that was best of all ; 
for they liked nothing so well as to look up at 
the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down 
from the breasts of millions of white birds ; and 
to see how smooth and deep the drift was ; and 
to listen to the hush upon the paths and roads. 
The Child's Story. Reprinted Pieces. 

NAVY YARD— Ship-building: in a. 

My good opinion of the Yard's retiring char- 
acter was not dashed by nearer approach. It re- 
sounded with the noise of hammers beating upon 
iron ; and the great sheds or slips under which 
the mighty men-of-war are built loomed business- 
like when contemplated from the opposite side 
of the river. For all that, however, the Yard 
made no display, but kept itself snug under hill- 
sides of cornfields, hop gardens, and orchards , 
its great chimneys smoking with a quiet— almost 
a lazy — air, like giants smoking tobacco ; and the 
great Shears moored oft it, looking meekly and 
inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe 
of the machinery creation. The store of cannon 
on the neighboring gun-wharf had an innocent, 
toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated 
sentry on duty over them was a mere toy figure, 
with a clock-work movement. As the hot sun- 
light sparkled on him, he might have passed for 
the identical little man who had the little gun, 
and whose bullets they were made of lead, lead, 
lead. 

Crossing the river, and landing at the Stairs, 
where a drift of chips and weed had been trying 
to land before me, and had not succeeded, but had 
got into a corner instead, I found the very street- 
posts to be cannon, and the architectural orna- 
ments to be shells. And so I came to the Yard, 
which was shut up tight and strong with great 
folded gates, like an enormous patent safe. These 
gates devouring me, 1 became digested into the 
Yard ; and it had, at first, a clean-swept, holiday 
air, as if it had given over work till next war- 
time. Though, indeed, a quantity of hemp for 
rope was tumbling out of storehouses, even there, 
which would hardly be lying like so much hay on 
the white stones if the Yard was as placid as ii 
pretended. 

Ding, Clash, Dong, Bang, Boom, Rattle, Clash, 
B.A.NG, Clink, Bang, Dong, Bang, Clatter, Bang, 
Bang, BANG ! What on earth is this ! This is, 
or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armor-plated 
ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her 



J 



NAVY-YARD 



827 



NAVY-YARD 



now : twelve hundred men working on stages 
over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, 
under her keel, between her decks, down in her 
hold, within her and without, crawling and creep- 
ing into the finest curves of her lines, wherever 
it is possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred 
hammerers, measurers, calkers, armorers, forgers, 
smiths, ship-wrights ; twelve hundred dingers, 
dashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers, 
bangers, bangers ! Yet all this stupendous uproar 
around the rising Achilles is as nothing to the 
reverberations with which the perfected Achilles 
shall resound upon the dreadful day when the 
full work is in hand for which this is but note of 
preparation, — the day when the scuppers that are 
now fitting, like great, dry, thirsty conduit-pipes, 
shall run red. All these busy figures between 
decks, dimly seen bending at their work in smoke 
and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall 
do work here of another kind in smoke and fire 
that day. These steam-worked engines along- 
side, helping the ship by travelling to and fro, 
and wafting tons of iron plates about, as though 
they were so many leaves of trees, would be rent 
limb from limb if they stood by her for a minute 
then. To think that this Achilles, monstrous 
compound of iron tank and oaken chest, can ever 
swim or roll ! To think that any force of wind 
and wave could ever break her ! To think that 
wherever I see a glowing red-hot iron point thrust 
out of her side from within, — as I do now, there, 
and there, and there ! — and two watching men 
on a stage without, with bared arms and sledge- 
hammers, strike at it fiercely and repeat their 
blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being 
driven home, of which there are many in every 
iron plate, and thousands upon thousands in the 
ship ! To think that the difficulty I experience 
in appreciating the ship's size when I am on 
board arises from her being a series of iron 
tanks and oaken chests ; so that internally she is 
ever finishing and ever beginning, and half of 
her might be smashed, and yet the remaining 
half suffice and be sound. Then, to go over the 
side again and down among the ooze and wet to 
the bottom of the dock, in the depths of the 
subterranean forest of dog-shores and stays that 
hold her up, and to see the immense mass bulg- 
ing out against the upper light, and tapering 
down towards me, is, with great pains and much 
clambering, to arrive at an impossibility of 
realizing that this is a ship at all, and to become 
possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous 
immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphi- 
theatre (say that at Verona), and almost filling 
it ! Yet what would even these things be with- 
out the tributary workshops and their mechanical 
powers for piercing the iron plates — four inches 
and a half thick— for rivets, shaping them under 
hydraulic pressure to the finest tapering turns of 
the ship's lines, and paring them away, with 
knives shaped like the beaks of strong and cruel 
birds, to the nicest requirements of the design ! 
These machines of tremendous force, so easily 
directed by one attentive face and presiding 
hand, seem to me to have in them something of 
the retiring character of the Yard. " Obedient 
monster, .please to bite this mass of iron through 
and through, at equal distances, where these re- 
gular chalk-marks are, all round." Monster 
looks at its work, and, lifting its ponderous head, 
replies : " I don't particularly want to do it ; but 
if it must be done — ! " The solid metal wrig- 



gles out, hot from the monster's crunching tooth, 
and it is done. *' Dutiful monster, observe this 
other mass of iron. It is required to be pared 
away, according to this delicately lessening and 
arbitrary line, which please to look at." Mon- 
ster (who has been in a revery) brings down its 
blunt head, and, much in the manner of Doctor 
Johnson, closely looks along the line — very 
closely, being somewhat near-sighted. " I don't 
particularly want to do it ; but if it must be 
done — ! " Monster takes another near-sighted 
look, takes aim, and the tortui-ed piece writhes 
off, and falls, a hot tight-twisted snake, among the 
ashes. The making of the rivets is merely a 
pretty round game, played by a man and a boy, 
who put red-hot barley-sugar in a Pope Joan 
board, and immediately rivets fall out of win- 
dow ; but the tone of the great machines is 
the tone of the great Yard and the great 
country : " We don't particularly want to do it ; 
but if it must be done — ! " 

How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles 
can ever be held by such comparatively little 
anchors as those intended for her, and lying 
near her here, is a mystery of seamanship which 
I will refer to the wise boy. For my own part, 
I should as soon have thought of tethering an 
elephant to a tent-peg, or the larger hippopota- 
mus in the Zoological Gardens to my shirt-pin. 
Yonder, in the river, alongside a hulk, lie two of 
this ship's hollow iron masts. They are large 
enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her 
other appliances. I wonder why only her an- 
chors look small. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24. 

NAVY- YARD— Scenes in a. 

Sauntering among the rope-making, I am spun 
into a state of blissful indolence, wherein my 
rope of life seems to be so untwisted by the pro- 
cess as that I can see back to very early days in- 
deed, when my bad dreams — they were frightful, 
though my more mature understanding has never 
made out why — were of an interminable sort of 
rope-making, with long, minute filaments for 
strands, which, when they were spun home to- 
gether close to my eyes, occasioned screaming. 
Next I walk among the quiet lofts of stores, — of 
sails, spars, rigging, ships' boats, — determined to 
believe that somebody in authority wears a gir- 
dle, and bends beneath the weight of a massive 
bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is 
wanted, he comes, telling his keys like Blue- 
Beard, and opens such a door. Impassive as the 
long lofts look, let the electric batteiy send down 
the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly 
open, and such a fleet of armed ships, under 
steam and under sail, shall burst forth, as will 
charge the old Medway — where the merry Stuart 
let the Dutch come, while his not so merry sail- 
ors starved in the streets — with something worth 
looking at to carry to the sea. Thus I idle round 
to the Medway again, where it is now flood- 
tide ; and I find the river evincing a strong so- 
licitude to force a way into the dry-dock where 
Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred 
bangers, with intent to bear the whole away be- 
fore they are ready. 

To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon 
it ; for I make my way to the gates through a 
little quiet grove of trees, shading the quaintest 
of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf-sj)eckled 
shadow of a shipwright just passing away at the 



NECESSITY AND LAWYERS 



328 



NEIGHBORHOOD 



farther end might be the shadow of Russian Peter 
himself. So the doors of the great patent safe 
at last close upon me, and I take boat again, — 
somehow thinking, as the oars dip, of braggart 
Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters 
of the Yard, with their " We don't particularly 
want to do it ; but if it must be done — ! " 
Scrunch. — Uncommercial Traveller, CJmp. 24. 

NECESSITY AND LAWYERS. 

Though necessity has no law, she has her 
lawyers. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 66. 

NEEDLEWORK— Love as a teacher of. 

Mrs. John Rokesmith sat at needlework in 
her neat little room, beside a basket of neat lit - 
tie articles of clothing, which presented so much 
of the appearance of being in the dolls' dress- 
maker's way of business, that one might have 
supposed she was going to set up in opposition 
to Miss Wren. Whether the Complete British 
Family Housewife had imparted sage council 
anent them, did not appear, but probably not, as 
that cloudy oracle was nowhere visible. For cer- 
tain, however, Mrs. John Rokesmith stitched at 
them with so dexterous a hand, that she must 
have taken lessons of somebody. Love is in all 
things a most wonderful teacher, and perhaps 
love from a pictorial point of view, with nothing 
on but a thimble, had been teaching this branch 
of needlework to Mrs. John Rokesmith. 

Placidly, though rather consequentially smiling, 
she sat stitching away with a regular sound, like 
a sort of dimpled little charming Dresden-china 
clock by the very best maker. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. ii. 

NEIGHBORHOOD— An ancient. 

Surely there never was, in any other borough, 
city, or hamlet in the world, such a singular sort 
of a place as Todgers's. And surely London, 
to judge from that part of it which hemmed 
Todgers's round, and hustled it, and crushed it, 
and stuck its brick-and-mortar elbows into it, 
and kept the air from it, and stood perpetually 
between it and the light, was worthy of Tod- 
gers's, and qualified to be on terms of close 
relationship and alliance with hundreds and 
thousands of the odd family to which Todgers's 
belonged. 

You couldn't walk about in Todgers's neigh- 
borhood, as you could in any other neighbor- 
hood. You groped your way for an hour 
through lanes, and byeways, and court-yards, and 
passages ; and you never once emerged upon 
anything that might be reasonably called a 
street. A kind of resigned distraction came 
over the stranger as he trod those devious 
mazes, and, giving himself up for lost, went in 
and out, and round about, and quietly turned 
back again when he came to a deal wall or was 
stopped by an iron railing, and felt that the 
means of escape might possibly present them- 
selves in their own good time, but that to antici- 
pate them was hopeless. Instances were known 
of people who, being asked to dine at Todgers's, 
had travelled round and round for a weary 
time, with its very chimney-pots in view ; and 
finding it, at last, impossible of attainment, had 
gone home again, with a gentle melancholy on 
their spirits, tranquil and uncomplaining. No- 
body had ever found Todgers's on a verbal di- 
rection, though given within a minute's walk of 



it. Cautious emigrants from Scotland or the 
North of England had been known to reach it 
safely, by impressing a charity-boy, town-bred, 
and bringing him along with them ; or by 
clinging tenaciously to the postman ; but these 
were rare exceptions, and only went to prove 
the rule that Todgers's was in a labyrinth, where- 
of the mystery was known but to a chosen few. 

Several fruit brokers had their marts near 
Todgers's : and one of the first impressions 
wrought upon the stranger's senses was of 
oranges — of damaged oranges, with blue and 
green bruises on them, festering in boxes, or 
mouldering away in cellars. All day long, a 
stream of porters from the wharves beside the 
river, each bearing on his back a bursting chest 
of oranges, poured slowly through the narrow 
passages ; while underneath the archway by the 
public-house, the knots of those who rested and 
regaled within, were piled from morning until 
night. Strange solitary pumps were found near 
Todgers's, hiding themselves for the most part 
in blind alleys, and keeping company with fire- 
ladders. There were churches also by dozens, 
with many a ghostly little church-yard, all 
overgrown with such straggling vegetation 
as springs up spontaneously from damp, and 
graves, and rubbish. In some of the|e dingy 
resting places, which bore much the same anal- 
ogy to green church-yards as the pots of earth 
for mignonnette and wall-flower in the windows 
overlooking them did to rustic gardens, there 
were trees — tall trees ; still putting forth their 
leaves in each succeeding year, with such a lan- 
guishing remembrance of their kind (so one 
might fancy, looking on their sickly boughs) as 
birds in cages have of theirs. Here, paralyzed 
old watchmen guarded the bodies of the dead 
at night, year after year, until at last they joined 
that solemn brotherhood ; and, saving that 
they slept below the ground a sounder sleep 
than even they had ever known above it, and 
were shut up in another kind of box, their con- 
dition can hardly be said to have undergone 
any material change when they in turn were 
watched themselves. 

Among the narrow thoroughfares at hand, there 
lingered, here and there, an ancient doorway of 
carved oak, from which, of old, the sounds of 
revelry and feasting often came ; but now these 
mansions, only used for storehouses, were dark 
and dull, and, being filled with wool, and cotton, 
and the like — such heavy merchandise as stifles 
sounds and stops the throat of echo — had an air 
of palpable deadness about them which, added 
to their silence and desertion, made them very 
grim. In like manner, there were gloomy court- 
yards in these parts, into which few but belat. 
ed wayfarers ever strayed, and where vast bags 
and packs of goods, upward or downward bound, 
were forever dangling between heaven and earth 
from lofty cranes. There were more trucks near 
Todgers's than you would suppose a whole city 
could ever need ; not active trucks, but a vaga- 
bond race, forever lounging in the narrow lanes 
before their masters' doors and stopping up the 
pass ; so that when a stray hackney-coach or 
lumbering wagon came that way, they were the 
cause of such an uproar as enlivened the whole 
neighborhood, and made the bells in the next 
church-tower vibrate again. In the throats and 
maws of dark no-thoroughfares near Todgers's, 
, individual wine-merchants and wholesale deal- 



NEIGHBORHOOD 



829 



NEIGHBORHOOD 



ers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of 
their own ; and deep among the foundations of 
these buildings, the ground was undermined and 
burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, 
troubled by rats, might be heard on a quiet Sun- 
day rattling their halters, as disturbed spirits in 
tales of haunted houses are said to clank their 
chains. 

To tell of half the queer old taverns that had a 
drowsy and secret existence near Todgers's, 
would fill a goodly book ; while a second volume 
no less capacious might be devoted to an account 
of the quaint old guests who frequented their 
dimly-lighted parlors. These were, in general, 
ancient inhabitants of that region ; born, and 
bred there from boyhood ; who had long since 
become wheezy and asthmatical, and short of 
breath, except in the article of story-telling ; in 
which respect they were still marvellously long- 
winded. These gentry were much opposed to 
steam and all new-fangled ways, and held bal- 
looning to be sinful, and deplored the degener- 
acy of the times ; which that particular member 
of each little club who kept the keys of the 
nearest church professionally, always attributed 
to the prevalence of dissent and irreligion : 
though the major part of the company inclined 
to the belief that virtue went out with hair-pow- 
der, and that Old England's greatness had de- 
cayed amain with barbers. 

Martin Chuzzlewity Chap, 9. 

NEIGHBORHOOD-The Five Points, New 
York. 

Ascend those pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a 
false footing on the trembling boards, and grope 
your way with me into this wolfish den, where 
neither ray of light nor breath of air appears to 
come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by 
the officer's voice — he knows it well — but com- 
forted by his assurance that he has not come on 
business, officiously bestirs himself to light a 
candle. The match flickers for a moment, and 
shows great mounds of dusky rags upon the 
ground ; then dies away and leaves a denser dark- 
ness than before, if there can be degrees in such 
extremes. He stumbles down the stairs and 
presently comes back, shading a flaring taper 
with his hand. Then the mounds of rags are 
seen to be astir, and rise slowly up, and the floor 
is covered with heaps of negro women, waking 
from their sleep ; their white teeth chattering, 
and their bright eyes glistening and winking on 
all sides with surprise and fear, like the countless 
repetition of one astonished African face in some 
strange mirror. 

Mount up these other stairs with no less cau- 
tion (there are traps and pitfalls here for those 
who are not so well escorted as ourselves) into 
the house-top ; where the bare beams and raft- 
ers meet overhead, and calm night looks down 
through the crevices in the roof. Open the door 
of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping 
negroes. Pah ! They have a charcoal fire within ; 
there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so 
close they gather round the brazier ; and vapors 
issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every 
corner, as you glance about you in these dark re- 
treats, some figure crawls, half awakened, as if 
the judgment hour were near at hand, and every 
obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where 
dogs would howl to lie, women and men and 
boys slink off" to sleep, forcing the dislodg- 



ed rats to move away in quest of better lodg- 
ings. 

Here too are lanes and alleys, paved with mud 
knee-deep ; underground chambers, where they 
dance and game ; the walls bedecked with rough 
designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and Amei-i- 
can Eagles out of number ; ruined houses open to 
the street, whence, through wide gaps in the 
walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as though 
the world of vice and misery had nothing efse 
to show ; hideous tenements which take their 
name from robbery and murder ; all that is 
loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here. 

American Notes ^ Chap. 6. 

NEIGHBORHOOD— An irregrular. 

The schools were newly built, and there were 
so many like them all over the country, that one 
might have thought the whole were but one rest- 
less edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin's 
palace. They were in a neighborhood which 
looked like a toy neighborhood taken in blocks 
out of a box by a child of particularly incoherent 
mind, and set up anyhow ; here, one side of a 
new street ; there, a large solitary public house 
facing nowhere ; here, another unfinished street 
already in ruins ; there, a church ; here, an im- 
mense new warehouse ; there, a dilapidated old 
country villa ; then, a medley of black ditch, 
sparkling cucumber-frame, rank field, richly culti- 
vated kitchen-garden, brick viaduct, arch-spanned 
canal, and disorder of frowziness and fog. As 
if the child had given the table a kick, and 
gone to sleep. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. v. 

NEIGHBORHOOD-A foul. 

They left the busy scene, and went into an 
obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had 
never penetrated before, although he recognized 
its situation, and its bad repute. The ways 
were foul and narrow ; the shops and houses 
wretched ; the people half-naked, drunken, slip- 
shod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many 
cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and 
dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets ; and 
the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, 
and misery. 

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was 
a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house 
roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and 
greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor 
within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, 
chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse 
iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like 
to scrutinize were bred and hidden in moun- 
tains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat 
and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the 
wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of 
old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly sev- 
enty years of age ; who had screened himself 
from the cold air without, by a frowzy curtain- 
ing of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line ; 
and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm 
retirement. — Christmas Carol, Stave 4. 

NEIGHBORHOOD— A corrupt; its influ- 
ence. 

Darkness rests upon Tom-all-Alone's. Di- 
lating and dilating since the sun went down 
last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills 
every void in the place. For a time there were 
some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of 



NEIGHBORHOOD 



330 



NEWSBOY 



Life burns in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily, heavily, 
in the nauseous air, and winking — as that lamp, 
too, winks in Tom-all-Alone's — at many horri- 
ble things. But they are blotted out. The 
moon has eyed Tom with a dull, cold stare, as 
admitting some puny emulation of herself in his 
desert region, unfit for life and blasted by volca- 
nic fires ; but she has passed on, and is gone. 
The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables 
grazes on Tom-all-Aione's, and Tom is fast 

asleep. 

***** 

But he has his revenge! Even the winds are 
his messengers, and they serve him in these 
hours of darkness. There is not a drop of 
Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection 
and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, this 
very night, the choice stream (in which chemists, 
on analysis, would find the genuine nobility) of 
a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be 
able to say Nay to the infamous alliance. There 
is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch 
of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one 
obscenity or degradation about him, not an ig- 
norance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of 
his committing, but shall work its retribution, 
through every order of society, up to the proud- 
est of the proud, and to the highest of the high. 
Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and 
spoiling, Tom has his revenge. 

It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's 
be uglier by day or by night ; but on the argu- 
ment that the more that is seen of it the more 
shocking it must be, and that no part of it left 
to the imagination is at all likely to be made so 
bad as the reality, day carries it. The day be- 
gins to break now ; and in truth it might be 
better for the national glory even that the sun 
should sometimes set upon the British domin- 
ions, than that it should ever rise upon so vile 
a wonder as Tom. — Bleak House, Chap. 46. 

NEIGHBORHOOD-An ancient. 

A place much changed in feature and in for- 
tune, yet with some relish of ancient greatness 
about it. Two or three mighty stacks of chim- 
neys, and a few large, dark rooms which had 
escaped being walled and subdivided out of the 
recognition of their old proportions, gave the 
Yard a character. It was inhabited by poor 
people, who set up their rest among its faded 
glories, as Arabs of the desert pitch their tents 
among the fallen stones of the Pyramids ; but 
there was a family sentimental feeling prevalent 
in the Yard, that it had a character. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 12. 

•• NEVER MIND 1 » — A comprehensive 
phrase. 

" Never mind." 

There must be something very comprehensive 
in this phrase of " Never mind," for we do not 
recollect to have ever witnessed a quarrel in the 
street, at a theatre, public room, or elsewhere, in 
whicli it has not been the standard reply to all 
belligerent inquiries. " Do you call yourself a 
gentleman, sir?" — " Never mind, sir." " Did I 
offer to say anything to the young woman, sir?" 
— " Never mind, sir." " Do you want your head 
knocked up against that wall, sir ? " — '• Never 
mind, sir." It is observable, too, that there 
would appear to be some hidden taunt in this 
universal " Never mind," which rouses more 



indignation in the bosom of the individual ad- 
dressed, than the most lavish abuse could possi- 
bly awaken. — Pickwick, Chap. 24. 

NEWSPAPER— A diminutive reader of a. 

The daily papers are so very large in propor- 
tion to himself, shorn of his hat, that when he 
holds up the Times to run his eye over the col- 
umns, he seems to have retired for the night, 
and to have disappeared under the bed-clothes. 
Bleak House, Chap. 20. 

NEWSPAPER— A smeared. 

Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long 
out of date, which had nothing half so legible in 
its local news, as the foreign matter of coffee, 
pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and 
wine, with which it was sprinkled all over, as if 
it had taken the measles in a highly irregular 
form, I sat at my table while he stood before the 
fire. — Bleak House, Chap. 43. 

NEWS— Its rapid circulation. 

By what means the news that there had been 
a quarrel between the two young men got into 
Miss Twinkleton's establishment before break- 
fast, it is impossible to say. Whether it was 
brought in by the birds of the air, or came 
blowing in with the very air itself, when the 
casement windows were set open ; whether the 
baker brought it kneaded into the bread, or the 
milkman delivered it as part of the adulteration 
of his milk ; or the housemaids, beating the dust 
out of their mats against the gateposts, received 
it in exchange deposited on the mats by the town 
atmosphere ; certain it is that the news perme- 
ated every gable of the old building before Miss 
Twinkleton was down, and that Miss Twinkle- 
ton herself received it through Mrs. Tisher, while 
yet in the act of dressing ; or (as she might have 
expressed the phrase to a parent or guardian of 
a mythological turn) of sacrificing to the Graces. 
Edwin Drood, Chap. 9. 

NEWSBOY— Adolphus Tetterhy as a. 

Master Adolphus was also in the newspaper 
line of life, being employed, by a more thriving 
firm than his father and Co., to vend newspapers 
at a railway station, where his chubby little per- 
son, like a shabbily disguised Cupid, ?nd his 
shrill little voice (he was not much more than ten 
years old), were as well known as the hoarse 
panting of the locomotive, running in and out. 
His juvenility might have been at some loss for 
a harmless outlet, in this early application to 
traffic, but for a fortunate discovery he made of 
a means of entertaining himself, and of dividing 
the long day into stages of interest, without ne- 
glecting business. This ingenious invention, re- 
markable, like many great discoveries, for its 
simplicity, consisted in varying the first vowel 
in the word " paper," and substituting in its 
stead, at different periods of the day, all the 
other vowels in grammatical succession. Thus, 
before daylight in the winter-time, he went to 
and fro, in his little oil-skin cap and cape, and 
his big comforter, piercing the heavy air with 
his cry of " Morn-ing Pa-per ! " which, about an 
hour before noon, changed to " Morn-ing Pep- 
per ! " which, at about two, changed to " Morn- 
ing Pip-per ; " which, in a couple of hours, 
changed to " Morning Pop-per ! " and so de- 
clined with the sun into " Eve-ning Pup-per ! ** 



NEW YORK 



331 



NIAGABA 



to the great relief and comfort of this young 
gentleman's spirits. — Haunted Man, Chap, 2. 

NEW YORK— Tlie streets of. 

The streets and shops are lighted now ; and 
as the eye travels down the long thoroughfare, 
dotted with bright jets of gas, it is reminded of 
Oxford Street or Piccadilly. Here and there a 
flight of broad stone cellar steps appears, and a 
painted lamp directs you to the Bowling Saloon, 
or Ten-Pin alley ; Ten-Pins being a game of 
mingled chance and skill, invented when the 
legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins. 
At other downward flights of steps are other 
lamps, marking the whereabouts of oyster cel- 
lars — pleasant retreats, say I ; not only by rea- 
son of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty 
nigh as large as cheese-plates (or for thy dear 
sake, heartiest of Greek Professors !) but be- 
cause, of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or 
fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oys- 
ters alone are not gregarious, but, subduing 
themselves, as it were, to the nature of what 
they work in, and copying the coyness of the 
thing they eat. do sit apart in curtained boxes, 
and consort by twos, not by two hundreds. 

But how quiet the streets are ! Are there no 
itinerant bands, no wind or stringed instru- 
ments? No, not one. By day are there no 
Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers, 
Conjurers, Orchestrinas, or even Barrel-organs? 
No, not one. Yes, I remember one. One bar- 
rel-organ and a dancing monkey — sportive by 
nature, but fast fading into a dull, lumpish mon- 
key of the Utilitarian school. Beyond that, 
nothing lively ; no, not so much as a white 
mouse in a twirling cage. 

Are there no amusements? Yes, there is a 
lecture-room across the way, from which that 
glare of light proceeds, and there may be even- 
ing service for the ladies thrice a week, or 
oftener. For the young gentlemen there is the 
counting-house, the store, the bar-room ; the 
latter, as you may see through these windows, 
pretty full. Hark 1 to the clinking sound of 
hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool 
gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process 
of mixing, they are poured from glass to glass ! 
No amusements? What are these suckers of 
cigars and swallowers of strong drinks, whose 
hats and legs we see in every possible variety 
of twist, doing, but amusing themselves ? What 
are the fifty newspapers, which those precocious 
urchins are bawling down the street, and which 
are kept filed within, — what are they but amuse- 
ments? Not vapid, waterish amusements, but 
good strong stuff, dealing in round abuse and 
blackguard names, pulling off the roofs of pri- 
vate houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain ; 
pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious 
taste, and gorging with coined lies the most 
voracious maw ; imputing to every man in pub- 
lic life the coarsest and the vilest motives ; scar- 
ing away from the stabbed and prostrate body- 
politic every Samaritan of clear conscience and 
good deeds ; and setting on, with yell and whis- 
tle, and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest of 
vermin and worst birds of prey. — No amuse- 
ments 1 

Let us go on again, and passing this wilder- 
ness of an hotel with stores about its base, like 
some Continental theatre or the London Opera 
Hous€ shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the 



Five Points. But it is needful, first, that we 
take as our escort these two heads of the police, 
whom you would know for sharp and well-trained 
ofiicers if you met them in the Great Desert, So 
true it is, that certain pursuits, wherever carried 
on, will stamp men with the same character. 
These two might have been begotten, born, and 
bred in Bow Street. 

We have seen no beggars in the streets by 
night or day, but of other kinds of strollers 
plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice are 
rife enough where we are going now. 

This is the place — these narrow ways diverg- 
ing to the right and left, and reeking everywhere 
with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here 
bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The 
coarse and bloated faces at the doors have coun- 
terparts at home and all the wide world over. 
Debauchery has made the very houses prema- 
turely old. See how the rotten beams are tum- 
bling down, and how the patched and broken 
windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that 
have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those 
pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their 
masters walk upright in lieu of going on 
all fours ? and why they talk instead of grunt- 
ing? 

So far nearly every house is a low tavern, and 
on the bar-room walls are colored prints of 
Washington, and Queen Victoria of England, 
and the American Eagle. Among the pigeon- 
holes that hold the bottles are pieces of plate- 
glass and colored paper, for there is, in some 
sort, a taste for decoration, even here. And as 
seamen frequent these haunts, there are mari- 
time pictures, by the dozen, of partings between 
sailors and their lady-loves ; portraits of William, 
of the ballad, and his Black-Eyed Susan ; of Will 
Watch, the Bold Smuggler ; of Paul Jones, the 
Pirate, and the like ; on which the painted eyes 
of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot, 
rest in as strange companionship as on most of 
the scenes that are enacted in their wondering 
presence. — American Notes, Chap. 6. 

NIAGARA. 

It was a miserable day, chilly and raw, a 
damp mist falling, and the trees in that northern 
region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the 
train halted I listened for the roar, and was con- 
stantly straining my eyes in the direction where 
I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river 
rolling on towards them, every moment expect- 
ing to behold the spray. Within a few minutes 
of our stopping, not before, I saw two great 
white clouds rising up slowly and majestically 
from the depths of the earth. That was all. . 
At length we alighted, and then for the first 
time I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt 
the ground tremble underneath my feet. 

The bank is very steep, and was slippery with 
rain and half-melted ice. I hardly know how I 
got down, but I was soon at the bottom, and 
climbing, with two English officers who were 
crossing and had joined me, over some broken 
rocks, deafened by the noise, half blinded by 
the spray, and wet to the skin. We were at the 
foot of the American Fall. I could see an im- 
mense torrent of water tearing headlong down 
from some great height, but had no idea of 
shape, or situation, or anything but vague im- 
mensity. 

When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, 



NIAGARA 



832 



NIGHT 



and were crossing the swollen river immediately 
before both cataracts, I began to feel what it 
was ; but I was in a manner stunned, and unable 
to comprehend the vastness of the scene. It was 
not until I came on Table Rock, and looked — 
Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright, green 
water ! — that it came upon me in its full might 
and majesty. 

Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I 
was standing, the first effect and the enduring 
one — instant and lasting — of the tremendous 
spectacle, was Peace. Peace of mind, tranquil- 
lity, calm recollections of the Dead, great 
thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness ; noth- 
ing of gloom or terror. Niagara was at once 
stamped upon my heart, an Image of Beauty ; 
to remain there, changeless and indelible, until 
its pulses cease to beat forever. 

Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life 
receded from my view, and lessened in the dis- 
tance, during the ten memorable days we passed 
on that Enchanted Ground ! What voices spoke 
from out the thundering water ; what faces, faded 
from the earth, looked out upon me from its 
gleaming depths ; what Heavenly promise glis- 
tened in those angels' tears, the drops of many 
hues, that showered around, and twined them- 
selves about the gorgeous arches which the 
changing rainbows made ! 

I never stirred in all that time from the Cana- 
dian side, whither I had gone at first. I never 
crossed the river again ; for I knew there were 
people on the other shore, and in such a place 
it is natural to shun strange company. To wan- 
der to and fro all day, and see the cataracts 
from all points of view ; to stand upon the edge 
of the Great Horseshoe Fall, marking the hur- 
ried water gathering strength as it approached 
the verge, yet seeming, too, to pause before it 
shot into the gulf below ; to gaze from the 
river's level up at the torrent as it came stream- 
ing down ; to climb the neighboring heights and 
watch it through the trees, and see the wreathing 
water in the rapids hurrying on to take its fear- 
ful plunge ; to linger in the shadow of the 
solemn rocks three miles below, watching the 
river, as, stirred by no visible cause, it heaved 
and eddied and awoke the echoes, being trou- 
bled yet, far down beneath the surface, by its 
giant leap ; to have Niagara before me, lighted 
by the sun and by the moon, red in the day's 
decline, and gray as evening slowly fell upon 
it ; to look upon it every day, and wake up in 
the night and hear its ceaseless voice : this was 
enough. 

I think in every quiet season now, still do 
those waters roll and leap, and roar and tumble, 
all day long ; still are the rainbows spanning 
them, a hundred feet below. Still, when the 
sun is on them, do they shine and glow like 
molten gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do 
they fall like snow, or seem to crumble away 
like the front of a great chalk-cliff, or roll down 
the rock like dense white smoke. But always 
does the mighty stream appear to die as it 
comes down, and always from its unfathomable 
grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and 
mist which is never laid, — which has haunted 
this place with the same dread solemnity since 
Darkness brooded on the deep, and that first 
flood before the Deluge — Light — came rushing 
on Creation at the word of God. 

American Notes ^ Chap. 14. 



NIGHT. 

Night was still heavy in the sky. On open 
plains, from hill-tops, and from the decks of soli 
tary ships at sea, a distant low-lying line, that 
promised by-and-bye to change to light, was visi- 
ble in the dim horizon ; but its promise was re- 
mote and doubtful, and the moon was striving 
with the night-clouds busily. 

Haunted Man^ Chap. 3. 



The wide stare stared itself out for one while ; 
the sun went down in a red, green, golden glory ; 
the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire- 
flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men 
may feebly imitate the goodness of a better 
order of beings ; the long dusty roads and the 
interminable plains were in repose — and so deep 
a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered 
of the time when it shall give up its dead. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. i. 



An awful survey, in a lonely and remote part 
of an empty old pile of building, on a winter 
night, with the loud wind going by upon its 
journey of mystery — whence, or whither, no 
man knowing since the world began — and the 
stars, in unimaginable millions, glittering 
through it, from eternal space, where the world's 
bulk is as a grain, and its hoary age is infancy. 
Haunted Man^ Chap. i. 



It was a fine dry night, and the light of a 
young moon, which was then just rising, shed 
around that peace and tranquillity which gives to 
evening-time its most delicious charm. The 
lengthened shadows of the trees, softened as if 
reflected in still water, threw their carpet on the 
path the travellers pursued, and the light wind 
stirred yet more softly than before, as though it 
were soothing Nature in her sleep. 

Batnaby Rudge, Chap. 14. 



Night, like a giant, fills the church, from pave- 
ment to roof, and holds dominion through 
the silent hours. Pale dawn again comes peep- 
ing through the windows ; and, giving place to 
day, sees night withdraw into the vaults, and fol- 
lows it, and drives it out, and hides among the 
dead. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 32. 



There was no wind ; there was no passing 
shadow on the deep shade of the night ; there 
was no noise. The city lay behind him, lighted 
here and there, and starry worlds were hidden 
by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly 
made out any shapes against the sky. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 55. 

The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps 
looked pale, and shook as if they were cold. 
There was a distant glimmer of something that 
was not quite darkness, rather than of light, in 
the sky ; and foreboding night was shivering 
and restless, as the dying are who make a 
troubled end. Florence remembered how, as a 
watcher, by a sick bed, she had noted this bleak 
time, and felt its influence, as if in some hidden 
natural antipathy to it ; and now it was very, 
very gloomy. — Dombey <2r» Son, Chap. 43. 

The rich light had faded, the sombre hues of 
night were falling fast upon the landscape, 
and a few bright stars were already twinkling 



NIQHT 



NIQHT 



overhead. The birds were all at roost ; the 
daisies on the green had closed their fairy hoods ; 
the honeysuckle twining round the porch ex- 
haled its perfume in a two-fold degree, as 
though it lost its coyness at that silent time 
and loved to shed its fragrance on the night ; 
the ivy scarcely stirred its deep green leaves. 
How tranquil and how beautiful it was ! 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 54. 



It was one of those dark nights that hold their 
breath by the hour together, and than heave a 
long, low sigh, and hold their breath again. 
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 9. 

NIGHT— And Morning. 

The night crept on apace, the moon went 
down, the stars grew pale and dim, and morning, 
cold as they, slowly approached. Then, from 
behind a distant hill, the noble sun rose up, driv- 
ing the mists in phantom shapes before it, and 
clearing the earth of their ghostly forms till 
darkness came again. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 43. 

NTQHT— A cloudy. 

It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shud- 
dered in the wind. The rain had been thick and 
heavy all day, and with little intermission for 
many days. None was falling just then, how- 
ever. The sky had partly cleared, but was very 
gloomy — even above us, where a few stars were 
shining. In the north and north-west, where the 
sun had set three hours before, there was a pale 
dead light, both beautiful and awful ; and into it 
long sullen lines of cloud waved up, like a sea 
stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards 
London, a lurid glare overhung the whole dark 
waste ; and the contrast between these two lights, 
and the fancy which the redder light engendered 
of an unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen 
buildings of the city, and on all the faces of its 
many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was 
as solemn as might be. — Bleak House, Chap. 31. 

NIGHT — The companionship of (Little 

Nell). 

In one of those rambles which had now be- 
come her only pleasure or relief from care, light 
had faded into darkness and evening deepened 
into night, and still the young creature lingered 
in the gloom ; feeling a companionship in Nature, 
so serene and still, when noise of tongues and 
glare of garish lights would have been solitude 
indeed. 

The sisters had gone home, and she was alone. 
She raised her eyes to the bright stars, looking 
down so mildly from the wide worlds of air, and, 
gazing on them, found new stars burst upon her 
view, and more beyond, and more beyond again, 
until the whole great expanse sparkled with shin- 
ing spheres, rising higher and higher in immeas- 
urable space, eternal in their numbers as in their 
changeless and incorruptible existence. She bent 
over the calm river, and saw them shining in the 
same majestic order as when the dove beheld 
them gleaming through the swollen waters, upon 
the mountain-tops down far below, and dead 
mankind a million fathoms deep. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 42. 

NIGHT- To the outcast. 

It was the dead time of the night, and all was 



quiet. Now and then a drowsy watchman's 
footsteps sounded on the pavement, or the lamp- 
lighter on his rounds went flashing past, leaving 
behind a little track of smoke mingled with 
glowing morsels of bis hot red link. He hid 
himself even from these partakers of his lonely 
walk, and shrinking in some arch or door- 
way while they passed, issued forth again when 
they were gone, and so pursued his solitary 
way. 

To be shelterless and alone in the open coun- 
try, hearing the wind moan, and watching for day 
through the whole long, weary night ; to listen to 
the falling rain, and crouch for warmth beneath 
the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow 
of a tree, are dismal things — but not so dismal 
as the wandering up and down where shelter is, 
and beds and sleepers are by thousands, a house- 
less, rejected creature. To pace the echoing 
stones from hour to hour, counting the dull 
chimes of the clocks ; to watch the lights twink- 
ling in chamber windows ; to think what hap- 
py forgetfulness each house shuts in ; that here 
are children coiled together in their beds, here 
youth, here age, here poverty, here wealth, all 
equal in their sleep, and all at rest ; to have 
nothing in common with the slumbering world 
around, not even sleep — Heaven's gift to all its 
creatures — and be akin to nothing but despair ; 
to feel, by the wretched contrast with everything 
on every hand, more utterly alone and cast away 
than in a trackless desert ; this is a kind of suf- 
fering on which the rivers of great cities close 
full many a time, and which the solitude in 
crowds alone awakens. 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 18. 

NIGHT-A still. 

A fine night, and a bright large moon, and 
multitudes of stars. Mr. Tulkinghorn, in re- 
pairing to his cellar, and in opening and shut- 
ting those resounding doors, has to cross a little 
prison-like yard. He looks up casually, think- 
ing what a fine night, what a bright large 
moon, what multitudes of stars ! A quiet night, 
too. 

A very quiet night. When the moon shines 
very brilliantly, a solitude and stillness seem to 
proceed from her, that influence even crowded 
places, full of life. Not only is it a still night 
on dusty high-roads and on hill-summits, whence 
a wide expanse of country may be seen in 
repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away 
into a fringe of trees against the sky, with 
the gray ghost of a bloom upon them ; 
not only is it a still night in gardens and in 
woods, and on the river where the water mead- 
ows are fresh and green, and the stream 
sparkles on among pleasant islands, murmuring 
weirs, and whispering rushes ; not only does the 
stillness attend it as it flows where houses clus- 
ter thick, where many bridges are reflected in it, 
where wharves and shipping make it black and 
awful, where it winds from these disfigurements 
through marshes whose grim beacons stand like 
skeletons washed ashore, where it expands 
through the bolder region of rising grounds, rich 
in corn-field, wind-mill, and steeple, and where 
it mingles with the ever-heaving sea ; not only is 
it a still night on the deep, and on the shore 
where the watcher stands to see the ship with 
her spread wings cross the path of light that 
appears to be presented to only him ; but even 



NIGHT 



334 



NIQHT 



on this strangers' wilderness of London there is 
some rest. Its steeples and towers, and its one 
great dome, grow more ethereal ; its smoky- 
house-tops lose their grossness, in the pale efful- 
gence ; the noises that arise from the streets are 
fewer and are softened, and the footsteps on the 
pavements pass more tranquilly away. 

Bleak House, Chap. 48. 

NIGHT— On the Thames. 

My face confessing a surprised desire to have 
some friendly conversation with Waterloo 
Bridge, and my friend Pea being the most 
obliging of men, we put about, pulled out of the 
force of the stream, and in place of going at 
great speed with the tide, began to strive against 
it, close in shore again. Every color but black 
seemed to have departed from the world. The 
air was black, the water was black, the barges 
and hulks were black, the piles were black, the 
buildings were black, the shadows were only a 
deeper shade of black upon a black ground. 
Here and there a coal fire, in an iron cresset, 
blazed upon a wharf ; but, one knew that it too 
had been black a little while ago, and would be 
black again soon. Uncomfortable rushes of water 
suggestive of gurgling and drowning, ghostly 
rattlings of iron chains, dismal clankings of 
discordant engines, formed the music that ac- 
companied the dip of our oars and their rattling 
in the rullocks. Even the noises had a black 
sound to me — as the trumpet sounded red to 
the blind man. 

DoTvn with the Tide. Reprinted Pieces. 

NIGHT— At sea. 

The light shining on the dreary waste of 
water, and showing it in all its vast extent of 
loneliness, presents a solemn spectacle which 
even night, veiling it in darkness and uncer- 
tainty, does not surpass. The rising of the 
moon is more in keeping with the solitary 
ocean, and has an air of melancholy grandeur, 
which, in its soft and gentle influence, seems to 
comfort while it saddens. I recollect, when I 
was a very young child, having a fancy that the 
reflection of the moon in water was a path to 
Heaven, trodden by the spirits of good people 
on their way to God ; and this old feeling often 
came over me again, when I watched it on a tran- 
quil night at sea. — American Notes. Chap. 16. 

NIGHT— In pilson (Bamaby Rudgre). 

The moon came slowly up in all her gentle 
glory, and the stars looked out, and through the 
small compass of the grated window, as through 
the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky 
life of guilt, the face of Heaven shone bright 
and merciful. He raised his head; gazed upward 
at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the 
earth in sadness, as if the night, more thought- 
ful than the day, looked down in sorrow on the 
suff"erings and evil deeds of men ; and felt its 
peace sink deep into his heart. He, a poor 
idiot, caged in his narrow cell, was as much 
lifted up to God, while gazing on the mild light, 
as the freest and most" favored man in all the 
spacious city ; and in his ill-remembered prayer, 
and in the fragment of the childish hymn with 
which he sung and crooned himself asleep, there 
breathed as true a spirit as ever studied homily 
expressed, or old cathedral arches echoed. 

Bamaby Rudge^ Chap. 73. 



NIGHT— A river at. 

The river had an awful look, the buildings on 
the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and 
the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in 
the water, as if the spectres of suicides were 
holding them to show where they went down. 
The wild moon and clouds were as restless as 
an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the 
ver}' shadow of the immensity of London seemed 
to lie oppressively upon the river. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 13. 

NIGHT— Out in a London. 

Three o'clock, and half-past three, and they 
had passed over London Bridge. They had 
heard the rush of the tide against obstacles ; 
had looked down, awed, through the dark vapor 
on the river ; had seen little spots of lighted 
water where the bridge lamps were reflected, 
shining like demon eyes, with a terrible fasci- 
nation in them for guilt and misery. They had 
shrunk past homeless people, lying coiled up in 
nooks. They had run from drunkards. They 
had started from slinking men, whistling and 
singing to one another at bye corners, or run- 
ning away at full speed. Though evp-^/where 
the leader and the guide. Little Dorrit, happy 
for once in her youthful appearance, feigned to 
cling to and rely upon Maggy. And more than 
once some voice, from among a knot of brawl- 
ing or prowling figures in their path, had called 
out to the rest, to " let the woman and the child 
go by! " — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 14. 

NIGHT— In liondon. 

But the streets of London, to be beheld in 
the very height of their glory, should be seen 
on a dark, dull, murky winter's night, when 
there is just enough damp gently stealing down 
to make the pavement greasy, without cleans- 
ing it of any of its impurities ; and when the 
heavy, lazy mist, which hangs over every object, 
makes the gas-lamps look brighter, and the 
brilliantly lighted shops more splendid, from 
the contrast they present to the darkness around. 
All the people who are at home on such a night 
as this, seem disposed to make themselves as 
snug and comfortable as possible ; and the 
passengers in the streets have excellent reason 
to envy the fortunate individuals who are seated 
by their own firesides. 

Sketches (Scenes), Chap. 2. 

NIGHT— The approach and shadows of. 

All that prospect, which from the terrace 
looked so near, has moved solemnly away, and 
changed — not the first nor the last of beautiful 
things that look so near and will so change — 
into a distant phantom. Light mists arise, and 
the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the 
garden are heavy in the air. Now, the woods 
settle into great masses, as if they were each one 
profound tree. And now the moon rises, to 
separate them, and to glimmer here and there 
in horizontal lines behind their stems, and to 
make the avenue a pavement of light among 
high cathedral arches fantastically broken. 

Now, the moon is high ; and the great house, 
needing habitation more than ever, is like a 
body without life. Now, it is even awful, 
stealing through it, to think of the live people 
who have slept in the solitary bedrooms ; to say 
nothing of the dead. Now is the time for 



NTQHT-WAIiKS 



335 



NIQHT-FANCEES 



shadow, when every comer is a cavern, and 
every downward step a pit, when the stained 
glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the 
floors, when anything and everything can be 
made of the heavy staircase beams excepting 
their own proper shapes, when the armor has 
dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished 
from stealthy movement, and when barred hel- 
mets are frightfully suggestive of heads inside. 
But, of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the 
shadow in the long drawing-room upon my 
lady's picture is the first to come, the last to be 
disturbed. At this hour and by this light it 
changes into threatening hands raised up, and 
menacing the handsome face with every breath 
that stirs. — Bleak House, Chap. 40. 

NTQHT-WALKS— The associations of. 

Although I am an old man, night is generally 
my time for walking. In the summer I often 
leave home early in the morning, and roam about 
the fields and lanes all day, or even escape for 
days or weeks together ; but, saving in the coun- 
try, I seldom go out until after dark, though, 
Heaven be thanked, I love its light and feel the 
cheerfulness it sheds upon the earth, as much 
as any creature living. 

I have fallen insensibly into this habit, both 
because it favors my infirmity, and because it 
affords me greater opportunity of speculating dn 
the characters and occupations of those who fill 
the streets. The glare and hurry of broad noon 
are not adapted to idle pursuits like mine ; a 
glimpse of passing faces caught by the light of 
a street lamp, or a shop window, is often better 
for my purpose than their full revelation in the 
daylight ; and, if I must add the truth, night is 
kinder in this respect than day, which too often 
destroys an air-built castle at the moment of its 
completion, without the least ceremony or re- 
morse. 

That constant pacing to and fro, that never- 
ending restlessness, that incessant tread of feet 
wearing the rough stones smooth and glossy — is 
it not a wonder how the dwellers in narrow ways 
can bear to hear it ? Think of a sick man, in 
such a place as St. Martin's Court, listening to 
the footsteps, and in the midst of pain and 
weariness, obliged, despite himself (as though it 
were a task he must perform) to detect the child's 
step from the man's, the slipshod beggar from the 
booted exquisite, the lounging from the busy, 
the dull heel of the sauntering outcast from the 
quick tread of an expectant pleasure-seeker 
— think of the hum and noise being always pres- 
ent to his senses, and of the stream of life that 
will not stop, pouring on, on, on, through all his 
restless dreams, as if he were condemned to lie, 
dead, but conscious, in a noisy churchyard, and 
had no hope of rest for centuries to come ! 
^ ^ Then, the crowds for ever passing and repass- 
ling on the bridges (on those which are free of 
toll, at least), where many stop on fine evenings, 
looking listlessly down upon the water, with 
some vague idea that by-and-bye it runs between 
green banks which grow wider and wider, until 
at last it joins the broad, vast sea — where some 
halt to rest from heavy loads, and think, as they 
look over the parapet, that to smoke and lounge 
away one's life, and lie sleeping in the sun upon 
a hot tarpaulin, in a dull, slow, sluggish barge, 
must be happiness unalloyed — and where some, 
and a very different class, pause with heavier 



loads than they, remembering to have heard or 
read in some old time that drowning was not a 
hard death, but of all means of suicide the easi- 
est and best. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. i. 

NIOHT-FANCIES. 

What a doleful night ! How anxious, how 
dismal, how long ! There was an inhospitable 
smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust ; 
and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester 
over my head, I thought what a number of blue- 
bottle flies from the butchers', and earwigs from 
the market, and grubs from the country, must 
be holding on up there, lying by for next sum- 
mer. This led me to speculate whether any of 
them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied 
that I felt light falls on my face — a disagreeable 
turn of thought, suggesting other and more ob- 
jectionable approaches up my back. When I 
had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary 
voices with which silence teems, began to make 
themselves audible. The closet whispered, the 
fire-place sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, 
and one guitar-string played occasionally in the 
chest of drawers. At about the same time, the 
eyes on the wall acquired a new expression, 
and in every one of those staring rounds I saw 
written, Don't go Home. 

Whatever night-fancies and night-noises 
crowded on me, they never warded off this 
Don't go Home. It plaited itself into what- 
ever I thought of, as a bodily pain would have 
done. Not long before, I had read in the news- 
papers, how a gentleman unknown had come to 
the Hummums in the night, and had gone to 
bed, and had destroyed himself, and had been 
found in the morning weltering in blood. It 
came into my head that he must have occupied 
this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to 
assure myself that there were no red marks 
about ; then opened the door to look out into 
the passages, and cheer myself with the com- 
panionship of a distant light, near which I 
knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But all 
this time, why I was not to go home, and what 
had happened at home, and when I should go 
home, and whether Provis was safe at home, were 
questions occupying my mind so busily, that 
one might have supposed there could be no 
more room in it for any other theme. Even 
when I thought of Estella, and how we had 
parted that day for ever, and when I recalled 
all the circumstances of our parting, and all her 
looks and tones, and the action of her fingers 
while she knitted — even then I was pursuing, 
here and there and everywhere, the caution, 
Don't go home. When at last I dozed, in sheer 
exhaustion of mind and body, it became a vast 
shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. Im- 
perative mood, present tense : Do not thou go 
home, let him not go home, let us not go home, 
do not ye or you go home, let not them go home. 
Then potentially : I may not and I cannot go 
home ; and I might not, could not, would not, 
and should not go home ; until I felt that I was 
going distracted, and rolled over on the pillow, 
and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall 
again. — Great Expectations. Chap. 45. 

In the quiet hours of the night, one house 
shuts in as many incoherent and incongruous 
fancies as a madman's head. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. ^ 



NIGHT-THOTJGHTS 



836 



NOSE 



NIGHT-THOTTQHTS-Of Little NeU. 

At that silent hour, when her grandfather was 
sleeping peacefully in his bed, and every sound 
was hushed, the child lingered before the dying 
embers, and thought of her past fortunes as if 
they had been a dream and she only now awoke. 
The glare of the sinking flame, reflected in the 
oaken panels whose carved tops were dimly seen 
in the dusky roof — the aged walls, where strange 
shadows came and went with every flickering 
of the fire — the solemn presence, within, of that 
decay which falls on senseless things the most 
enduring in their nature ; and without, and 
round about on every side, of Death — filled her 
with deep and thoughtful feelings, but with none 
of terror or alarm. A change had been gradu- 
ally stealing over her, in the time of her loneli- 
ness and soiTow. With failing strength and 
heightening resolution, there had sprung up a 
purified and altered mind ; there had grown 
in her bosom blessed thoughts and hopes, 
which are the portion of few but the weak and 
drooping. There were none to see the frail, 
perishable figure, as it glided from the fire and 
leaned pensively at the open casement ; none 
but the stars to look into the upturned face and 
reid its history. The old church bell rang out 
the hour with a mournful sound, as if it had 
grown sad from so much communing with the 
dead and unheeded warning to the living ; the 
fallen leaves rustled ; the grass stirred upon the 
graves ; all else was still and sleeping. 

Some of those dreamless sleepers lay close 
within the shadow of the church — touching the 
wall, as if they clung to it for comfort and pro- 
tection. Others had chosen to lie beneath the 
changing shade of trees ; others by the path, 
that footsteps might come near them ; others, 
among the graves of little children. Some had 
desired to rest beneath the very ground they had 
trodden in their daily walks ; some, where the 
setting sun might shine upon their beds ; some, 
where its light would fall upon them when it 
rose. Perhaps not one of the imprisoned souls 
had been able quite to separate itself in living 
thought from its old companion. If ariy had, it 
had still felt for it a love like that which captives 
have been known to bear towards the cell in 
which they have been long confined, and, even 
at parting, hung upon its narrow bounds affec- 
tionately. 

It was long before the child closed the win- 
dow, and approached her bed. Again some- 
thing of the same sensation as before — an in- 
voluntary chill — a momentary feeling akin to 
fear — but vanishing directly, and leaving no 
alarm behind. Again, too, dreams of the little 
scholar ; of the roof opening, and a column of 
bright faces, rising far away into the sky, as she 
had seen in some old scriptural picture once, and 
looking down on her, asleep. It was a sweet 
and happy dream. The quiet spot outside 
seemed to remain the same, saving that there 
was music in the air, and a sound of angels' 
wings. After a time the sisters came there, 
hand in hand, and stood among the graves. 
And then the dream grew dim and faded. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 52. 

NIGHT-CAPS, 

" People may say what they like," observed 
Mrs. Nickleby, " but there's a great deal of com- 
fort in a night-cap, as I am sure you would con- 



fess, Nicholas, my dear, if you would only have 
strings to yours, and wear it like a Christian, 
instead of sticking it upon the very top of your 
head like a blue-coat boy. You needn't think 
it an unmanly or quizzical thing to be particular 
about your night-cap, for I have often heard 
your poor dear papa, and the Reverend Mr. 
What's-his-name, who used to read prayers in 
that old church with the curious little steeple 
that the weathercock was blown off" the night 
week before you were born — I have often heard 
them say, that the young men at college are un- 
commonly particular about their night-caps, and 
that the Oxford night-caps are quite celebrated 
for their strength and goodness ; so much so, 
indeed, that the young men never dream of go- 
ing to bed without 'em, and I believe it's ad- 
mitted on all hands that they know what's good, 
and don't coddle themselves." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. yj. 

NOBILITY— True. 

His formal an-ay of words might have at any 
other time, as it has often had, something ludic- 
rous in it ! but at this time it is serious and af- 
fecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his 
gallant shielding of her, his generous conquest 
of his own wrong and his own pride for her 
sake, are simply honorable, manly, and true. 
Toothing less worthy can be seen through the 
lustre of such qualities in the commonest me- 
chanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the 
best-born gentleman. In such a light both 
aspire alike, both rise alike, both children of the 
dust shine equal. — Bleak House, Chap. 58. 

NOBODY-The story of. 

If you were ever in the Belgian villages near 
the field of Waterloo, you will have seen, in 
some quiet little church, a monument erected 
by faithful companioi j in arms to the memory 
of Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D, and E, 
Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I, and J, seven 
non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and 
thirty rank and file, who fell in the discharge of 
their duty on the memorable day. The story of 
Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the 
earth. They bear their share of the battle ; 
they have their part in the victory ; they fall ; 
they leave no name but in the mass. The march 
of the proudest of us leads to the dusty way by 
which they go. O ! Let us think of them this 
year at the Christmas fire, and not forget them 
when it is burnt out. 

Nobody's Story. Reprinted Pieces. 

NOSES--In art. 

" Why, that depends in a great measure on 
the pattern," replied Miss La Creevy. " Snubs 
and Romans are plentiful enough, and there are 
flats of all sorts and sizes when there's a meet- 
ing at Exeter Hall ; but perfect aquilines, I am 
sorry to say, are scarce, and we generally use 
them for uniforms or public characters." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 5. 

NOSE— A mixed or Composite. 

" What may you call his nose, now, my dear ? " 
pursued Mrs. Nickleby, wishing to interest Nich- 
olas in the subject to the utmost. 

"Call it?" repeated Nicholas. 

" Ah ! " returned his mother, " what style of 
nose ? What order of architecture, if one may 




** Tender, Earnest Kate. 



337 



NOSES 



837 



NURSE 



say so ? I am not very learned in noses. Do 
you call it a Roman or a Grecian ? " 

" Upon my word, mother," said Nicholas, 
laughing, " as well as I remember, I should call 
it a kind of Composite, or mixed nose. But I 
have no very strong recollection on the subject. 
If it will afford you any gratification, I'll observe 
it more closely, and let you know." 

• Nichohxs Nickleby, Chap. 55. 

NOSES. 

I think the Romans must have aggravated one 
another very much, with their noses. Perhaps 
they became the restless people they were, in 
consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman 
nose so aggravated me, during the recital of my 
misdemeanors, that I should have liked to pull 
it until he howled. — Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

NURSE— Mrs. Pipchin, the. 

This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous 
ill-favored, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping 
figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a 
hook nose, and a hard gray eye, that looked as if 
it might have been hammered at on an anvil with- 
out sustaining any injury. Forty years at least 
had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been 
the death of Mr. Pipchin ; but his relict still wore 
black bombazine, of such a lustreless, deep, dead, 
sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light her 
up after dark, and her presence was a quencher 
to any number of candles. She was generally 
spoken of as " a great manager " of children ; 
and the secret of her management was, to give 
them everything that they didn't like, and nothing 
that they did — which was found to sweeten their 
dispositions very much. She was such a bitter 
old lady, that one was tempted to believe there 
had been some mistake in the application of the 
Peruvian machinery, aind that all her waters of 
gladness and milk of human kindness had been 
pumped out dry, instead of the mines. 

Dombey &> Son, Chap. 8. 



Mrs. Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with 
her sable plumage and her hooked beak, like 
a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath — for 
Mr. Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked 
fast — and she croaked hoarsely as she waited for 
the opening of the door. 

Dombey dr" Son, Chap. ii. 

NURSES-Their characteristics. 

" I needn't beg you," he added, pausing for a 
moment at the settee before the fire, " to take 
particular care of this young gentleman, Mrs. 

"Blockitt, Sir?" suggested the nurse, a sim- 
pering piece of faded gentility, who did not pre- 
sume to state her name as a fact, but merely of- 
fered it as a mild suggestion. 



The excellent and thoughtful old system, hal- 
lowed by long prescription, which has usually 
picked out from the rest of mankind the most 
dreary and uncomfortable people that could 
possibly be laid hold of, to act as instructors of 
youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, moni- 
tors, attendants on sick-beds, and the like, had 
•established Mrs. Wickam in very good business 
as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualities 
being particularly commended by an admiring 
and numerous connection. 



Mrs. Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair 
complexion, with her eyebrows always elevated, 
and her head always drooping ; who was always 
ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity 
anybody else ; and who had a surprising natural 
gift of viewing all subjects in an utterly forlorn 
and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful prece- 
dents to bear upon them, and deriving the great- 
est consolation from the exercise of that talent. 

***** 

Mrs. Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, 
like a disconsolate spectre, most decidedly and 
forcibly shook her head to negative this position. 

•' It matters very little ! " said Alice, with a 
faint smile. " Better or worse to-day, is but a 
day's difference — perhaps not so much." 

Mrs. Wickam, as a serious character, expressed 
her approval with a groan ; and having made 
some cold dabs at the bottom of the bed-clothes, 
as feeling for the patient's feet and expecting to 
find them stony, went clinking among the medi- 
cine bottles on the table. 

***** 

Mrs. Wickam having clinked sufficiently 
among the bottles, now produced the mixture. 
Mrs. Wickam looked hard at her patient in the 
act of drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, 
her eyebrows also, and shook her head, express- 
ing that tortures shouldn't make her say it was a 
hopeless case. Mrs. Wickam then sprinkled a 
little cooling-stuff about the room, with the air 
of a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes 
on ashes, dust on dust — for she was a serious 
character — and withdrew to partake of certain 
funeral baked meats down-stairs. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 58. 

" My goodness gracious me. Miss Floy, you 
naughty, sinful child, if you don't shut your eyes 
this minute, I'll call in them hobgoblins that lives 
in the cockloft to come and eat you up alive ! " 

Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, 
supposed to issue from a conscientious goblin of 
the bull species, impatient to discharge the 
severe duty of his position. Having further 
composed her young charge by covering her 
head with the bed-clothes, and making three or 
four angry dabs at the pillow, she folded her 
arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat look- 
ing at the fire for the rest of the evening. 

Dombey <Sr* Son, Chap. 5. 

NURSE— A gentle. 

Who, slowly recovering from a disorder so 
severe and dangerous, could be insensible to the 
unremitting attentions of such a nurse as gentle, 
tender, earnest Kate ? On whom could the 
sweet soft voice, the light step, the delicate hand, 
the quiet, cheerful, noiseless discharge of those 
thousand little offices of kindness and relief 
which we feel so deeply when we are ill, and 
forget so lightly when we are well — on whom 
could they make so deep an impression as on a 
young heart stored with every pure and true 
affection that women cherish ; almost a stranger 
to the endearments and devotion of its own sex, 
save as it learnt them from itself; rendered, by 
calamity and suffering, keenly susceptible of the 
sympathy so long unknown and so long sought 
in vain ! What wonder that days became as 
years in knitting them together ! 

Nicholas^ NickUby^ Chap. 55. 



NTTRSE 



338 



NTJBSE 



NURSE. 

A nurse attended her, who might have been 
the figure-head of a pauper-ship. 

Uncofumercial Traveller^ Chap, 1 8. 

NURSE— Mrs. Squeers as a. 

'* I remember very well, sir," rejoined Squeers. 
"Ah! Mrs. Squeers, sir, was as partial to that 
lad as if he had been her own ; the attention, 
sir, that was bestowed upon that boy in his ill- 
ness ! Dry toast and warm tea offered him every 
night and morning when he couldn't swallow 
anything — a candle in his bed-room on the very 
night he died — the best dictionary sent up for 
him to lay his head upon. I don't regret it 
though. It is a pleasant thing to reflect that 
one did one's duty by him." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 4. 

NURSES— Mercenary. 

Quiet and solitude were destined to hold un- 
interrupted rule no longer, beneath the roof that 
sheltered the child. Next morning, the old man 
was in a raging fever accompanied with deli- 
rium ; and sinking under the influence of this 
disorder he lay for many weeks in imminent 
peril of his life. There was watching enough 
now, but it was the watching of strangers who 
made a greedy trade of it, and who, in the inter- 
vals of their attendance upon the sick man, hud- 
dled together with a ghastly good-fellowship, 
and ate and drank and made merry ; for disease 
and death were their ordinary household gods. 
Old Curiosity Shop^ Chap. 11. 

NURSE— Sairey Cramp as a. 

" Why, highty tighty, sir ! " cried Mrs. Gamp, 
" is these your manners ? You want a pitcher 
of cold water throw'd over you to bring you 
round ; that's my belief ; and if you was under 
Betsy Prig you'd have it, too, I do assure you, 
Mr. Chuffey. Spanish Flies is the only thing to 
draw this nonsense out of you ; and if anybody 
wanted to do you a kindness, they'd clap a blis- 
ter of 'em on your head, and put a mustard 
poultige on your back. Who's dead, indeed ! 
It wouldn't be no grievous loss if some one was, 
I think !" 

" He's quiet now, Mrs. Gamp," said Merry. 
" Don't disturb him." 

" Oh, bother the old wictim, Mrs. Chuzzle- 
wit," replied that zealous lady. " I ain't no pa- 
tience with him. You give him his own way 
too much by half. A worritin' wexagious cree- 
tur ! " 

No doubt with the view of carrying out the 
precepts she enforced, and " bothering the old 
wictim " in practice as well as in theory, Mrs. 
Gamp took him by the collar of his coat, and 
gave him some dozen or two of hearty shakes 
backward and forward in his chair ; that exer- 
cise being considered by the disciples of the 
Prig school of nursing (who are very numerous 
among professional ladies) as exceedingly con- 
ducive to repose, and highly beneficial to the 
performance of the nervous functions. Its effect 
in this instance was to render the patient so 
giddy and addle headed that he could say noth- 
ing more ; which Mrs. Gamp regarded as the 
triumph of her art. 

"There!" she said, loosening the old man's 
cravat, in consequence of his being rather black 
in the face after this scientific treatment. 



" Now, I hope, you're easy in your mind. If 
you should turn at all faint, we can soon rewive 
you, sir, I promige you. Bite a person's thumbs, 
or turn their fingers the wrong way," said Mrs. 
Gamp, smiling with the consciousness of at once 
imparting pleasure and instruction to her audi- 
tors, " and they comes to, wonderful, Lord bless 
you ! " 

As this excellent woman had been formally 
entrusted with the care of Mr. Chuffey on a pre- 
vious occasion, neither Mrs. Jonas nor anybody 
else had the resolution to interfere directly with 
her mode of treatment : though all present (Tom 
Pinch and his sister especially) appeared to be 
disposed to differ from her views. For such is 
the rash boldness of the uninitiated, that they 
will frequently set up some monstrous abstract 
principle, such as humanity, or tenderness, or the 
like idle folly, in obstinate defiance of all prece- 
dent and usage ; and will even venture to main- 
tain the same against the persons who have 
made the precedents and established the usage, 
and who must therefore be the best and most 
impartial judges of the subject. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 46. 



He was so wasted, that it seemed as if his 
bones would rattle when they moved him. 
His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes unnatu- 
rally large. He lay back in the easy-chair like 
one more dead than living ; and rolled his lan- 
guid eyes towards the door when Mrs. Gamp 
appeared, as painfully as if their weight alone 
were burdensome to move. 

" And how are we by this time ? " Mrs. 
Gamp observed. " We looks charming." 

" We looks a deal charminger than we are, 
then," returned Mrs. Prig, a little chafed in her 
temper. " We got out of bed back'ards, I 
think, for we're as cross as two sticks. I never 
see sich a man. He wouldn't have been washed, 
if he'd had his own way." 

" She put the soap in my mouth," said the 
unfortunate patient, feebly. 

" Couldn't you keep it shut, then?" retorted 
Mrs. Prig. " Who do you think's to wash one 
feater, and miss another, and wear one's eyes 
out with all manner of fine-work of that de- 
scription, for half-a-crown a day ! If you wants 
to be tittivated, you must pay accovdin'." 

" Oh, dear me ! " cried the patient, " oh dear, 
dear ! " 

" There ! " said Mrs. Prig, " that's the way 
he's been a conducting of himself, Sarah, ever 
since I got him out of bed, if you'll believe it." 

" Instead of being grateful," Mrs. Gamp ob- 
served, "for all our little ways. Oh, fie for 
shame, sir, fie for shame ! " 

Here Mrs. Prig seized the patient by the 
chin, and began to rasp his unhappy head with 
a hair-brush. 

" I suppose you don't like that, neither ! " she 
observed, stopping to look at him. 

It was just possible that he didn't, for the 
brush was a specimen of the hardest kind of in- 
strument producible by modern art ; and his 
very eye-lids were red with the friction. Mrs. 
Prig was gratified to observe the correctness of 
her supposition, and said triumphantly, " she 
know'd as much." 

When his hair was smoothed down comforta- 
bly into his eyes, Mrs. Prig and Mrs. Gamp put 
on his neckerchief; adjusting his shirt-collai 



1 



NURSES 



OFFICE 



with great nicety, so that the starched points 
should also invade those organs, and afflict them 
^ith an artificial ophthalmia. His waistcoat 
and coat were next arranged ; and as every but- 
ton was wrenched into a wrong button-hole, and 
the order of his boots was reversed, he presented 
on the whole rather a melancholy appearance. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 29. 

NURSES-Children and. 

If we all knew our own minds (in a more en- 
larged sense than the popular acceptation of 
that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses 
responsible for most of the dark corners we are 
forced to go back to against our wills. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 15. 

NURSE AND CHILD. 

Charley is accordingly introduced, and, under 
a heavy fire of eyes, sits down to her basin and 
a Druidical ruin of bread-and-butter. In the 
active superintendence of this young person, 
Judy Smallweed appears to attain a perfectly 
geological age, and to date from the remotest 
periods. — Bleak House, Chap. 21. 

NTTRSERY-Child in a. 

The purblind day was feebly struggling with 
the fog, when I opened my eyes to encounter 
those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon 
me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down 
in his bed-gown and cap, and was so cold that 
his teeth were chattering as if he had cut them 
all. — Bleak House, Chap. 4. 

NXTRSERY— Miss Tox in the. 

At the little ceremonies of the bath and toi- 
lette, she assisted with enthusiasm. The ad- 
ministration of infantine doses of physic awak- 
ened all the active sympathy of her character ; 
and being on one occasion secreted in a cup- 
board (whither she had fled in modesty), when 
Mr. Dombey was introduced into the nursery by 
his sister, to behold his son, in the course of 
preparation for bed, taking a short walk uphill 
over Richards's gown, in a short and airy linen 
jacket, Miss Tox was so transported beyond the 
ignorant present as to be unable to refrain from 
crying out, " Is he not beautiful, Mr. Dombey ! 
Is he not a Cupid, Sir ! " and then almost sink- 
ing behind the closet door with confusion and 
blushes. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 5. 



O 

OATH-Of Mr. Peggrotty. 

The only subject, she informed me, on which 
he ever showed a violent temper or swore an 
oath, was this generosity of his ; and if it were 
ever referred to, by any one of them, he 
struck the table a heavy blow with his right 
hand (had split it on one such occasion), and 
swore a dreadful oath that he would be 
*' Gormed " if he didn't cut and run for good, 
if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, 
in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the 
least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb 



passive to be gormed ; but that they all regard- 
ed it as constituting a most solemn impreca- 
tion. — David Copperjield, Chap. 3. 

OBSTRUCTIONS-In life and travel. 

When a man is in a violent hurry to get on, 
and has a specific object in view, the attainment 
of which depends on the completion of his 
journey, the difficulties which interpose them- 
selves in his way appear not only to be innume- 
rable, but to have been called into existence 
especially for the occasion. The remark is by 
no means a new one, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons 
had practical and painful experience of its just- 
ice in the course of his drive. There are three 
classes of animated objects which prevent your 
driving with any degree of comfort or celerity 
through streets which are but little frequented 
— they are pigs, children, and old women. 

Tales, Chap. 10. 

OCCUPATIONS— Humanizing:. 

For myself, I know no station in which, the 
occupation of to-day cheerfully done, and the 
occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to, 
any one of these pursuits is not most humaniz- 
ing and laudable. I know no station which is 
rendered more endurable to the person in it or 
more safe to the person out of it, by having 
ignorance for its associate. I know no sta- 
tion which has a right to monopolize the 
means of mutual instruction, improvement, and 
rational entertainment, or which has ever con- 
tinued to be a station very long, after seeking 
to do so. — American Notes, Chap. 4. 

OFFICE— A lawyer's by candle ligrht. 

As I stood idle by Mr. Jaggers's fire, its rising 
and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf 
look as if they were playing a diabolical game at 
bo-peep with me ; while the pair of coarse fat 
office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as 
he wrote in a corner, were decorated with dirty 
winding-sheets, as if in remembrance of a host 
of hanged clients. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 48. 

OFFICE— A smeary. 

They walked in. And a mighty yellow jaun- 
diced little office Mr. Fips had of it ; with a 
great, black, sprawling splash upon the floor in 
one corner, as if some old clerk had cut his 
throat there years ago, and had let out ink in- 
stead of blood. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 39. 

OFFICE— An intelligrence. 

The office looked just the same as when he 
had left it last, and, indeed, with one or two ex- 
ceptions, there seemed to be the very same pla- 
cards in the window that he had seen before. 
There were the same unimpeachable masters 
and mistresses in want of virtuous servants, and 
the same virtuous servants in want of unim- 
peachable masters and mistresses, and the same 
magnificent estates for the investment of capi- 
tal, and the same enormous quantities of capital 
to be invested in estates, and, in short, the 
same opportunities of all sorts for people who 
wanted to make their fortunes. And a most 
extraordinary proof it was of the national pros- 
perity, that people had not been found to avail 
themselves of such advantages long ago. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 35. 



OFFICE 



340 



OFFICE 



OFFICE— A business. 

Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through 
the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving 
a black sediment upon the panes, showed the 
books and papers, and the figures bending over 
them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as 
much abstracted in appearance from the world 
without, as if they were assembled at the bot- 
tom of the sea ; while a mouldy little strong 
room in the obscure perspective, where a shady 
lamp was always burning, might have represent- 
ed the cavern of some ocean-monster, looking 
on with a red eye at these mysteries of the 
deep, — Dombey &' Son, Chap. 13. 

OFFICE— The Clrctunlocution. 

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody 
knows without being told) the most important 
Department under government. No public busi- 
ness of any kind could possibly be done at any 
time, without the acquiescence of the Circumlo- 
cution Office. Its finger was in the largest pub- 
lic pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was 
equally impossible to do the plainest right and 
to undo the plainest wrong, without the express 
authority of the Circumlocution Office. If an- 
other Gunpowder Plot had been discovered 
half an hour before the lighting of the match, 
nobody would have been justified in saving the 
Parliament until there had been half a score of 
boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks 
of official memoranda, and a family vault full of 
ungrammatical correspondence on the part of 
the Circumlocution Office. 

This glorious establishment had been early in 
the field, when the one sublime principle involv- 
ing the difficult art of governing a country, was 
first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had 
been foremost to study that bright revelation, 
and to carry its shining influence through the 
whole of the official proceedings. Whatever 
was required to be done, the Circumlocution 
Office was beforehand with all the public De- 
partments in the art of perceiving — how not 

TO DO IT. 

Through this delicate perception, through the 
tact with which it invariably seized it, and 
through the genius with which it always acted 
on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen 
to overtop all the public departments ; and 
the public condition had risen to be — what it 
was. 

* * * ♦ * 

Numbers of people were lost in the Circum- 
locution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or 
with projects for the general welfare (and they 
had better have had wrongs at first, than have 
taken that bitter English recipe for certainly 
getting them), who, in slow lapse of time and 
agony had passed safely through other public 
departments ; who, according to rule, had been 
bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded 
by the other ; got referred at last to the Circum- 
locution Office, and never reappeared in the 
light of day. Boards sat upon them, secre- 
taries minuted upon them, commissioners gab- 
bled about them, clerks registered, entered, 
checked, and ticked them off", and they melted 
away. In short, all the business of the coun- 
try went through the Circumlocution Office, 
except the business that never came out of it ; 
ind its name was Legion. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 10. 



OFFICE— An Official's defence of the Clr- 
ctunlocution. 

" No, but really ! Our place is,"' said the easy 
Young Barnacle, " the most inoffensive place 
possible. You'll say we are a Humbug. I won't 
say we are not ; but all that sort of thing is in- 
tended to be, and must be. Don't you see?" 

" I do not," said Clennam, 

" You don't regard it from the right point of 
view. It is the point of view that is the essen- 
tial thing. Regard our place from the point of 
view that we only ask you to leave us alone, and 
we are as capital a Department as you'll find 
anywhere." 

" Is your place there to be left alone?" asked 
Clennam. 

" You exactly hit it," returned Ferdinand. 
'• It is there with the express intention that 
everything shall be left alone. That is what it 
means. That is what it's for. No doubt there's 
a certain form to be kept up that it's for some- 
thing else, but its only a form. Why, good 
Heaven, we are nothing but forms ! Think 
what a lot of our forms you have gone through. 
And you have never got any nearer to an 
end ? " 

" Never," said CTennam, 

" Look at it from the right point of view, and 
there you have us official and eff"ectual. It's 
like a limited game of cricket. A field of out- 
siders are always going in to bowl at the Public 
Sei'vice, and we block the balls." 

Clennam asked what became of the bowlers? 
The airy young Barnacle replied that they grew 
tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs 
broken, died off", gave it up, went_ in for other 
games. 

" And this occasions me to congratulate my- 
self again," he pursued, " on the circumstance 
that our place has had nothing to do with your 
temporary retirement. It very easily might 
have had a hand in it ; because it is undeniable 
that we are sometimes a most unlucky place in 
our effects upon people who will not leave us 
zXone."— Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 28., 

OFFICE— The Circumlocution. 

The waiting-rooms of that Department soon 
began to be familiar with his presence, and he 
was generally ushered into them by its janitors 
much as a pickpocket might be shown into a 
police-office ; the principal diff"erence being that 
the object of the latter class of public business 
is to keep the pickpocket, while the Circumlo- 
cution object was to get rid of Clennam. How- 
ever, he was resolved to stick to the Great De- 
partment ; and so the work of form-filling, cor- 
responding, minuting, memorandum-making, 
signing, counter-signing, counter-counter-sign- 
ing backwards and forwards, and referring side- 
ways, crosswise, and zigzag, recommenced. 

Here arises a feature of the Circumlocution 
Office, not previously mentioned in the present 
record. When that admirable Department got 
into trouble, and was, by some infuriated Mem- 
ber of Parliament, whom the smaller Barnacles 
almost suspected of laboring under diabolic 
possession, attacked, on the merits of no indi- 
vidual case, but as an Institution wholly abomi- 
nable and Bedlamite ; then the noble or right 
honorable Barnacle who represented it in the 
House, would smite that Member and cleave 
him asunder, with a statement of the quantify 



OFFICE 



841 



OFFICE 



of business (for the prevention of business) done 
by the Circumlocution Office. Then would that 
noble or right honorable Barnacle hold in his 
hand a paper containing a few figures, to which, 
with the permission of the house, he would en- 
treat its attention. Then would the inferior 
Barnacles exclaim, obeying orders, *' Hear, 
Hear, Hear ! " and " Read ! " Then would the 
noble or right honorable Barnacle perceive, sir. 
from this little document, which he thought 
might carry conviction even to the perversest 
mind (Derisive laughter and cheering from the 
Barnacle fry), that within the short compass of 
the last financial half-year, this much-maligned 
Department (Cheers) had written and received 
fifteen thousand letters (Loud cheers), twenty- 
four thousand minutes (Louder cheers), and 
thirty-two thousand five hundred and seventeen 
memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, an in- 
genious gentleman connected with the Depart- 
ment, and himself a valuable public servant, 
had done him the favor to make a curious cal- 
culation of the amount of stationery consumed 
in it during the same period. It formed a part 
of this same short document ; and he derived 
from it the remarkable fact, that the sheets of 
foolscap paper it had devoted to the public ser- 
vice would pave the footways on both sides of 
Oxford Street from end to end, and leave nearly 
a quarter of a mile to spare for the park (Im- 
mense cheering and laughter) : while of tape — 
red tape — it had used enough to stretch, in 
graceful festoons, from Hyde Park Corner to 
the General Post-Office. Then, amidst a burst 
of official exultation, would the noble or right 
honorable Barnacle sit down, leaving the muti- 
lated fragments of the Member on the field. 
No one, after that exemplary demolition of him, 
would have the hardihood to hint that the more 
the Circumlocution Office did, the less was done, 
and that the greatest blessing it could confer on 
an unhappy public would be to do nothing. 
Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 8. 

OFFICE— The trials of the Circumlocution. 

Mr, Meagles went through the narrative ; the 
established narrative, which has become tire- 
some ; the matter-of-course narrative which we 
all knew by heart. How, after interminable 
attendance and correspondence, after infinite 
impertinences, ignorances, and insults, my lords 
made Minute, number three thousand four 
hundred and seventy-two, allowing the culprit 
to make certain trials of his invention at his 
own expense. How the trials were made in 
the presence of a board of six, of whom two an- 
cient members were too blind to see it, two 
other ancient members were too deaf to hear it, 
one other ancient member was too lame to get 
near it, and the final ancient member was too 
pig-headed to look at it. How there were 
more years ; more impertinences, ignorances, 
and insults. How my lords then made a 
Minute, number five thousand one hundred 
and three, whereby they resigned the business 
to the Circumlocution Office. How the Cir- 
cumlocution Office, in course of time, took up 
the business as if it were a bran new thing of 
yesterday, which had never been heard of be- 
fore ; muddled the business, addled the busi- 
ness, tossed the business in a wet blanket. 
How the impertinences, ignorances, and insults 
went through the multiplication table. How 



there was a reference of the invention to three 
Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew noth- 
ing about it ; into whose heads nothing could 
be hammered about it ; who got bored about 
it, and reported physical impossibilities about 
it. How the Circumlocution Office, in a 
Minute, number eight thousand seven hundred 
and forty, " saw no reason to reverse the deci- 
sion at which my lords had arrived." How the 
Circumlocution Office, being reminded that my 
lords had arrived at no decision, shelved the 
business. How there had been a final inter- 
view with the head of the Circumlocution 
Office that very morning, and how the Brazen 
Head had spoken, and had been, upon the 
whole, and under all the circumstances, and 
looking at it from the various points of view, 
of opinion that one of two courses was to be 
pursued in respect of the business : that was to 
say, either to leave it alone for evermore, or to 
begin it all over again. 

***** 

If that airy young Barnacle had been there, 
he would have frankly told them perhaps that 
the Circumlocution Office had achieved its 
functions. That what the Barnacles had to do, 
was to stick on to the national ship as long as 
they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the 
ship, clean the ship, would be to knock them 
off ; that they could but be knocked off once ; 
and that if the ship went down with them yet 
sticking to it, that was the ship's look out, and 
not theirs. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Cliap. lo. 

OFFICE— Aspirants for (the Barnacles). 

And there too was a sprinkling of less distin- 
guished Parliamentary Barnacles, who had not 
as yet got anything snug, and were going 
through their probation to prove their worthi- 
ness. These Barnacles perched upon staircases 
and hid in passages, waiting their orders to 
make houses or not to make houses ; and they did 
all their hearing, and ohing, and cheering, and 
barking, under directions from the heads of the 
family ; and they put dummy motions on the 
paper in the way of other men's motions, and 
they stalled disagreeable subjects off until late 
in the night, and late in the session, and then, 
with virtuous patriotism, cried out that it was 
too late ; and they went down into the country, 
whenever they were sent, and swore that Lord 
Decimus had revived trade from a swoon and 
commerce from a fit, and had doubled the har- 
vest of corn, quadrupled the harvest of hay, and 
prevented no end of gold flying out of the 
Bank. Also these Barnacles were dealt, by the 
heads of the family, like so many cards below 
the court-cards, to public meetings and dinners ; 
where they bore testimony to all sorts of ser- 
vices on the part of their noble and honorable 
relatives, and buttered the Barnacles on all 
sorts of toasts. And they stood, under similar 
orders, at all sorts of elections ; and they turned 
out of their own seats, on the shortest notice 
and the most unreasonable terms, to let in 
other men ; and they fetched and carried, and 
toadied and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate 
heaps of dirt, and were indefatigable in the 
public service. And there was not a list in all 
the Circumlocution Office, of places that might 
fall vacant anywhere within half a century, 
from a lord of the Treasury to a Chinese consul, 
and up again to a governor-general of India, but. 



OFFICE-HOLDERS 



342 



OFFICIAli 



as applicants for such places, the names of some 
or of every one of these hungry and adhesive 
Barnacles were down. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 34. 

OFFICE-HOLDERS— The Barnacles. 

To have got the whole Barnacle family to- 
gether would have been impossible, for two 
reasons. Firstly, because no building could have 
held all the members and connections of that 
illustrious house. Secondly, because wherever 
there was a square yard of ground in British 
occupation, under the sun or moon, with a pub- 
lic post upon it, sticking to that post was a Bar- 
nacle, No intrepid navigator could plant a 
flagstaff upon any spot of earth, and take pos- 
session of it in the British name, but to that spot 
of earth, so soon as the discovery was known, 
the Circumlocution Office sent out a Barnacle 
and a despatch-box. Thus the Barnacles were 
all over the world, in every direction — despatch- 
boxing the compass. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 34. 

OFFICIAL-(Alderman Cute). 

Seen the Alderman ? Oh, dear ! Who could 
ever help seeing the Alderman ? He was so 
considerate, so affable, he bore so much in mind 
the natural desire of folks to see him, that if he 
had a fault, it was the being constantly On View. 
And wherever the great people were, there, to 
be sure, attracted by the kindred sympathy be- 
tween great souls, was Cute. — Chimes, yi Quarter. 

OFFICIAL-The village. 

His income is small, certainly, as the rusty 
black coat and threadbare velvet collar de- 
monstrate ; but then he lives free of house- 
rent, has a limited allowance of coals and can- 
dles, and an almost unlimited allowance of 
authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, 
thin, bony man ; always wears shoes and black 
cotton stockings with his surtout ; and eyes you, 
as you pass his parlor window, as if he wished 
you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen 
of his power. He is an admirable specimen of 
a small tyrant: morose, brutish, and ill-tem- 
pered ; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his 
superiors, and jealous of the influence and au- 
thority of the beadle. 

Sketches (Scenes), Chap. i. 

OFFICIALS-Villagre (The parish beadle). 

The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps 
the most, important member of the local admin- 
istration. He is not so well off as the church- 
wardens, certainly, nor is he so learned as the 
vestry-clerk, nor does he order things quite so 
much his own way as either of them. But his 
power is very great, notwithstanding ; and the 
dignity of his office is never impaired by the 
absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. 
The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. 
It is quite delightful to hear him, as he explains 
the state of the existing poor-laws to the deaf 
old women in the board-room passage on busi- 
ness nights ; and to hear what he said to the 
senior churchwarden. 

***** 

See him again on Sunday in his state-coat and 
cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show 
in his left hand, and a small cane for use in his 
riglit. How pompously he marshals the children 



into their places ! and how demurely the little 
urchins look at him askance as he surveys them 
when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye 
peculiar to beadles ! The churchwardens and 
overseers being duly installed in their curtained 
pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, 
erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, 
and divides his attention between his prayer- 
book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the com- 
mencement of the communion service, when the 
whole congregation is hushed into a profound 
silence, broken only by the voice of the officiat- 
ing clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the 
stone floor of the aisle with astounding clear- 
ness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. 
His involuntary look of horror is instantly 
changed into one of perfect indifference, as if 
he were the only person present who had not 
heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After 
putting forth his right leg now and then, as a 
feeler, the victim who dropped the money ven- 
tures to make one or two distinct dives after it ; 
and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his 
little round head, when it again appears above 
the seat, with divers double knocks, adminis- 
tered with the cane before noticed, to the in- 
tense delight of three young men in an adjacent 
pew, who cough violently at intervals until the 
conclusion of the sermon. 

Sketches {Scenes), Chap. i. 

OFFICIALS— The nursery of. 

Such a nursery of statesmen had the Depart- 
ment become, in virtue of a long career of this 
nature, that several solemn lords had attained 
the reputation of being quite unearthly prodi- 
gies of business, solely from having practised 
How not to do it, at the head of the Circumi'- . 
cution Office. As to the minor priests and aco- 
lytes of that temple, the result of all this was 
that they stood divided into two classes, and, 
down to the junior messenger, either believed 
in the Circumlocution Office as a heaven-bom 
institution, that had an absolute right to do 
whatever it liked ; or took refuge in total in- 
fidelity, and considered it a flagrant nuisance. 

The Barnacle family had for some time helped 
to administer the Circumlocution Office. The 
Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered them- 
selves in a general way as having vested rights 
in that direction, and took it ill if any other 
family had much to say to it. The Barnacles 
were a very high family, and a very large family. 
They were dispersed all over the public offices, 
and held all sorts of public places. Either the 
nation was under a load of obligation to the 
Barnacles, or the Barnacles were under a load 
of obligation to the nation. It was not quite 
unanimously settled which ; the Barnacles hav- 
ing their opinion, the nation theirs. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 10. 

OFFICIAL— Barnacle at home. 

Mr. Barnacle would see him. Would he walk 
up-stairs ? He would, and he did ; and in the 
drawing-room, with his leg on a rest, he found 
Mr. Barnacle himself, the express image and 
presentment of How not to do it. 

Mr. Barnacle dated from a better time, when 
the country was not so parsimonious, and the 
Circumlocution Office was not so badgered. He 
wound and wound folds of white cravat round 
his neck, as he wound and wound folds of tape 



OFFICIAL 



348 



OLD BOYS 



and paper round the neck of the country. His 
wristbands and collar were oppressive, his voice 
and manner were oppressive. He had a large 
watch-chain and bunch of seals, a coat buttoned 
up to inconvenience, a waistcoat buttoned up to 
inconvenience, an unwrinkled pair of trousers, 
a stiff pair of boots. He was altogether splen- 
did, massive, overpowering, and impracticable. 
He seemed to have been sitting for his portrait 
to Sir Thomas Lawrence all the days of his 
life. 

" Mr. Clennam ? " said Mr. Barnacle. " Be 
seated." 

Mr. Clennam became seated. 

" You have called on me, I believe," said Mr. 
Barnacle, " at the Circumlocution — " giving it 
the air of a word of about five and twenty syl- 
lables, " Office." 

*' I have taken that liberty." 

Mr. Barnacle solemnly bent his head as who 
should say " I do not deny that it is a liberty ; 
proceed to take another liberty, and let me know 
your business." 

Mr. Barnacle tapped his fingers on the table, 
and, as if he were now sitting for his portrait to 
a new and strange artist, appeared to say to his 
visitor, " If you will be good enough to take me 
with my present lofty expression, I shall feel 
obliged." — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. lo. 

OFFICIAIi— Barnacle, the public. 

For Mr, Tite Barnacle, Mr. Arthur Clennam 
made his fifth enquiry one day at the Circumlo- 
cution Office ; having on previous occasions 
awaited that gentleman successively in a hall, a 
glass case, a waiting-room, and a fire-proof pas- 
sage where the Department seemed to keep its 
wind. On this occasion Mr. Barnacle was not 
engaged, as he had been before, with the noble 
prodigy at the head of the Department ; but was 
absent. Barnacle Junior, however, was an- 
nounced as a lesser star, yet visible above the 
office horizon. 

With Barnacle Junior he signified his desire to 
confer ; and found that young gentleman singe- 
ing the calves of his legs at the parental fire, and 
supporting his spine against the mantel-shelf. 
It was a comfortable room, handsomely furnish- 
ed in the higher official manner ; and presenting 
stately suggestions of the absent Barnacle, in the 
thick carpet, the leather-covered desk to sit at, 
the leather-covered desk to stand at, the formid- 
able easy-chair and hearth-rug, the interposed 
screen, the torn-up papers, the despatch-boxes 
with little labels sticking out of them, like 
medicine bottles or dead game, the pervading 
smell of leather and mahogany, and a general 
bamboozling air of How not to do it. 

The present Barnacle, holding Mr. Clennam's 
card in his hand, had a youthful aspect, and the 
fluffiest little whisker, perhaps, that ever was 
seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, 
that he seemed half- fledged, like a young bird ; 
and a compassionate observer might have urged, 
that if he had not singed the calves of his legs, 
he would have died of cold. He had a 
superior eye-glass dangling round his neck, but 
unfortunately had such flat orbits to his eyes, 
and such limp little eyelids, that it wouldn't 
stick in when he put it up, but kept tumbling 
out against his waistcoat buttons with a click 
that discomposed him very much. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. lo. 



OLD AGE. 

* * * a horse so old that his birthday was 
lost in the mists of antiquity. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. I. 

OLD AGE— The vanity of (The grave-digr- 

g-ers). 

" I have been thinking, Davy," replied the 
sexton, " that she," he pointed to the grave, 
" must have been a deal older than you or 
me." 

" Seventy-nine," answered the old man with 
a shake of the head, " I tell you that I saw it." 

"Saw it?" replied the sexton; "aye, but, 
Davy, women don't always tell the truth about 
their age." 

" That's true, indeed," said the other old man, 
with a sudden sparkle in his eye. " She might 
have been older." 

" I am sure she must have been. Why, only 
think how old she looked. You and I seemed 
but boys to her." 

" She did look old," rejoined David. " You're 
right. She did look old." 

*' Call to mind how old she looked for many 
a long, long year, and say if she could be but 
seventy-nine at last — only our age," said the 
sexton. 

" Five year older at the very least ! " cried 
the other. 

" Five ! " retorted the sexton. " Ten. Good 
eighty-nine. I call to mind the time her daugh- 
ter died. She was eighty-nine if she was a day, 
and tries to pass upon us now for ten year young- 
er. Oh ! human vanity." 

The other old man was not behindhand with 
some moral reflections on this fruitful theme, 
and both adduced a mass of evidence, of such 
weight as to render it doubtful — not whether 
the deceased was of the age suggested, but 
whether she had not almost reached the patri- 
archal term of a hundred. When they had 
settled this question to their mutual satisfaction, 
the sexton, with his friend's assistance, rose to go. 

" It's chilly, sitting here, and I must be care- 
ful — till the summer," he said, as he prepared 
to limp away. 

" What ? " asked old David. 

" He's very deaf, poor fellow ! " cried the 
sexton. " Good-bye ! " 

" Ah ! " said old David, looking after him. 
" He's failing very fast. He ages every day." 

And so they parted ; each persuaded that the 
other had less life in him than himself ; and 
both greatly consoled and comforted by the lit- 
tle fiction that they had agreed upon, respecting 
Becky Morgan, whose decease was no longer 
a precedent of uncomfortable application, and 
would be no business of theirs for half a score 
of years to come. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54. 

OLD BOYS. 

If we had to make a classification of society, 
there are a particular kind of men whom we 
should immediately set down under the head of 
*' Old Boys ;" and a column of most extensive 
dimensions the old boys would require. To 
what precise causes the rapid advance of old boy 
population is to be traced, we are unable to de- 
termine. It would be an interesting and curi- 
ous speculation, but, as we have not sufficient 
space to devote to it here, we simply stale the 



OLD CLOTHES 



344 



OLD CLOTHES 



fact that the numbers of the old boys have been 
gradually augmenting within the last few years, 
and that they are at this moment alarmingly on 
the increase. , 

Upon a general review of the subject, and 
without considering it minutely in detail, we 
should be disposed to subdivide the old boys 
into two distinct classes — the gay old boys, and 
the steady old boys. The gay old boys are 
paunchy old men in the disguise of young ones, 
who frequent the Quadrant and Regent Street 
in the daytime ; the theatres (especially theatres 
under lady management) at night ; and who as- 
sume all the foppishness and levity of boys, 
without the excuse of youth or inexperience. 
The steady old boys are certain stout old gen- 
tlemen of clean appearance, who are always to 
be seen in the same taverns, at the same hours 
every evening, smoking and drinking in the same 
company. 

There was once a fine collection of old boys 
to be seen round the circular table at Offley's 
every night, between the hours of half-past eight 
and half-past eleven. We have lost sight of them 
for some time. There were, and may be still, 
for aught we know, two splendid specimens in 
full blossom at the Rainbow Tavern in Fleet 
Street, who always used to sit in the box nearest 
the fire-place, and smoked long cherry-stick 
pipes which went under the table, with the bowls 
resting on the floor. Grand old boys they were 
— fat, red-faced, white-headed old fellows — al- 
ways there — one on one side the table, and the 
other opposite — puffing and drinking away in 
great state. Everybody knew them, and it was 
supposed by some people that they were both 
immortal. 

Mr. John Dounce was an old boy of the latter 
class (we don't mean immortal, but steady), a 
retired glove and braces maker, a widower, resi- 
dent with three daughters — all grown up, and all 
unmarried — in Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. 
He was a short, round, large -faced, tubbish sort 
of a man, with a broad-brimmed hat, and a 
square coat ; and had that grave, but confident, 
kind of roll, peculiar to old boys in general. 
Regular as clock-work — breakfast at nine — 
dress and tittivate a little — down to the Sir 
Somebody's Head — glass of ale and tlie paper — 
come back again, and take daughters out for a 
walk — dinner at three — glass of grog and pipe — 
nap — tea — little walk — Sir Somebody's Head 
again — capital house — delightful evenings. 

:tc :ic 9|c He He 

John Dounce, having lost his old friends, 
alienated his relations, and rendered himself 
ridiculous to everybody, made offers successively 
to a schoolmistress, a landlady, a feminine to- 
bacconist, and a housekeeper ; and, being di- 
rectly rejected by each and every of them, was 
accepted by his cook, with whom he now lives, 
a henpecked husband, a melancholy monument 
of antiquated misery, and a living warning to all 
uxorious old boys. 

Sketches (Characters), Chap. 7. 

OLD CLOTHES— The depositories of. 

Through every alteration and every change, 
Monmouth Street has still remained the burial- 
place of the fashions ; and such, to judge from 
all present appearances, it will remain until 
there are no more fashions to bury. 

We love to walk among these extensive groves 



of the illustrious dead, and to indulge in the 
speculations to which they give rise ; now fit- 
ting a deceased coat, then a dead pair of trou- 
sers, and anon the mortal remains of a gaudy 
waistcoat, upon some being of our own conjur- 
ing up, and endeavoring from the shape and 
fashion of the garment itself, to bring its former 
owner before our mind's eye. We have gone 
on speculating in this way, until whole rows of 
coats have started from their pegs, and buttoned 
up, of their own accord, round the waists of 
imaginary wearers ; lines of trousers have 
jumped down to meet them ; waistcoats have 
almost burst with anxiety to put themselves on ; 
and half an acre of shoes have suddenly found 
feet to fit them, and gone stumping down the 
street with a noise which has fairly awakened 
us from our pleasant reverie, and driven us 
slowly away, with a bewildered stare, an object 
of astonishment to the good people of Mon- 
mouth Street, and of no slight suspicion to the 
policeman at the opposite street corner. 

We were occupied in this manner the other 
day, endeavoring to fit a pair of lace-up half- 
boots on an ideal personage, for whom, to say 
the truth, they were full a couple of sizes too 
small, when our eyes happened to alight on a 
few suits of clothes ranged outside a shop-win- 
dow, which it immediately struck us, must at 
different periods have all belonged to, and been 
worn by, the same individual, and had now, by 
one of those strange conjunctions of circumstan- 
ces which will occur sometimes, come to be ex- 
posed together for sale in the same shop. The 
idea seemed a fantastic one, and we looked at 
the clothes again, with a firm determination not 
to be easily led away. No, we were right ; the 
more we looked the more we were convinced 
of the accuracy of our previous impression. 
There was the man's whole life written as legi- 
bly on those clothes, as if we had his autobi- 
ography engrossed on parchment before us. 
Sketches {Scenes), Chap. 6. 

OLD CLOTHES— Dealers in. 

We have always entertained a particular at- 
tachment towards Monmouth Street, as the only 
true and real emporium for second-hand wear- 
ing apparel. Monmouth Street is venerable 
from its antiquity, and respectable from its use- 
fulness. Holywell Street we despise ; the red- 
headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly 
haul you into their squalid houses, and thrust 
you into a suit of clothes, whether you will or 
not, we detest. 

The inhabitants of Monmouth Street are a 
distinct class ; a peaceable and retiring race, 
who immure themselves for the most part in 
deep cellars, or small back parlors, and who 
seldom come forth into the world, except in the 
dusk and coolness of the evening, when they 
may be seen seated in chairs on the pavement, 
smoking their pipes, or watching the gambols 
of their engaging children as they revel in the 
gutter, a happy troop of infantine scavengers. 
Their countenances bear a thoughtful and a 
dirty cast, certain indications of their love of 
traffic ; and their habitations are distinguished 
by that disregard of outward appearance, and 
neglect of personal comfort, so common among 
people who are constantly immersed in pro- 
found speculations, and deeply engaged in sed- 
entary pursuits. — Sketches {Scenes), Chap. 6. 



OLD COUPLE 



845 



OLD mAN 



OLD COUPLE- The. 

They are grandfather and grandmother to 
a dozen grown people, and have great-grand- 
children besides ; their bodies are bent, their 
hair is gray, their step tottering and infirm. 
Is this the lightsome pair whose wedding was 
so merry, and have the young couple indeed 
grown old so soon ? 

It seems but yesterday, — and yet what a host 
of cares and griefs are crowded into the in- 
tervening time, which, reckoned by them, 
lengthens out into a century ! How many new 
associations have wreathed themselves about 
their hearts since then ! The old time is gone, 
and a new time has come for others, — not for 
them. They are but the rusting link that 
feebly joins the two, and is silently loosening 
its hold and dropping asunder. 

It seems but yesterday, — and yet three of 
their children have sunk into the grave, and 
the tree that shades it has grown quite old. 
One was an infant, — they wept for him. The 
next a girl, a slight young thing too delicate 
for earth, — her loss was hard indeed to bear. 
The third, a man. That was the worst of all, 
but even that grief is softened now. 

It seems but yesterday,— and yet how the 
gay and laughing faces of that bright morning 
have changed and vanished from above ground ! 
Faint likenesses of some remain about them 
yet, but they are very faint, and scarcely to be 
traced. The rest are only seen in dreams, 
and even they are unlike what they were, in 
eyes so old and dim. 

One or two dresses from the bridal ward- 
robe are yet preserved. They are of a quaint 
and antique fashion, and seldom seen, except 
in pictures. White has turned yellow, and 
brighter hues have faded. Do you wonder, 
child ? The wrinkled face was once as smooth 
as yours, the eyes as bright, the shrivelled skin as 
fair and delicate. It is the work of hands 
that have been dust these many years. 

Where are the fairy lovers of that happy day, 
whose annual return comes upon the old man 
and his wife like the echo of some village 
bell which has long been silent ? 

* * * * * 

This morning the old couple are cheerful but 
serious, recalling old times as well as they can 
remember them, and dwelling upon many pas- 
sages in their past lives which the day brings to 
mind. The old lady reads aloud, in a tremu- 
lous voice, out of a great Bible, and the old gen- 
tleman, with his hand to his ear, listens with 
profound respect. When the book is closed, 
they sit silent for a short space, and afterwards 
resume their conversation, with a reference per- 
haps to their dead children, as a subject not un- 
suited to that they have just left. By degrees 
they are led to consider which of those who sur- 
vive are the most like those dearly remembered 
objects, and so they fall into a less solemn 
strain, and become cheerful again. 

How many people in all, grandchildren, great- 
grandchildren, and one or two intimate friends 
of the family, dine together to-day at the eldest 
son's to congratulate the old couple, and wish 
them many happy returns, is a calculation be- 
yond our powers ; but this we know, that the 
old couple no sooner present themselves, very 
sprucely and carefully attired, than there is a 
violent shouting and rushing forward of the 



younger branches with all manner of presehts, 
such as pocket-books, pencil-cases, pen-wipers, 
watch-papers, pincushions, sleeve-buckles, work- 
ed slippers, watch-guards, and even a nutmeg- 
grater ; the latter article being presented by a 
very chubby and very little boy, who exhibits it 
in great triumph as an extraordinary variety. 
The old couple's emotion at these tokens of re- 
membrance occasions quite a pathetic scene, of 
which the chief ingredients are a vast quantity 
of kissing and hugging, and repeated wipings 
of small eyes and noses with small square 
pocket-handkerchiefs, which don't come at all 
easily out of small pockets. Even the peevish 
bachelor is moved, and he says, as he presents 
the old gentleman with a queer sort of antique 
ring from his own finger, that he'll be de'ed if 
he doesn't think he looks younger than he did 
ten years ago. 

The old couple sit side by side, and the old 
time seems like yesterday indeed. Looking 
back upon the path they have travelled, its dust 
and ashes disappear ; the flowers that withered 
long ago show brightly again upon its borders, 
and they grow young once more in the youth 
of those about them. — Sketches of Couples, 

OLD MAN— The conventional. 

Anybody may pass, any day, in the thronged 
thoroughfares of the metropolis, some meagre, 
wrinkled, yellow old man (who might be sup- 
posed to have dropped from the stars, if there 
were any star in the heavens dull enough to be 
suspected of casting off so feeble a spark), creep- 
ing along with a scared air, as though bewilder- 
ed and a little frightened by the noise and bustle. 
This old man is always a little old man. If he 
were ever a big old man, he has shrunk into a 
little old man ; if he were always a little old 
man, he has dwindled into a less old man. His 
coat is of a color, and cut, that never was the 
mode anywhere, at any period. Clearly, it was 
not made for him, or for any individual mortal. 
Some wholesale contractor measured Fate for 
five thousand coats of such quality, and Fate 
has lent this old coat to this old man, as one of 
a long unfinished line of many old men. It has 
always large dull metal buttons, similar to no 
other buttons. This old man wears a hat, a 
thumbed and napless and yet an obdurate hat, 
which has never adapted itself to the shape of 
his poor head. His coarse shirt and his coarse 
neckcloth have no more individuality than his 
coat and hat : they have the same character of 
not being his— of not being anybody's. Yet 
this old man wears these clothes with a certain 
unaccustomed air of being dressed and elaborat- 
ed for the public ways ; as though he passed the 
greater part of his time in a nightcap and gown. 
And so, like the country mouse in the second 
year of a famine, come to see the town-mouse, 
and timidly threading his way to the town-mouse's 
lodging through a city of cats, this old man 
passes in the streets. 

Sometimes, on holidays, towards evening, he 
will be seen to walk with a slightly increased in- 
firmity, and his old eyes will glimmer with a 
moist and marshy light. Then the little old 
man is drunk. A very small measure will over- 
set him ; he may be bowled off his unsteady legs 
with a half-pint pot. Some pitying acquaintance 
— chance acquaintance, very often — has warmed 



OLD TIMES 



346 



OliD MAIDS 



up his weakness with a treat of beer, and the 
consequence will be the lapse of a longer time 
than usual before he shall pass again. For the 
little old man is going home to the Workhouse ; 
and on his good behavior they do not let him 
out often (though methinks they might, consider- 
ing the few years he has before him to go out 
in, under the sun) ; and on his bad behavior 
they shut him up closer than ever, in a grove 
of two score and nineteen more old men, every 
one of whom smells of all the others. 

Mrs. Plornish's father — a poor little reedy pip- 
ing old gentleman, like a worn-out bird ; who 
had been in what he called the music-binding 
business, and met with great misfortunes, and 
who had seldom been able to make his way, or 
to see it, or to pay it, or to do anything at all 
with it but find it no thoroughfare — had re- 
tired of his own accord to the Workhouse which 
was appointed by law to be the Good Samaritan 
of his district. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 31. 

OLD TIMES. 

" Those darling byegone times, Mr. Carker," 
said Cleopatra, " with their delicious fortresses, 
and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful 
places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, 
and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and 
everything that makes life truly charming ! How 
dreadfully we have degenerated ! " 

" Yes, we have fallen ofif deplorably," said Mr. 
Carker. 

" We have no Faith left, positively," said Mrs. 
Skewton, advancing her shrivelled ear ; for Mr. 
Dombey was saying something to Edith. " We 
have no Faith in the dear old Barons, who were 
the most delightful creatures — or in the dear old 
Priests, who were the most warlike of men — or 
even in the days of that inestimable Queen Bess, 
upon the wall there, which were so extremely 
golden. Dear creature ! She was all Heart ! 
And that charming father of hers ! I hope you 
doat on Hariy the Eighth ! " 

" I admire him very much," said Carker. 

" So bluff ! " cried Mrs, Skewton, " wasn't he ? 
So burly. So truly English. Such a picture, too, 
he makes, with his dear little peepy eyes, and his 
benevolent chin ! " 

***** 

" Oh ! " cried Mrs. Skewton, with a faded little 
scream of rapture, " the Castle is charming ! — as- 
sociations of the Middle Ages — and all that — 
which is so truly exquisite. Don't you doat upon 
the Middle Ages, Mr. Carker?" 

" Very much,, indeed," said Mr. Carker. 

•' Such charming times ! " cried Cleopatra. " So 
full of faith ! So vigorous and forcible ! So pictu- 
resque ! So perfectly removed from common- 
place ! Oh dear ! If they would only leave us 
a little more of the poetry of existence in these 
terrible days ! " — Dombey (Sr* Son^ Chap. 27. 

Still the red-faced gentleman extolled the 
good old times, the grand old times, the great 
old times. No matter what anybody else said, 
he still went turning round and round in one set 
form of words concerning them ; as a poor squir- 
rel turns and turns in its revolving cage ; touch- 
ing the mechanism and trick of which, it has 
probably quite as distinct perceptions as ever 
this red-faced gentleman had of his deceased 
Millennium. — Chimes ^ 1st Quarter. 



OLD PEOPLE— Dick Swiveller's opinion of. 
" He don't look like it," said Dick, shaking his 
head, " but these old people — there's no trusting 
'em, Fred. There's an aunt of mine down in 
Dorsetshire that was going to die when I was 
eight years old, and hasn't kept her word yet 
They're so aggravating, so unprincipled, so spite- 
ful. Unless there's apoplexy in the family, Fred, 
you can't calculate upon 'em, and even then they 
deceive you just as often as not." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 7. 

OLD PEOPLE— The obstinacy of. 

" Nothing but taking him in the very fact of 
eloping, will convince the old lady, sir," replied 
Job. 

" All them old cats will run their heads agin 
mile-stones," observed Mr. Weller in a parenthe- 
sis. — Pickwick, Chap. 16. 

OLD MAN— A vigorous. 

He was a strong and vigorous old man, with 
a will of iron, and a voice of brass. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 3. 

OLD LADY-A pretty. 

What is prettier than an old lady — except a 
young lady — when her eyes are bright, when hei 
figure is trim and compact, when her face is 
cheerful and calm, when her dress is as the 
dress of a china shepherdess ; so dainty in its 
colors, so individually assorted to herself, so 
neatly moulded on her? Nothing is prettier 
thought the good Minor Canon frequently, when 
taking his seat at table opposite his long 
widowed mother. Her thought at such times 
may be condensed into the two words that 
oftenest did duty together in all her conversa 
tions : " My Sept ! "—Edwin Drood, Chap. 6 

OLD MAIDS. 

The house was the perfection of neatness — so 
were the four Miss Willises. Everything was 
formal, stiff, and cold — so were the four Miss 
Willises. Not a single chair of the whole set 
was ever seen out of its place — not a single Miss 
Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of 
hers. There they always sat, in the same places, 
doing precisely the same things at the same 
hour. The eldest Miss Willis used to knit, the 
second to draw, the two others to play duets on 
the piano. They seemed to have no separate 
existence, but to have made up their minds just 
to winter through life together. They were 
three long graces in drapery, with the addition, 
like a school-dinner, of another long grace after- 
wards — the three fates with another sister — the 
Siamese twins multiplied by two. The eldest 
Miss Willis grew bilious — the four Miss Willises 
grew bilious immediately. The eldest Miss 
Willis grew ill-tempered and religious — the four 
Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious 
directly. Whatever the eldest did, the others 
did, and whatever anybody else did, they all 
disapproved of ; and thus they vegetated — living 
in Polar harmony among themselves, and, as 
they sometimes went out, or saw company " in 
a quiet way" at home, occasionally icing the 
neighbors. Three years passed over in this 
way, when an unlooked-for and extraordinary 
phenomenon occurred. The Miss Willises 
showed symptoms of summer ; the frost gradual- 
ly broke up ; a complete thaw took place. Was 



OLD MAID 



847 



OLD FIRM 



it possible ? one of the four Miss Willises was 
going to be married ! — Sketches {Scenes), Chap. 3. 

OLD MAID— Miss Voltunnia, the. 

Miss Volumnia, displaying in early life a 
pretty talent for cutting ornaments out of col- 
ored paper, and also for singing to the guitar in 
the Spanish tongue, and propounding French 
conundrums in country houses, passed the twen- 
ty years of her existence between twenty and 
forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Laps- 
ing then out of date, and being considered to 
bore mankind by her vocal performances in the 
Spanish language, she retired to Bath ; where 
she lives slenderly on an annual present from 
Sir Leicester, and whence she makes occasional 
resurrections in the country houses of her cous- 
ins. She has an extensive acquaintance at Bath 
among appalling old gentlemen with thin legs 
and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing 
in that dreary city. But she is a little dreaded 
elsewhere, in consequence of an indiscreet pro- 
fusion in the article of rouge, and persistency in 
an obsolete pearl necklace, like a rosary of little 
bird's-eggs. — Bleak House, Chap. 28. 

OLD MAID— A fashionable. 

The only great occasions for Volumnia, in 
this changed aspect of the place in Lincolnshire, 
are those occasions, rare and widely-separated, 
when something is to be done for the county, 
or the country, in the way of gracing a public 
ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph 
come out in fairy form, and proceed with joy 
under cousinly escort to the exhausted old as- 
sembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off; which, 
during three hundred and sixty-four days and 
nights of every ordinary year, is a kind of Anti- 
podean lumber-room, full of old chairs and ta- 
bles, upside down. Then, indeed, does she cap- 
tivate all hearts by her condescension, by her 
girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as in 
the days when the hideous old general with the 
mouth too full of teeth, had not cut one of them 
at two guineas each. Then does she twirl and 
twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through 
the mazes of the dance. Then do the swains 
appear with tea, with lemonade, with sandwiches, 
with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, state- 
ly and unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. 
Then is there a singular parallel between her 
and the little glass chandeliers of another age, 
embellishing that assembly-room ; which, with 
their meagre stems, their spare little drops, their 
disappointing knobs where no drops are, their 
bare little stalks from which knobs and drops 
have both departed, and their little feeble pris- 
matic twinkling, all seem Volumnias. 

Bleak House, Chap. 66. 

OLD MAIDS— The Crxunptons. 

The Miss Crumptons, or, to quote the author- 
ity of the inscription on the garden-gate of 
Minerva House, Hammersmith, " The Misses 
Crumpton," were two unusually tall, particularly 
thin, and exceedingly skinny personages ; very 
upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crump- 
ton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria 
Crumpton admitted she was forty ; an admis- 
sion which was rendered perfectly unnecessary 
by the self-evident fact of her being at least 
fifty. They dressed in the most interesting 
manner— like twins ; and looked as happy and 



comfortable as a couple of marigolds run to seed. 
They were very precise, had the strictest possible 
ideas of propriety, wore false hair, and always 
smelt very strongly of lavender. — Tales, Chap. 3. 

OLD FIRM— Their place of business. 

The old-established firm of Anthony Chuzzle- 
wit and Son, Manchester Warehousemen, and 
so forth, had its place of business in a very nar- 
row street somewhere behind the Post Office ; 
where every house was in the brightest summer 
morning very gloomy ; and where light porters 
watered the pavement, each before his own em- 
ployer's premises in fantastic patterns, in the 
dog-days ; and where spruce gentlemen, with 
their hands in the pockets of symmetrical trou- 
sers, were always to be seen in warm weather, 
contemplating their undeniable boots in dusty 
warehouse doorways : which appeared to be the 
hardest work they did, except now and then 
carrying pens behind their ears. A dim, dirty, 
smoky, tumble-down, rotten old house it was, 
as anybody would desire to see ; but there the 
firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son transacted 
all their business and their pleasure too, such as 
it was ; for neither the young man nor the old 
had any other residence, or any care or thought 
beyond its narrow limits. 

Business, as may be readily supposed, was the 
main thing in this establishment : insomuch in- 
deed that it shouldered comfort out of doors, 
and jostled the domestic arrangements at every 
turn. Thus in the miserable bed-rooms there 
were files of moth-eaten letters hanging up 
against the walls ; and linen rollers, and frag- 
ments of old patterns, and odds and ends of 
spoiled goods, strewed upon the ground ; while 
the meagre bedsteads, washing-stands, and 
scraps of carpet, were huddled away into cor- 
ners as objects of secondary consideration, not 
to be thought of but as disagreeable necessities, 
furnishing no profit, and intruding on the one 
affair of life. The single sitting-room was on 
the same principle ; a chaos of boxes and old pa- 
pers, and had more counting-house stools in it 
than chairs : not to mention a great monster of 
a desk straddling over the middle of the floor, 
and an iron safe sunk into the wall above the 
fire-place. The solitary little table for purposes 
of refection and social enjoyment, bore as fair a 
proportion to the desk and other business furni- 
ture, as the graces and harmless relaxations of 
life had ever done, in the persons of the old 
man and his son, to their pursuit of wealth. It 
was meanly laid out now, for dinner ; and in a 
chair before the fire sat Anthony himself, who 
rose to greet his son and his fair cousins as 
they entered. 

An ancient proverb warns us that we should 
not expect to find old heads upon young shoul- 
ders ; to which it may be added, that we seldom 
meet with that unnatural combination but we 
feel a strong desire to knock them off; merely 
from an inherent love we have of seeing things 
in their right places. It is not improbable that 
many men, in no wise choleric by nature, felt 
this impulse rising up within them, when they 
first made the acquaintance of Mr. Jonas; but 
if they had known him more intimately, in his 
own house, and had sat with him at his own 
board, it would assuredly have been paramount 
to all other considerations. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II. 



OLD WOMEN 



348 



OBACLE 



OliD WOMEN— A type of good. 

She was one of those old women, was Mrs. 
Betty Higden, who, by dint of an indomitable 
purpose and a strong constitution, fight out 
many years, though each year has come with its 
new knockdown blows fresh to the fight against 
her, wearied by it ; an active old woman, with a 
bright dark eye and a resolute face, yet quite a 
tender creature too ; not a logically-reasoning 
woman, but God is good, and hearts may count 
in Heaven as high as heads. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 1 6. 

OMNIBTJS-The. 

Of all the public conveyances that have been 
constructed since the days of the Ark — we think 
that is the earliest on record — to the present 
time — commend us to an omnibus. A long 
stage is not to be despised, but there you have 
only six insides, and the chances are, that the 
same people go all the way with you — there is 
no change, no variety. Besides, after the first 
twelve hours or so, people get cross and sleepy, 
and when you have seen a man in his nightcap, 
you lose all respect for him ; at least, that is the 
case with us. Then, on smooth roads people 
frequently get prosy, and tell long stories, and 
even those who don't talk, may have very un- 
pleasant predilections. We once travelled four 
hundred miles, inside a stage-coach, with a stout 
man, who had a glass of rum-and- water, warm, 
handed in at the window at every place where 
we changed horses. This was decidedly unpleas- 
ant. We have also travelled, occasionally, with 
a small boy of a pale aspect, with light hair, 
and no perceptible neck, coming up to town 
from school under the protection of the 
guard, and directed to be left at the Cross Keys 
till called for. This is, perhaps, even worse 
than rum-and-water in a close atmosphere. 
Then there is the whole train of evils conse- 
quent on the change of the coachman ; and the 
misery of the discovery— which the guard is 
sure to make the moment you begin to doze — 
that he wants a brown-paper parcel, which he 
distinctly remembers to have deposited under 
the seat on which you are reposing. A great 
deal of bustle and groping takes place, and 
when you are thoroughly awakened, and severely 
cramped, by holding your legs up by an almost 
supernatural exertion, while he is looking be- 
hind them, it suddenly occurs to him that he 
put it in the fore-boot. Bang goes the door ; 
the parcel is immediately found ; off starts the 
coach again ; and the guard plays the key -bugle 
as loud as he can play it, as if in mockery of your 
wretchedness. 

Now, you meet with none of these afflictions 
in an omnibus ; sameness there can never be. 
The passengers change as often in the course 
of one journey as the figures in a kaleidoscope, 
and though not so glittering, are far more amus- 
ing. We believe there is no instance on record, 
of a man's having gone to sleep in one of these ve- 
hicles. As to long stories, would any man venture 
to tell a long story in an omnibus ? and even if he 
did, where would be the harm ? nobody could 
possibly hear what he was talking about. Again: 
children, though occasionally, are not often to 
be found in an omnibus ; and even when they 
are, if the vehicle be full, as is generally the 
case, somebody sits upon them, and we are un- 
conscious of their presence. Yes, after mature 



reflection, and considerable experience, we are 
decidedly of opinion, that of all known ve- 
hicles, from the glass-coach in which we were 
taken to be christened, to that sombre caravan 
in which we must one day make our last earthly 
journey, there is nothing like an omnibus. 

Scenes^ Chap. 15. 

OMNIBXTS— Experiences in an. 

" I beg your pardon, sir," said a little prim, 
wheezing old gentleman, sitting opposite Dumps, 
" I beg your pardon ; but have you ever observ- 
ed, when you have been in an omnibus on a 
wet day, that four people out of five always 
come in with large cotton umbrellas, without a 
handle at the top, or the brass spike at the bot- 
tom?" — Tales, Chap. ii. 

OPPORTTJNITIES-Lost. 

From the beginning, she had sat looking at 
him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his 
chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in 
his turn, perhaps he might have seen one waver- 
ing moment in her, when she was impelled to 
throw herself upon his breast, and give him the 
pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, 
he must have overleaped at a bound the artifi- 
cial barriers he had for many years been erect- 
ing, between himself and all those subtle es- 
sences of humanity which will elude the utmost 
cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to 
be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. 
The barriers were too many and too high for 
such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, 
matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again ; and 
the moment shot away into the plumbless depths 
of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportu- 
nities that are drowned there. — Louisa Grad- 
grind, in Hard Times, Book I,, Chap, 15. 

OPINION— A unanimity of. 

"John Edward Nandy," said Mr. Plornish, 
addressing the old gentleman. " Sir. It's not 
too often that you see unpretending actions 
without a spark of pride, and therefore when 
you see them give grateful honor unto the same, 
being that if you don't and live to want 'em it 
follows serve you right." 

To which Mr. Nandy replied : 

*' I am heartily of your opinion, Thomas, and 
which your opinion is the same as mine, and 
therefore no more words and not being back- 
wards with that opinion, which opinion giving 
it as yes, Thomas, yes, is the opinion in which 
yourself and me must ever be unanimously jined 
by all, and where there is not difierence of opin- 
ion there can be none but one opinion, which 
fully no, Thomas, Thomas, no ! " 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 13. 

OPINIONS— How chanired. 

Some men change their opinions from neces- 
sity, others from expediency, others from inspi- 
ration ! — Scenes, Chap. 18. 

ORACLE— The villag-e. 

Nearest the fire, with his face towards the 
door at the bottom of the room, sat a stoutish 
man of about forty, whose short, stiff, black hair 
curled closely round a broad high forehead, and 
a face to which something besides water and ex- 
ercise had communicated a rather inflamed a]) 
pearance. He was smoking a cigar, with his 



ORATOB 



349 



OBGAK 



eyes fixed on the ceiling, and had that confident, 
oracular air which marked him as the leading 
politician, general authority, and universal an- 
ecdote-relater of the place. He had evidently 
just delivered himself of something very weigh- 
ty ; for the remainder of the company were puff- 
ing at their respective pipes and cigars in a kind 
of solemn abstraction, as if quite overwhelmed 
with the magnitude of the subject recently under 
discussion. 



'• AVhat is a man ? " continued the red-faced 
specimen of the species, jerking his hat indig- 
nantly from its peg on the wall. " What is an 
Englishman? Is he to be trampled upon by 
every oppressor ? Is he to be knocked down at 
everybody's bidding? What's freedom? Not 
a standing army. What's a standing army? 
Not freedom. What's general happiness ? Not 
universal misery. Liberty ain't the window-tax, 
is it ? The Lords ain't the Commons, are they ? " 
And the red-faced man, gradually bursting into 
a radiating sentence, in which such adjectives 
as " dastardly," " oppressive," " violent," and 
"sanguinary," formed the most conspicuous 
words, knocked his hat indignantly over his 
eyes, left the room, and slammed the door after 
him. — Sketches (Characters)^ Chap, 5. 

ORATOR— A windy. 

Then Lord Decimus, who was a wonder on 
his own Parliamentary pedestal, turned out to 
be the windiest creature here : proposing hap- 
piness to the bride and bridegroom in a series 
of platitudes that would have made the hair of 
any sincere disciple and believer stand on end : 
and trotting, with the complacency of an idiotic 
elephant, among howling labyrinths of sentences 
which he seemed to take for high roads, and 
never so much as wanted to get out of. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 34. 

ORATOR— His warmtli. 

And when the petition had been read and was 
about to be adopted, there came forward the 
Irish member (who was a young gentleman of 
ardent temperament), with such a speech as only 
an Irish member can make, breathing the true 
soul and spirit of poetry, and poured forth with 
such fervor, that it made one warm to look at 
him. — jVicholas Xickleb)\ Chap. 2. 

ORATOR-A British. 

He might be asked, he observed, in a perora- 
tion of great power, what were his principles ? 
His principles were what they always had been. 
His principles were written in the countenances 
of the lion and unicorn ; were stamped indeli- 
bly upon the royal shield which those grand an- 
imals supported, and upon the free words of 
fire which that shield bore. His principles were, 
Britannia and her sea-king trident! His prin- 
ciples were, commercial prosperity co-existently 
with perfect and profound agricultural content- 
ment ; but short of this he would never stop. 
His principles were these, — with the addition 
of his colors nailed to the mast, every man's 
heart in the right place, ever>' man's eye open, 
every man's hand ready, every man's mind on 
the alert. His principles were these, concur- 
rently with a general revision of something — 
speaking generally — and a possible re-adjust- 



ment of something else, not to be mentioned 
more particularly. His principles, to sum up 
all in a word, were, Hearths and Altars, Labor 
and Capital, CrovsTi and Sceptre, Elephant and 
Castle. 

Our Honorable Ft tend. Reprinted Pieces. 

ORG AN— Tom Pinch at the. 

What sounds are these that fall so grandly on 
the ear? What darkening room is this? 

And that mild figure seated at an organ, whc 
is he ? Ah Tom, dear Tom, old friend ! 

Thy head is prematurely gray, though Time 
has passed between thee and our old associa- 
tion, Tom. But, in those sounds with which it 
is thy wont to bear the twilight company, the 
music of thy heart speaks out : the story of thy 
life relates itself. 

Thy life is tranquil, calm, and happy, Tom. 
In the soft strain which ever and again comes 
stealing back upjoathe ear, the memor)' of thine 
old love may find a voice perhaps ; but it is a 
pleasant, softened, whispering memor}', like that 
in which we sometimes hold the dead, and does 
not pain or grieve thee, God be thanked ! 

Touch the notes lightly, Tom, as lightly as 
thou wilt, but never will thine hand fall half 
so lightly on that Instrument as on the head of 
thine old tyrant brought down ver}', very low ; 
and never will it make as hollow a response 
to any touch of thine, as he does always ! 

For a drunken, squalid, begging-letter-writ- 
ing man, called Pecksniff (with a shrewish daugh- 
ter), haunts thee, Tom ; and when he makes ap- 
peals to thee for cash, reminds thee that he 
built thy fortunes better than his own ; and when 
he spends it, entertains the alehouse company 
with tales of thine ingratitude and his munifi- 
cence towards thee once upon a time ; and then 
he shows his elbows, worn in holes, and puts his 
soleless shoes up on a bench, and begs his 
auditors look there, while thou art comfortably 
housed and clothed. All known to thee, and 
yet all borne with, Tom ! 

So, with a smile upon thy face, thou passest 
gently to another measure — to a quicker and 
more jojiul one — and little feet are used to 
dance about thee at the sound, and bright young 
eyes to glance up into thine. And there is one 
slight creature, Tom — her child ; not Ruth's — 
whom thine eyes follow in the romp and dance ; 
who, wondering sometimes to see thee look so 
thoughtful, runs to climb up on thy knee, and 
put her cheek to thine : who lovts thee, Tom, 
above the rest, if that can be : and falling sick 
once, chose thee for her nurse, and never 
knew impatience, Tom, when thou wert by her 
side. 

Thou glidest now into a graver air ; an air 
devoted to old friends and byegone times ; and 
in thy lingering touch upon the keys, and the 
rich swelling of the mellow harmony, they rise 
before thee. The spirit of that old man dead, 
who delighted to anticipate thy wants, and 
never ceased to honor thee, is there among the 
rest ; repeating, with a face composed and calm, 
the words he said to thee upon his bed, and 
blessing thee ! 

And coming from a garden, Tom, bestrewn 
with flowers by children's hands, thy sister, lit- 
tle Ruth, as light of foot and heart as in old 
days, sits down beside thee. From the Present, 
and the Past, with which she is so tenderly en- 



ORGANIST 



860 



OUTCAST 



twined in all thy thoughts, thy strain soars on- 
ward to the Future. As it resounds within thee 
and without, the noble music, rolling round ye 
both, shuts out the grosser prospect of an earthly 
parting, and uplifts ye both to Heaven ! 

Martin Chuzzlezuit, Chap, 54. 

ORGANIST-The. 

The organist's assistant was a friend of Mr. 
Pinch's, which was a good thing, for he, too, 
was a very quiet, gentle soul, and had been, like 
Tom, a kind of old-fashioned boy at school, 
though well liked by the noisy fellows too. As 
good luck would have it (Tom always said he 
had great good luck) the assistant chanced that 
very afternoon to be on duty by himself, with 
no one in the dusty organ-loft but Tom ; so 
while he played, Tom helped him with the stops ; 
and finally, the service being just over, Tom took 
the organ himself. It was then turning dark, 
and the yellow light that streamed in through 
the ancient windows in the choir was mingled 
with a murky red. As the grand tones resound- 
ed through the church, they seemed, to Tom, to 
find an echo in the depth of every ancient tomb, 
no less than in the deep mystery of his own 
heart. Great thoughts and hopes came crowd- 
ing on his mind as the rich music rolled upon 
the air, and yet among them — something more 
grave and solemn in their purpose, but the 
same — were all the images of that day, down to 
its very lightest recollection of childhood. The 
feeling that the sounds awakened, in the mo- 
ment of their existence, seemed to include his 
whole life and being ; and as the surrounding 
realities of stone and wood and glass grew 
dimmer in the darkness, these visions grew so 
much the brighter that Tom might have for- 
gotten the new pupil and the expectant master, 
and have sat there pouring out his grateful 
heart till midnight. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 5. 

ORGAN— Its melody. 

The organ sounded faintly in the church 
below. Swelling by degrees, the melody ascend- 
ed to the roof, and filled the choir and nave. 
Expanding more and more, it rose up, up ; 
up. up ; higher, higher, higher up ; awakening 
agitated hearts within the burly piles of oak, 
the hollow bells, the iron-bound doors, the 
stairs of solid stone ; until the tower-walls were 
insufficient to contain it, and it soared into the 
sky. — Chimes^ 3<^ Quarter. 

ORPHANS-The. 

" Look at this ! For God's sake look at this ! '' 

It was a thing to look at. The three chil- 
dren close together, and two of them relying 
solely on the third ; and the third so young, and 
yet with an air of age and steadiness that sat so 
strangely on the childish figure. 

" Charley, Charley ! " said my guardian. 
" How old are you ? " 

*' Over thirteen, sir," replied the child. 

" O ! What a great age," said my guardian. 
" What a great age, Charley ! " 

I cannot describe the tenderness with which 
he spoke to her, half playfully, yet all the more 
compassionately and mournfully. 

" And do you live alone here with these babies, 
Charley? " said my guardian. 

" Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into 



his face with perfect confidence, " since father 
died." 

" And how do you live, Charley ? O ! Char- 
ley," said ray guardian, turning his face away 
for a moment, " how do you live ? " 

" Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. 
I'm out washing to-day." 

" God help you, Charley," said my guardian. 
" You're not tall enough to reach the tub ! " 

" In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly, " I've 
got a high pair as belonged to mother." 

" And when did mother die ? Poor mother ! " 

" Mother died just after Emma was born ! " 
said the child, glancing at the face upon her 
bosom. " Then father said I was to be as good 
a mother to her as I could. And so I tried. 
And so I worked at home and did cleaning, and 
nursing, and washing, for a long time before I 
began to go out. And that's how I know how. 
Don't you see, sir?" 

" And do you often go out ? " 

" As often as I can," said Charley, opening 
her eyes, and smiling, " because of earning six- 
pences and shillings." 

" And do you always lock the babies up when 
you go out ? " 

" To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see ? " said 
Charley. " Mrs. Blinder comes up now and 
then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and 
perhaps I can run in sometimes ; and they can 
play, you know, and Tom an't afraid of being 
locked up, are you, Tom ? " 

" No-o ! " said Tom, stoutly. 

" When it comes on dark, the lamps are light- 
ed down in the court, and they show up here 
quite bright — almost quite bright. Don't 
they, Tom ? " 

" Yes, Charley," said Tom, " almost quite 
bright." 

" Then he's as good as gold," said the little 
creature — O ! in such a motherly, womanly way ! 
" And when Emma's tired he puts her to bed. 
And when he's tired he goes to bed himself. 
And when I come home and light the candle, 
and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has 
it with me. Don't you, Tom ? " 

" O yes, Charley ! " said Tom. " That I do ! " 
And either in this glimpse of the great pleasure 
of his life or in gratitude and love for Charley, 
who was all in all to him, he laid his face among 
the scanty folds of her frock, and passed from 
laughing into crying. 

It was the first time since our entry that a 
tear had been shed among these children. The 
little orphan girl had spoken of their father and 
their mother, as if all that sorrow were subdued 
by the necessity of taking courage, and by her 
childish importance in being able to work, and 
by her bustling, busy way. But now, when Tom 
cried, although she sat quite tranquil, looking 
quietly at us, and did not by any movement dis- 
turb a hair of the head of either of her little 
charges, I saw two silent tears fall down her 
face. — Bleak House, Chap. 15. 

OUTCAST— "Jo," his ignorance. 

It must be a strange state to be like Jo ! To 
shuffle through the streets, unfamiliar with the 
shapes, and in utter darkness as to the meaning, 
of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over 
the shops, and at corners of the streets, and 
on the doors, and in the windows ! To see peo- 
ple read, and to see people write, and to see the 



I 



OUTCAST 



851 



OUTCAST 



postman deliver letters, and not to have the 
least idea of all that language — to be, to every 
scrap of it, stone blind and dumb ! It must be 
very puzzling to see the good company going to 
the churches on Sundays, with their books in 
their hands, and to think (for perhaps Jo does 
think at odd times) what does it all mean, and 
if it means anything to anybody, how comes it 
that it means nothing to me ? To be hustled, 
and jostled, and moved on ; and really to feel 
that it would appear to be perfectly true that I 
have no business, here, or there, or anywhere ; 
and yet to be perplexed by the consideration 
that I am here somehow, too, and everybody 
overlooked me until I became the creature that 
I am ! It must be a strange state, not merely 
to be told that I am scarcely human (as in the 
case of my offering myself for a witness), but to 
feel it of my own knowledge all my life ! To 
see the horses, dogs, and cattle go by me, and 
to know that in ignorance I belong to them, 
and not the superior beings in my shape, whose 
delicacy I offend ! Jo's ideas of a Criminal 
Trial, or a Judge, or a Bishop, or a Govern- 
ment, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he 
only knew it) the Constitution, should be 
strange ! His whole material and immaterial 
life is wonderfully strange ; his death, the stran- 
gest thing of all. 

Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the 
tardy morning, which is always late in getting 
down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread 
as he comes along. His way lying through 
many streets, and the houses not yet being 
open, he sits down to breakfast on the door- 
step of the Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush 
when he has finished, as an acknowledgment of 
the accommodation. He admires the size of 
the edifice, and wonders what it's all about. 
He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual 
destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific, or what 
it costs to look up the precious souls among 
the cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit. 

He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it 
out for the day. The town awakes ; the great 
teetotum is set up for its daily spin and whirl ; 
all that unaccountable reading and writing, 
which has been suspended for a few hours, re- 
commences. Jo, and the other lower animals, 
get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. 
It is market-day. The blinded oxen, over- 
goaded, over-driven, never guided, run into 
wrong places and are beaten out ; and plunge, 
red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls ; and of- 
ten sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely 
hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order ; 
very, very like ! 

A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens 
to it. So does a dog — a drover's dog, waiting 
for his master outside a butcher's shop, and evi- 
dently thinking about those sheep he has had 
upon his mind for some hours, and is happily 
rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or 
four ; can't remember where he left them ; looks 
up and down the street, as half expecting to see 
them astray ; suddenly pricks up his ears and 
remembers all about it. A thoroughly vaga- 
bond dog, accustomed to low company and 
public-houses ; a terrific dog to sheep ; ready at 
a whistle to scamper over their backs, and tear 
out mouthfuls of their wool ; but an educated, 
improved, developed dog, who has been taught 



his duties and knows how to discharge them. 
He and Jo listen to the music, probably with 
much the same amount of animal satisfaction ; 
likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration, 
or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to 
things beyond the senses, they are probably 
upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the 
human listener is the brute ! 

Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and 
in a very few years they will so degenerate that 
they will lose even their bark — but not their bite. 

The day changes as it wears itself away, and 
becomes dark and drizzly. Jo fights it out, at 
his crossing, among the mud and wheels, the 
horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a 
scanty sum to pay for the unsavory shelter of 
Tom-all-Alone's. Twilight comes on ; gas be- 
gins to start up in the shops ; the lamplighter, 
with his ladder, runs along the margin of the 
pavement. A wretched evening is beginning to 
close in. — Bleak House, Chap. i6. 

OUTCAST-Jo, the. 

" You Phil ! Bring him in ! " 

Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to exe- 
cute the word of command : and the trooper, 
having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought 
in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tocka- 
hoopo Indians; he is not one of Mrs. Jellyby's 
lambs, being wholly unconnected with Borrio- 
boola-Gha ; he is not softened by distance and 
unfamiliarity ; he is not a genuine foreign-grown 
savage ; he is the ordinary home-made article. 
Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in 
body a common creature of the common streets, 
only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes 
him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores 
are in him, homely rags are on him : native 
ignorance, the growth of English soil and cli- 
mate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the -v^ 
beasts that perish. , Stand forth, Jo, in uncom- ^^ 
promising colors ! From the soul of thy foot to 
the crown of thy head, there is nothing interest- 
ing about thee. 

He shuffles slowly into Mr. George's gallery 
and stands huddled together in a bundle, look- 
ing all about the floor. He seems to know that 
they have an inclination to shrink from him, 
partly for what he is, and partly for what he has 
caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He is not 
of the same order of things, not of the same 
place in creation. He is of no order, and no 
place ; neither of the beasts, nor of humanity. 
Bleak House, Chap. 47. 

OUTCAST-Betty Hig-den, the. 

Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage 
as many ruggedly honest creatures, women and 
men, fare on their toiling way along the roads 
of life. Patiently to earn a spare, bare living, 
and quietly to die, untouched by workhouse 
hands — this was her highest sublunary hope. 

« 9)( i)e * )|c 

In those pleasant little towns on Thames, you 
may hear the fall of the water over the weirs, 
or even, in still weather, the rustle of the rushes ; 
and from the bridge you may see the young river, 
dimpled like a young child, playfully gliding 
away among the trees, unpolluted by the defile- 
ments that lie in wait for it on its course, and as 
yet out of hearing of the deep summons of the 
sea. It were too much to pretend that Betty 
Higden made out such thoughts ; no ; but she 



OUTCAST 



PARTING 



heard the tender river whispering to many like 
herself, " Come to me, come to me ! When the 
cruel shame and terror you have so long fled 
from, most beset you, come to me ! I am the 
Relieving Officer appointed by eternal ordinance 
to do my work ; I am not held in estimation ac- 
cording as I shirk it. My breast is softer than 
the pauper-nurse's ; death in my arms is peace- 
fuller than among the pauper wards. Come to 
me !" 

There was abundant place for gentler fancies 
too, in her untutored mind. Those gentlefolks 
and their children inside those fine houses, could 
they think, as they looked out at her, what it was 
to be really hungry, really cold? Did they feel 
any of the wonder about her, that she felt about 
them? Bless the dear laughing children! If 
they could have seen sick Johnny in her arms, 
would they have cried for pity ? If they could 
have seen dead Johnny on that little bed, would 
they have understood it? Bless the dear chil- 
dren for his sake, anyhow i So with the hum- 
bler houses in the little street, the inner firelight 
shining on the panes as the outer twilight dark- 
ened. When the families gathered in-doors 
there, for the night, it was only a foolish fancy 
to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close 
the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the 
lighted shops, and speculations whether their 
masters and mistresses, taking tea in a perspec- 
tive of back-parlor— not so far within but that 
the flavor of tea and toast came out, mingled 
with the glow of light, into the street — ate or 
drank or wore what they sold, with the greater 
relish because they dealt in it. So with the 
churchyard, on a branch of the solitary way to 
the night's sleeping-place. " Ah me ! The dead 
and I seem to have it pretty much to ourselves 
in the dark and in this weather ! But so much 
the better for all who are warmly housed at 
home." The poor soul envied no one in bitter- 
ness, and grudged no one anything. 

***** 

By what visionary hands she was led along 
upon that journey of escape from the Samaritan ; 
by what voices, hushed in the grave, she seemed 
to be addressed ; how she fancied the dead child 
in her arms again, and times innumerable ad- 
justed her shawl to keep it warm ; what infinite 
variety of forms of tower and roof and steeple 
the trees took ; how many furious horsemen 
rode at her, crying " There she goes ! Stop ! 
Stop, Betty Higden ! " and melted away as they 
came close ; be these things left untold. Faring 
on and hiding, hiding and faring on, the poor 
harmless creature, as though she were a Mur- 
deress and the whole country were up after her, 
wore out the day, and gained the night. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 8. 

OUTCAST-An. 

Cain might have looked as lonely and avoided. 
With an old sheepskin knapsack at his back, 
and a rough, unbarked stick cut out of some 
wood in his hand ; miry, footsore, his shoes and 
gaiters trodden out, his hair and beard untrim- 
med ; the cloak he carried over his shoulder, 
and the clothes he wore, soddened with wet ; 
limping along in pain and difficulty, he looked 
as if the clouds were hurrying from him, as if 
the wail of the wind and the shuddering of the 
grass were directed against him, as if the low 
mysterious plasliing of the water murmured at 



him, as if the fitful autumn night were disturbed 
by him. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. ii. 



PATRIOTISM-Of Miss Press. 

"Well, my sweet," said Miss Pross, nodding 
her head emphatically, " the short and the long 
of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gra- 
cious Majesty King George the Third ; " Miss 
Pross curtseyed at the name ; " and as such, my 
maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate 
their knavish tricks. On him our hopes we fix, 
God save the King ! " 

Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 7. 

PATRONS AND PATRONESSES-Boflan's 
idea of. 

" If Mr. Tom Noakes gives his five shillings 
ain't he a Patron, and if Mrs. Jack Styles gives 
her five shillings ain't she a Patroness ? What 
the deuce is it all about ? If it ain't stark staring 
impudence, what do you call it ? " 

" Don't be warm. Noddy," Mrs, Boffin urged. 

" Warm ! " cried Mr. Boffin. " It's enough to 
make a man smoking hot. I can't go anywhere 
without being patronized. I don't want to be 
patronized. If I buy a ticket for a Flower 
Show, or a Music Show, or any sort of Show, 
and pay pretty heav)' for it, why am I to be 
Patroned and Patronessed as if the Patrons and 
the Patronesses treated me ? If there's a good 
thing to be done, can't it be done on its own 
merits ? If there's a bad thing to be done, can 
it ever be Patroned and Patronessed right ? Yet 
when a new Institution's going to be built, it 
seems to me that the bricks and mortar ain't 
made of half so much consequence as the Pat- 
rons and Patronesses ; no, nor yet the objects. 
I wish somebody to tell me whether other 
countries get Patronized to anything like the ex- 
tent of this one ? And as to the Patrons and 
Patronesses themselves, I wonder they're not 
ashamed of themselves. They ain't Pills, or 
Hair-washes, or invigorating Nervous Essences, 
to be puffed in that way ! " 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 14. 

PARTY— A social. 

The gentlemen immediately began to slide 
about with much politeness, and to look as if 
they wished their arms had been legs, so little 
did they know what to do with them. The 
ladies smiled, curtsied, and glided into chairs, 
and dived for dropped pocket-handkerchiefs ; 
the gentlemen leaned against two of the curtain- 
pegs ; Mrs. Tibbs went through an admirable 
bit of serious pantomime with a servant who 
had come up to ask some questions about the 
fish-sauce ; and then the two young ladies look- 
ed at each other ; and everybody else appeared 
to discover something very attractive in the 
pattern of the fender. 

Tales. The Boarding House, CJiap. i. 

PARTINGh— And meeting. 

" The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of 
meeting again." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap, 3. 



PANIC 



353 



PABLIAMENT 



PANIC— The intoxication of a. 

The prisoners were far from insensible or un- 
feeling ; their ways arose out of the condition 
of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle 
difference, a species of fervor or intoxication, 
known, without doubt, to have led some persons 
to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die 
by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild in- 
fection of the wildly shaken public mind. In 
seasons of pesLilence, some of us will have a se- 
cret attraction to the disease — a terrible passing 
inclination to die of it. And all of us have like 
wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing 
circumstances to evoke them. 

Tale of Two Cities^ Chap, 6. 

PAPA— As a mode of address. 

" Papa is a preferable mode of address," ob- 
served Mrs. General. " Father is rather vulgar, 
my dear. The word Papa, besides, gives a pretty 
form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, 
and prism, are all very good words for the lips ; 
especially prunes and prism. You will find it 
serviceable, in the formation of a demeanor, if 
you sometimes say to yourself in company — 
on entering a room, for instance — Papa, pota- 
toes, poultry, prunes, and prism, prunes and 
prism." 

" Pray, my child," said Mr. Dorrit, "attend to 
the — hum — precepts bf Mrs. General." 

Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather forlorn glance 
at that eminent varnisher, promised to try. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 5. 

PARALYSIS— Sir Leicester Dedlock. 

The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that 
grass-grown city of the ancients, Bath, to be 
stimulated by an urgent curiosity, which impels 
her on all convenient and inconvenient occa- 
sions to sidle about with a golden glass at her 
eye, peering into objects of every description. 
Certain it is that she avails herself of the pres- 
ent opportunity of hovering over her kinsman's 
letters and papers, like a bird ; taking a short 
peck at this document, and a blink with her 
head on one side at that document, and hopping 
about from table to table, with her glass at her 
eye, in an inquisitive and restless manner. In 
the course of these researches, she stumbles over 
something ; and turning her glass in that direc- 
tion, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like 
a felled tree. 

***** 

They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, 
and rub, and fan, and put ice to his head, and 
try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the 
day has ebbed away, and it is night in his room, 
before his stertorous breathing lulls, or his 
fixed eyes show any consciousness of the candle 
that is occasionally passed before them. But 
when this change begins, it goes on ; and by- 
and-bye he nods, or moves his eyes, or even his 
hand, in token that he hears and comprehends. 

He fell down this morning, a handsome, 
stately gentleman ; somewhat infirm, but of a 
fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He 
lies upon his bed, an aged man with sunken 
cheeks, the decrepit shadow of himself. His 
voice was rich and mellow ; and he had so long 
been thoroughly persuaded of the weight and 
import to mankind of any word he said, that 
his words really had come to sound as if there 
were something in them. But now he can only 



whisper ; and what he whispers sounds like 
what it is — mere jumble and jargon. 

Bleak House, Chap. 56. 

PARIS— Mrs. Lirriper's opinion of. 

And of Paris I can tell you no more my dear 
than that it's town and country both in one, 
and carved stone and long streets of high houses 
and gardens and fountains and statues and trees 
and gold, and immensely big soldiers and im- 
mensely little soldiers and the pleasantest nurses 
with the whitest caps a playing at skipping-rope 
with the bunchiest babies in the flattest caps, 
and clean table-cloths spread everywhere for 
dinner, and people sitting out of doors smoking 
and sipping all day long and little plays being 
acted in the open air for little people and every 
shop a complete and elegant room, and every- 
body seeming to play at everything in this 
world. And as to the sparkling lights my dear 
after dark, glittering high up and low down and 
on before and on behind and all round, and the 
crowd of theatres and the crowd of people and 
the crowd of all sorts, it's pure enchantment. 
And pretty well the only thing that grated on 
me was that whether you pay your fare at the 
railway or whether you change your money at a 
money-dealer's or whether you take your ticket 
at the theatre, the lady or gentleman is caged up 
(I suppose by government) behind the strongest 
iron bars having more of a Zoological appear- 
ance than a free country. 

Well to be sure when I did after all get my 
precious bones to bed that night, and my Young 
Rogue came in to kiss me and asks " What do 
you think of this lovely, lovely Paris, Gran? " I 
says " Jemmy I feel as if it was beautiful fire- 
works being let off in my head." And very cool 
and refreshing the pleasant country was next 
day when we went on to look after my Legacy, 
and rested me much and did me a deal of good. 
Mrs. Lirripers Legacy, Chap. i. 

PARLIAMENT— The national dust-heap. 

Her father was usually sifting and sifting at 
his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (with- 
out being observed to turn up many precious 
articles among the rubbish), and was still hard 
at it in the national dust-yard. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. g. 

PARLIAMENT-A member of. 

Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather 
dirty machinery, in a by-corner, and made him 
Member of Parliament for Coketown : one of 
the respected members for ounce weights and 
measures, one of the representatives of the mul- 
tiplication table, one of the deaf honorable gen- 
tlemen, dumb honorable gentlemen, blind hon- 
orable gentlemen, lame honorable gentlemen, 
dead honorable gentlemen, to every other con- 
sideration. Else wherefore live we in a Christian 
land, eighteen hundred and odd years after our 
Msistev 7— Hard Times, Book /., C/iap. 14. 



That singularly awkward and ungainly-look- 
ing man, in the brownish-white hat, with the 
straggling black trousers which reach about half- 
way down the leg of his boots, who is leaning 
against the meat-screen, apparently deluding 
himself into the belief that he is thinking about 
something, is a splendid sample of a Member 
of the House of Commons concentrating in his 



PASSIONS 



354 



PECKSNTFFIAN TRAITS 



own person the wisdom of a constituency. Ob- 
serve the wig, of a dark hue but indescribable 
color, for if it be naturally brown, it has ac- 
quired a black tint by long service, and if it be 
naturally black, the same cause has imparted 
to it a tinge of rusty brown ; and remark how 
very materially the great blinker-like spectacles 
assist the expression of that most intelligent 
face. Seriously speaking, did you ever see a 
countenance so expressive of the most hopeless 
extreme of heavy dulness, or behold a form so 
strangely put together ? He is no great speaker : 
but when he does address the House, the effect 
is absolutely irresistible. — Scenes, Chap. i8. 

PASSIONS— The influence of bad. 

Verily, verily, travellers have seen many mon- 
strous idols in many countries ; but no human 
eyes have ever seen more daring, gross, and 
shocking images of the Divine nature, than we 
creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses, 
of our own bad passions. 

Little Dorr it, Book II., Chap. 30. 

PECKSNIFF— As a moral man. 

It has been remarked that Mr. Pecksniff was 
a moral man. So he was. Perhaps there never 
was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff ; es- 
pecially in his conversation and correspondence. 
It was once said of him by a homely admirer, 
that he had a Fortunatus's purse of good sen- 
timents in his inside. In this particular he was 
like the girl in the fairy tale, except that if they 
were not actual diamonds which fell from his 
lips, they were the very brightest paste, and 
shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary 
man ; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy- 
book. Some people likened him to a direction- 
post, which is always telling the way to a place, 
and never goes there ; but these were his ene- 
mies ; the shadows cast by his brightness ; that 
was all. His very throat was moral. You saw 
a good deal of it. You looked over a very low 
fence of white cravat (whereof no man had ever 
beheld the tie, for he fastened it behind), and 
there it lay, a valley between two jutting heights 
of collar, serene and whiskerless, before you. It 
seemed to say, on the part of Mr. Pecksniff, 
*' There is no deception, ladies and gentlemen ; 
all is peace, a holy calm pervades me." So did 
his hair, just grizzled with an iron-gray, which 
was all brushed off his forehead, and stood bolt 
upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action 
with his heavy eye-lids. So did his person, 
which was sleek, though free from corpulency. 
So did his manner, which was soft and oily. In 
a word, even his plain black suit, and state of 
widower, and dangling double eye-glass, all 
tended to the same purpose, and cried aloud, 
" Behold the moral Pecksniff ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

PECKSNIFF— And his daug-hters. 

She was the most arch and at the same time 
the most artless creature, was the youngest Miss 
Pecksniff, that you can possibly imagine. It 
was her great charm. She was too fresh and 
guileless, and too full of child-like vivacity, was 
the youngest Miss Pecksniff, to wear combs in 
her hair, or to turn it up, or to frizzle it, or 
braid it. She wore it in a crop, a loosely flow- 
ing crop, which had so many rows of curls in 
it, that the top row was only one curl. Mod- 



erately buxom was her shape, and quite womanly 
too ; but sometimes — yes, sometimes — she even 
wore a pinafore ; and how charming that was ! 
Oh ! she was indeed " a gushing thing " (as a 
young gentleman had observed in verse, in the 
Poet's comer of a provincial newspaper), was 
the youngest Miss Pecksniff ! 

Mr. Pecksniff was a moral man ; a grave 
man, a man of noble sentiments and speech ; 
and he had had her christened Mercy. Mercy ! 
oh, what a charming name for such a pure- 
souled being as the youngest Miss Pecksniff! 
Her sister's name was Charity, There was a 
good thing ! Mercy and Charity ! And Charity, 
with her fine strong sense, and her mild, yet not 
reproachful gravity, was so well named, and did 
so well set off and illustrate her sister ! "What 
a pleasant sight was that, the contrast they pre- 
sented ; to see each loved and loving one sym- 
pathizing with, and devoted to, and leaning on, 
and yet correcting and counter-checking, and, 
as it were, antidoting, the other ! To behold 
each damsel, in her very admiration of her 
sister, setting up in business for herself on an 
entirely different principle, and announcing no 
connection with over-the-way, and if the quality 
of goods at that establishment don't please you, 
you are respectfully invited to favor me with 
a call ! And the crowning circumstance of the 
whole delightful catalogue was, that both the 
fair creatures were so utterly unconscious of all 
this ! They had no idea of it. They no more 
thought or dreamed of it, than Mr. Pecksnifi' 
did. Nature played them off against each 
other ; they had no hand in it, the two Miss 
Pecksniffs. — Martin Chnzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

PECKSNTFFIAN MORALITY. 

" Even the worldly goods of which we have 
just disposed," said Mr. Pecksniff, glancing 
round the table when he had finished, " even 
cream, sugar, tea, toast, ham — " 

" And eggs," suggested Charity, in a low 
voice. 

" And eggs," said Mr. Pecksniff, " even they 
have their moral. See how they come and go ! 
Every pleasure is transitory. We can't even eat, 
long. If we indulge in harmless fluids, we get 
the dropsy : if in exciting liquids, we get drunk. 
What a soothing reflection is that ! " 

" Don't say we get drunk. Pa," urged the eld- 
est Miss Pecksniff. 

"When I say, we, my dear," returned her 
father, " I mean mankind in general ; the human 
race, considered as a body, and not as individu- 
als. There is nothing personal in morality, my 
love. Even such a thing as this," said Mr. 
Pecksniff, laying the fore-finger of his left hand 
upon the brown paper patch on the top of his 
head, " slight casual baldness though it be, re- 
minds us that we are but " — he was going to say 
" worms," but recollecting that worms were not 
remarkable for heads of hair, he substituted 
" flesh and blood." 

" Which," cried Mr. Pecksniff after a pause, 
during which he seemed to have been casting 
about for a new moral, and not quite successfully, 
" which is also very soothing." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

PECKSNIFFIAN TRAITS. 

Primed in this artful manner, Mr. Pecksniff 
presented himself at dinner-time in such a state 




Meekness of Mr. Pecksniff and his Charming Daughters. 354 



PEDiaBEE 



856 



PHILANTHROPISTS 



of suavity, benevolence, cheerfulness, politeness, 
and cordiality, as even he had perhaps never at- 
tained before. The frankness of the country 
gentleman, the refinement of the artist, the 
good-humored allowance of the man of the 
world ; philanthropy, forbearance, piety, tolera- 
tion, all blended together in a flexible adapta- 
bility to anything and everything, were express- 
ed in Mr. Pecksniff, as he shook hands with the 
great speculator and capitalist. 

Martin Ckuzzlewit, Chap. 44, 

PEDIGREE— The influence of time upon. 

It is a very hard thing upon the great men of 
past centuries, that they should have come into 
the world so soon, because a man who was born 
three or four hundred years ago, cannot reason- 
ably be expected to have had as many relations 
before him, as a man who is born now. The 
last man, whoever he is — and he may be a cob- 
bler or some low, vulgar dog for aught we know 
— will have a longer pedigree than the greatest 
nobleman now alive ; and I contend that this is 
not fair. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 6. 

PENITENCE— Extra superfine (writing). 

With this prelude, Mr. Pickwick placed four 
closely written sides of extra superfine wire- wove 
penitence in the hands of the astounded Mr. 
Winkle, senior. — Pickwick, Chap. 50. 

PEW— A church. 

* * * a little deal box without a lid (called 
by courtesy a pew). 

Sketches (Characters^, Chap. 9. 

PHILANTHROPIST-Mrs. Jellyby, the. 

" In-deed ! Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, 
standing with his back to the fire, and casting 
his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug, as if it were 
Mrs. Jellyby's biography, " is a lady of very re- 
markable strength of character, who devotes 
herself entirely to the public. She has devoted 
herself to an extensive variety of public subjects 
at various times, and is at present (until some- 
thing else attracts her) devoted to the subject of 
Africa ; with a view to the general cultivation 
of the coffee berry — and the natives— and the 
happy settlement, on the banks of the African 
rivers, of our superabundant home population. 
Mr. Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work 
that is considered likely to be a good work, and 
who is much sought after by philanthropists, has, 
I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby." 

Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked 
at us. 

" And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard. 

"Ah! Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is — a 
— I don't know that I can describe him to you 
better than by saying that he is the husband of 
Mrs. Jellyby." 

" A nonentity, sir ?" said Richard, with a droll 
look. 

'* I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge, grave- 
ly. " I can't say that, indeed, for I know noth- 
ing whatever of Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my 
knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jelly- 
by. He may be a very superior man ; but he 
is, so to speak, merged — Merged — in the more 
shining qualities of his wife." 

♦ « He « * 

Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the 
uneasiness which we could not help showing in 



our faces, as the dear child's head recorded its 
passage with a bump on every stair — Richard 
afterwards said he counted seven, besides one 
for the landing — received us with perfect equa- 
nimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, 
plump woman, of from forty to fifty, with hand- 
some eyes, though they had a curious habit of 
seeming to look a long way off. As if — I am 
quoting Richard again — they could see nothing 
nearer than Africa ! — Bleak House, Chap. 4. 

PHILANTHROPIST— Honesrthunder, the 
professional. 

Mrs. Crisparkle had need of her own share 
of philanthropy when she beheld this very large 
and very loud excrescence on the little party. Al- 
ways something in the nature of a Boil upon the 
face of society, Mr. Honeythunder expanded in- 
to an inflammatory Wen in Minor Canon Cor- 
ner. Though it was not literally true, as was 
facetiously charged against him by public un- 
believers, that he called aloud to his fellow- 
creatures, " Curse your souls and bodies, come 
here and be blessed ! " still his philanthropy was 
of that gunpowderous sort that the difference be- 
tween it and animosity was hard to determine. 
You were to abolish military force, but you were 
first to bring all commanding officers who had 
done their duty, to trial by court-martial for 
that offence, and shoot them. You were to abol- 
ish war, but were to make converts by making 
war upon them, and charging them with loving 
war as the apple of their eye. You were to have 
no capital punishment, but were first to sweep off 
the face of the earth all legislators, jurists, and 
judges who were of the contrary opinion. You 
were to have universal concord, and were to get 
it by eliminating all the people who wouldn't, 
or conscientiously couldn't, be concordant. 
You were to love your brother as yourself, but 
after an indefinite interval of maligning him 
(very much as if you hated him), and calling him 
all manner of names. Above all things, you 
were to do nothing in private, or on your own 
account. You were to go to the offices of the 
Haven of Philanthropy, and put your name 
down as a Member and a Professing Philanthro- 
pist. Then you were to pay up your subscrip- 
tion, get your card of membership and your 
riband and medal, and were evermore to live 
upon a platform, and evermore to say what Mr. 
Honeythunder said, and what the Treasurer 
said, and what the sub-Treasurer said, and 
what the Committee said, and what the sub- 
Committee said, and what the Secretary said, 
and what the Vice-Secretary said. And this was 
usually said in the unanimously carried resolu- 
tion under hand and seal, to the effect : " That 
this assembled Body of Professing Philanthro- 
pisUs views, with indignant scorn and contempt, 
not unmixed with utter detestation and loathing 
abhorrence," — in short, the baseness of all those 
who do not belong to it, and pledges itself to 
make as many obnoxious statements as possible 
about them, without being at all particular as to 
facts. — Echuin Drood, Chap. 6. 

PHILANTHROPISTS-The traits of. 

" It is a most extraordinary thing," interpos- 
ed the gentle Minor Canon, laying down his 
knife and fork to rub his ear in a vexed man- 
ner, " that these Philantliropists are always 
denouncing somebody. Ard it is another most 



PHTLANTHROPY 



356 



PHILANTHBOPY 



extraordinary thing that they are always so 
violently flush of miscreants ! " 

* ' * * * * 

" And it is another most extraordinary 
thing," remarked the Minor Canon in the same 
tone as before, " that these Philanthropists are 
so given to seizing their fellow-creatures by 
the scruff of the neck, and (as one may say) 
bumping them into the paths of peace. — I 
beg your pardon, Ma dear, for interrupting." 
Edwin Drood, Chap. 6. 

PHILANTHROPY— As a platform ma- 
noeuvre. 

"You make the platform discovery that War 
is a cdamity, and you propose to abolish it by 
a string of twisted resolutions tossed into the 
air like the tail of a kite, I do not admit the 
discovery to be yours in the least, and I have 
not a grain of faith in your remedy. Again, 
your platform resource of representing me as 
revelling in the horrors of a battle-field like a 
fiend incarnate ! Another time, in another of 
your undiscriminating platform rushes, you 
would punish the sober for the drunken. I 
claim consideration for the comfort, conve- 
nience, and refreshment of the sober ; and you 
presently make platform proclamation that I 
have a depraved desire to turn Heaven's crea- 
tures into swine and wild beasts ! In all such 
cases your movers, and your seconders, and 
your supporters — your regular Professors of all 
degrees — run amuck like so many mad Ma- 
lays ; habitually attributing the lowest and 
basest motives with the utmost recklessness (let 
me call your attention to a recent instance in 
yourself for which you should blush), and quot- 
ing figures which you know to be as wilfully 
one-sided as a statement of any complicated 
account that should be all Creditor side and 
no Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor. 
Therefore it is, Mr. Honeythunder, that I con- 
sider the platform a sufficiently bad example 
and a sufficiently bad school, even in public 
life ; but hold that, carried into private life, it 
becomes an unendurable nuisance." 

" These are strong words, sir ! " exclaimed 
the Philanthropist. 

" I hope so," said Mr. Crisparkle. " Good 
morning." 

He walked out of the Haven at a great rate, 
but soon fell into his regular brisk pace, and 
soon had a smile upon his face as he went 
along, wondering what the china shepherdess 
would have said if she had seen him pound- 
ing Mr. Honeythunder in the late little lively 
affair. For Mr. Crisparkle had just enough of 
harmless vanity to hope that he had hit hard, 
and to glow with the belief that he had trim- 
med the Philanthropic jacket pretty hand- 
somely. 

Mr. Crisparkle in Edwin Drood, Chap. 17. 

PHILANTHROPIST-Mrs. Pardiggle, the. 

Among the ladies who were most distinguished 
for this rapacious benevolence (if I may use the 
expression), was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who seemed, 
as 1 judged from the number of her letters to 
Mr. Jarndyce, to be almost as powerful a cor- 
respondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. "We observ- 
ed that the wind always changed, when Mrs. 
Pardiggle became the subject of conversation ; 
and that it invariably interrupted Mr. Jarndyce, 



and prevented his going any farther, when he had 
remarked that there were two classes of charit- 
able people ; one, the people who did a little and 
made a great deal of noise ; the other, the people 
who did a great deal and made no noise at all. 
We were therefore curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, 
suspecting her to be a type of the former class ; 
and were glad when she called one day with her 
five young sons. 

She M'^as a formidable style of lady, with sper 
tacles, a prominent nose, and a loud voice, who 
had the effect of wanting a great deal of room. 
And she really did, for she knocked down little 
chairs with her skirts that were quite a great way 
off. As only Ada and I were at home, we re- 
ceived her timidly ; for she seemed to come in 
like cold weather, and to make the little Par- 
diggles blue as they followed. 

" These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle, 
with great volubility, after the first salutations, 
" are my five boys. You may have seen their 
names in a printed subscription list (perhaps 
more than one), in the possession of our esteemed 
friend, Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest (twelve), 
is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the 
amount of five-and-threepence, to the Tocka- 
hoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten-and-a- 
half), is the child who contributed two-and-nine- 
pence to the Great National Smithers Testimo- 
nial. Francis, my third (nine), one-and-sixpence- 
halfpenny ; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence 
to the Superannuated Widows ; Alfred, my 
youngest (five) has voluntarily enrolled himself 
in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never, 
through life, to use tobacco in any form." 

We had never seen such dissatisfied children. 
It was not merely that they were weazened and 
shrivelled — though they were certainly that too — 
but they looked absolutely ferocious with discon- 
tent. At the mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, 
I could really have supposed Egbert to be one 
of the most baleful members of that tribe, he 
gave me such a savage frown. The face of each 
child, as the amount of his contribution was 
mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive 
manner, but his was by far the worst. I must 
except, however, the little recruit into the Infant 
Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and evenly 
miserable. — Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

PHILANTHROPY— Beggars in the name 
of. 

We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak 
House ; for we had become acquainted with 
many residents in and out of the neighborhood 
who knew Mr. Jarndyce, It seemed to Ada and 
me that everybody knew him, who wanted to do 
anything with anybody else's money. It amazed 
us, when we began to sort his letters, and to 
answer some of them for him in the Growlery 
of a morning, to find how the great object of 
the lives of nearly all his correspondents ap- 
peared to be to form themselves into committees 
for getting in and laying out money. The ladies 
were as desperate as the gentlemen ; indeed, I 
think they were even more so. They threw 
themselves into committees in the most impas- 
sioned m.anner, and collected subscriptions with 
a vehemence quite extraordinary. It appeared 
to us that some of them must pass their whole 
lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the 
whole Post-office Directory — shilling cards, half- 
crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards. 



I 



I 



PHILANTHROPISTS 



357 



PHYSICIAN 



They wanted everything. They wanted wearing 
apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted 
money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, 
they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, 
they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr. 
Jarndyce had — or had not. Their objects were as 
various as their demands. They were going to 
raise new buildings, they were going to pay off 
debts ouold buildings, they were going to estab- 
lish In a picturesque building (engraving of pro- 
posed West Elevation attached) the Sisterhood 
of Mediaeval Marys ; they were going to give a 
testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby ; they were going to 
have their Secretary's portrait painted, and pre- 
sented to his mother-in-law, whose deep devotion 
to him was well known : they were going to get 
up everything, I really believe, from five hundred 
thousand tracts to an annuity, and from a mar- 
ble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a 
multitude of titles. They were the Women of 
England, the Daughters of Britain, the Sisters 
of all the Cardinal Virtues separately, the Fe- 
males of America, the Ladies of a hundred de- 
nominations. They appeared to be always 
excited about canvassing and electing. They 
seemed to our poor wits, and according to their 
own accounts, to be constantly polling people 
by tens of thousands, yet never bringing their 
candidates in for anything. It made our heads 
ache to think, on the whole, what feverish lives 
they must lead. — Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

PHILANTHROPISTS-The phrenological 
formation of. 

Full half a year had come and gone, and 
Mr. Crisparkle sat in a waiting-room in the 
London chief offices of the Haven of Philan- 
thropy, until he could have audience of Mr. 
Honeythunder. 

In his college-days of athletic exercises, 
Mr. Crisparkle had known professors of the 
Noble Art of fisticuffs, and had attended two or 
three of their gloved gatherings. He had now 
an opportunity of observing, that as to the phre- 
nological formation of the backs of their heads, 
the Professing Philanthropists were uncommon- 
ly like the Pugilists. In the development of all 
those organs which constitute, or attend, a pro- 
pensity to " pitch into " your fellow-creatures, 
the Philanthropists were remarkably favored. 
There were several Professors passing in and 
out, with exactly the aggressive air upon them 
of being ready for a turn-up with any Novice 
who might happen to be on hand, that Mr. Cris- 
parkle well remembered in the circles of the 
Fancy. Preparations were in progress for a 
moral little Mill somewhere on the rural circuit, 
and other Professors were backing this or that 
Heavy-Weight as good for such or such speech- 
making hits, so very much after the manner of 
the sporting publicans that the intended Reso- 
lutions might have been Rounds. In an official 
manager of these displays, much celebrated for 
his platform tactics, Mr. Crisparkle recognized 
(in a suit of black) the counterpart of a deceased 
benefactor of his species, an eminent public 
character, once known to fame as Frosty-faced 
Fogo, who in days of yore superintended the 
formation of the magic circle with the ropes 
and stakes. There were only three conditions 
of resemblance wanting between these Profes- 
sors and those. Firstly, the Philanthropists 
were in very bad training : much too fleshy, and 



presenting, both in face and figure, a super- 
abundance of what is known to Pugilistic Ex- 
perts as Suet Pudding. Secondly, the Philan- 
thropists had not the good temper of the Pugil- 
ists, and used worse language. Thirdly, their 
fighting code stood in great need of revision, as 
empowering them not only to bore their man to 
the ropes, but to bore him to the confines of dis- 
traction ; also to hit him when he was down, hit 
him anywhere and anyhow, kick him, stamp 
upon him, gouge him, and maul him behind his 
back without mercy. In these last particulars 
the Professors of the Noble Art were much 
nobler than the Professors of Philanthropy. 
Edwin Drood, Chap. 17. 

PHUiOSOPHY— Squeers on. 

" What's the reason," said Mr. Squeers, deriv- 
ing fresh facetiousness from the bottle ; " what's 
the reason of rheumatics? What do they mean? 
What do people have 'em for — eh ? " 

Mrs. Sliderskew didn't know, but suggested 
that it was possibly because they couldn't help 
it. 

" Measles, rheumatics, hooping-cough, fevers, 
agers, and lumbagers," said Mr. Squeers, " is all 
philosophy together ; that's what it is. The 
heavenly bodies is philosophy, and the earthly 
bodies is philosophy. If there's a screw loose 
in a heavenly body, that's philosophy ; and if 
there's a screw loose in a earthly body, that's 
philosophy too ; or it may be that sometimes 
there's a little metaphysics in it, but that's not 
often. Philosophy's the chap for me. If a 
parent asks a question in the classical, commer- 
cial, or mathematical line, says I, gravely, ' Why, 
sir, in the first place, are you a philosopher ? ' 
' No, Mr. Squeers,' he says, I an't.' ' Then, sir,* 
says I, * I am sorry for you, for I shan't be able 
to explain it.' Naturally, the parent goes away, 
and wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally 
naturally, thinks I'm one." 

Saying this, and a great deal more, with tipsy 
profundity and a serio-comic air, and keeping 
his eye all the time on Mrs. Sliderskew, who was 
unable to hear one word, Mr. Squeers concluded 
by helping himself and passing the bottle. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 57. 

PHYSICIAN— Bob Sawyer's experience. 

" Anything new? " 

" No, nothing particular. Rather a good ac- 
cident brought into the casualty ward." 

" What was that, sir ? " inquired Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

'* Only a man fallen out of a four pair of stairs* 
window ; — but it's a very fair case— very fair case 
indeed." 

" Do you mean that the patient is in a fair 
way to recover?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. 

" No," replied Hopkins, carelessly. " No, I 
should rather say he wouldn't. There must be 
a splendid operation though, to-morrow — mag- 
nificent sight if Slasher does it." 

" You consider Mr. Slasher a good operator ? '* 
said Mr. Pickwick. 

*' Best alive," replied Hopkins. " Took a 
boy's leg out of the socket last week, — boy ate 
five apples and a ginger-bread cake — exactly two 
minutes after it was all over, boy said he 
wouldn't lie there to be made game of, and he'd 
tell his mother if they didn't begin." 

"Dear me!" said Mr. Pickwick, astonished. 



PHYSICIAN 



358 



PHYSICIAN 



*' Pooh ' That's nothing, that ain't," said 
Jack Hopkins. " Is it, Bob ? " 

" Nothing at all," replied Mr. Bob Sawyer. 

" By-the-bye, Bob," said Hopkins, with a 
scarcely perceptible glance at Mr. Pickwick's 
attentive face, " we had a curious accident 
last night. A child was brought in, who had 
swallowed a necklace." 

" Swallowed what, sir ? " interrupted Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

" A necklace," replied Jack Hopkins. " Not 
all at once, you know, that would be too much — 
you couldn't swallow that, if the child did — eh, 
Mr. Pickwick, ha ! ha ! " Mr. Hopkins appeared 
highly gratified with his own pleasantry, and 
continued. " No, the way was this. Child's 
parents were poor people who lived in a court. 
Child's eldest sister bought a necklace ; com- 
mon necklace, made of large black wooden 
beads. Child being fond of toys, cribbed the 
necklace, hid it, played with it, cut the string, 
and swallowed a bead. Child thought it capital 
fun, went back next day, and swallowed another 
bead." 

" Bless my heart," said Mr. Pickwick, " what 
a dreadful thing ! I beg your pardon, sir. Go 
on." 

" Next day, child swallowed two beads ; the 
day after that, he treated himself to three, and so 
on, till in a week's time he had got through the 
necklace — five-and-twenty beads in all. The 
sister, who was an industrious girl, and seldom 
treated herself to a bit of finery, cried her eyes 
out, at the loss of the necklace ; looked high and 
low for it ; but, I needn't say, didn't find it. A 
few days afterwards, the family were at dinner — 
baked shoulder of mutton, and potatoes under 
it — the child, who wasn't hungry, was playing 
about the room, when suddenly there was heard 
a devil of a noise, like a small hail storm. 
' Don't do that, my boy,' said the father. ' I 
ain't a doin' nothing,' said the child. 'Well, 
don't do it again,' said the father. There was a 
short silence, and then the noise began again, 
worse than ever. ' If you don't mind what I 
say, my boy,' said the father, ' you'll find your- 
self in bed, in something less than a pig's whis- 
per.' He gave the child a shake to make him 
obedient, and such a rattling ensued as nobody 
ever heard before. 'Why, damme, it's in the 
child ! ' said the father, ' he's got the croup in 
the wrong place ! ' ' No I haven't, father,' said 
the child, beginning to cry, 'it's the necklace; 
I swallowed it, father.' — The father caught the 
child up, and ran with him to the hospital : the 
beads in the boy's stomach rattling all the way 
with the jolting ; and the people looking up in 
the air, and down in the cellars, to see where the 
unusual sound came from. He's in the hospital 
now," said Jack Hopkins, " and he makes such 
a devil of a noise when he walks about, that 
they're obliged to muffle him in a watchman's 
coat, for fear he should wake the patients ! " 
Pickwick, Chap. 32. 

PHYSICIAN— Bob Sawyer's beginning-. 

" Who do you suppose will ever employ a 
professional man, when they see his boy playing 
at marbles in the gutter, or flying the garter in 
the horse-road? Have you no feeling for your 
profession, you groveller? Did you leave all 
the medicine?" 

" Yes, sir." 



" The powders for the child, at the large house 
with the new family, and the piils to be taken 
four times a day at the ill-tempered old gentle- 
man's with the gouty leg ? " 

" Yes, sir." 

" Then shut the door, and mind the shop." 

" Come," said Mr. Winkle, as the boy retired, 
" Things are not quite so bad as you would have 
me believe, either. There is some medicine to 
be sent out." 

Mr. Bob Sawyer peeped into the shop to see 
that no stranger was within hearing, and lean- 
ing forward to Mr. Winkle, said in a low tone : 

" He leaves it all at the wrong houses." 

Mr. Winkle looked perplexed, and Bob Saw- 
yer and his friend laughed. 

" Don't you see ? " said Bob. " He goes up to 
a house, rings the area bell, pokes a packet of 
medicine without a direction into the servant's 
hand, and walks off. Servant takes it into the 
dining-parlor ; master opens it, and reads the 
label : ' Draught to be taken at bed-time — pills 
as before — lotion as usual — the powdei. From 
Sawyer's, late Nockemorf's. Physicians' pre- 
scriptions carefully prepared,' and all the rest 
of it. Shows it to his wife — she reads the label ; 
it goes down to the servants — they read the label. 
Next day, boy calls : ' Very sorry — his mistake — 
immense business — great many parcels to deli- 
ver — Mr. Sawyer's compliments — late Nockem- 
orf.' The name gets known, and that's the 
thing, my boy, in the medical way. Bless your 
heart, old fellow, it's better than all the adver- 
tising in the world. We have got one four- 
ounce botfle that's been to half the houses in 
Bristol, and hasn't done yet." 

" Dear me, I see," observed Mr. Winkle ; 
" what an excellent plan ! " — Pickwick, Chap. 38. 

PHYSICIAN— The oracular. 

The doctor, who was a red-nosed gentleman, 
with a great bunch of seals dangling below a 
waistcoat of ribbed black satin, arrived with all 
speed, and taking his seat by the bedside of 
poor Nell, drew out his watch, and felt her 
pulse. Then he looked at her tongue, then he 
felt her pulse again, and while he did so, he 
eyed the half-emptied wine-glass as if in pro- 
found abstraction. 

" I should give her — " said the doctor at 
length, " a tea-spoonful, every now and then, of 
hot brandy and water." 

" Why, that's exactly what we've done, sir ! " 
said the delighted landlady. 

" I should also," observed the doctor, who 
had passed the foot-bath on the stairs, " I should 
also," said the doctor, in the voice of an oracle, 
" put her feet in hot water, and wrap them up 
in flannel. I should likewise," said the doctor, 
with increased solemnity, " give her something 
light for supper — the wing of a roasted fowl 
now — " 

" Why, goodness gracious me, sir, it's cook- 
ing at the kitchen fire this instant ! " cried the 
landlady. And so indeed it was, for the school- 
master had ordered it to be put down, and it 
was getting on so well that the doctor might 
have smelt it if he had tried ; perhaps he did. 

" You may then," said the doctor, rising 
gravely, " give her a glass of hot mulled port 
wine, if she likes wine — " 

" And a toast, sir? " suggested the landlady. 

" Ay," said the doctor, in the tone of a man 



PHYSICIAN 



859 



PHYSIOGNOMY 



who makes a dignified concession. " And a toast 
—of bread. But be very particular to make it 
of bread, if you please, ma'am." 

With which parting injunction, slowly and 
portentously delivered, the doctor departed, 
leaving the whole house in admiration of that 
wisdom which tallied so closely with their own. 
Everybody said he was a very shrewd doctor in- 
deed, and knew perfectly what people's consti- 
tutions were : which there appears some reason 
to suppose he did. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 46. 

PHYSICIAN-A fashionable. 

Mr. Jobling was, as we have already seen, in 
some measure a very popular character. He 
had a portentously sagacious chin, and a pom- 
pous voice, with a rich huskiness in some of its 
tones that went directly to the heart, like a ray 
of light shining through the ruddy medium of 
choice old burgundy. His neck-kerchief and 
shirt-frill were ever of the whitest, his clothes 
of the blackest and sleekest, his gold watch- 
chain of the heaviest, and his seals of the larg- 
est. His boots, which were always of the bright- 
est, creaked as he walked. Perhaps he could 
shake his head, rub his hands, or warm himself 
before a fire, better than any man alive ; and he 
had a peculiar way of smacking his lips and 
saying, " Ah ! " at intervals, while patients de- 
tailed their symptoms, which inspired great 
confidence. It seemed to express, '* I know 
what you're going to say better than you do ; 
but go on, go on." As he talked on all occa- 
sions whether he had anything to say or not, it 
was unanimously observed of him that he was 
" full of anecdote ; " and his experience and 
profit from it were considered, for the same rea- 
son, to be something much too extensive for de- 
scription. His female patients could never 
praise him too highly ; and the coldest of his 
male admirers would always say this for him to 
their friends, " that whatever Jobling's profes- 
sional skill might be (and it could not be de- 
nied that he had a very high reputation), he 
was one of the most comfortable fellows you 
ever saw in your life ! " 

Martin Chuzzkwit, Chap. 27. 

PHYSICIAN-The. 

The dinner-party was at the great Physician's. 
Bar was there, and in full force. Ferdinand 
Barnacle was there, and in his most engaging 
state. Few ways of life were hidden from Phy- 
sician, and he was oftener in its darkest places 
than even Bishop. There were brilliant ladies 
about London who perfectly doted on him, my 
dear, as the most charming creature and the 
most delightful person, who would have been 
shocked to find themselves so close to him if 
they could have known on what sights those 
thoughtful eyes of his had rested within an hour 
or two, and near to whose beds, and under 
what roofs, his composed figure had stood. But, 
Physician was a composed man, who performed 
neither on his own trumpet, nor on the trumpets 
of other people. Many wonderful things did he 
see and hear, and much irreconcileable moral 
contradiction did he pass his life among ; yet 
his equality of compassion was no more dis- 
turbed than the Divine Master's of all healing 
was. He went, like the rain, among the just 
and unjust, doing all the good he could, and 



neither proclaiming it in the synagogues nor at 
the corners of streets. 

As no man of large experience of humanity, 
however quietly carried it may be, can fail to be 
invested with an interest peculiar to the posses- 
sion of such knowledge, Physician was an at- 
tractive man. Even the daintier gentlemen and 
ladies who had no idea of his secret, and who 
would have been startled out of more wit?, than 
they had, by the monstrous impropriety of his 
proposing to them, " Come and see what I see ! " 
confessed his attraction. Where he was, some- 
thing real was. And half a grain of reality, 
like the smallest portion of some other scarce 
natural productions, will flavor an enormous 
quantity of diluent. 

It came to pass, therefore, that Physician's 
little dinners always presented people in their 
least conventional lights. The guests said to 
themselves, whether they were conscious of it 
or no, " Here is a man who really has an ac- 
quaintance with us as we are, who is admitted 
to some of us every day with our wigs and 
paint off, who hears the wanderings of our 
minds, and sees the undisguised expression of 
our faces, when both are past our control ; we 
may as well make an approach to reality with 
him, for the man has got the better of us and is 
too strong for us." Therefore Physician's guests 
came out so surprisingly at his round table, that 
they were almost natural. 

Bar's knowledge of that agglomeration of 
Jurymen which is called humanity was as sharp 
as a razor, yet a razor is not a generally conve- 
nient instrument, and Physician's plain bright 
scalpel, though far less keen, was adaptable to 
far wider purposes. Bar knew all about the 
gullibility and knavery of people ; but Physi- 
cian could have given him a better insight into 
their tendernesses and affections, in one week 
of his rounds, than Westminster Hall and all 
the circuits put together, in threescore years 
and ten. Bar always had a suspicion of this, 
and perhaps was glad to encourage it (for, if the 
world were really a great Law Court, one would 
think that the last day of Term could not too 
soon arrive) ; and so he liked and respected 
Physician quite as much as any other kind of 
man did. — Little Dorrit, Book II. , C/uip. 25. 

PHYSICIAN— The riches of grood deeds. 

I never walk out with my husband, but I hear 
the people bless him. I never go into a house 
of any degree, but I hear his praises, or see 
them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night 
but I know that in the course of that day he has 
alleviated pain, and soothed some fellow-creature 
in the time of need. I know that from the beds 
of those who were past recovery, thanks have 
often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his 
patient ministration. Is not this to be rich? 
Bleak House, Chap. 67. 

PHYSIOONOMY— Of a hotel. 

I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be 
true ; I am much of the same mind as to the 
subtler expressions of the hand ; I hold physi- 
ognomy to be infallible ; though all these sciences 
demand rare qualities in the student. But I 
also hold that there is no more certain index to 
personal character than the condition of a set 
of casters is to the character of any hotel. Know- 
, ing, and having often tested this theory of mine, 



PICKWICKIANS 



PICKWICK 



Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when, 
laying aside any remaining veil of disguise, I 
held up before him in succession the cloudy oil 
and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, the dirty 
salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy 
sauce in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition. 

A Dinner in an Hour, New Uncommercial 
Samples. 

PICKWICKIANS-The. 

And how much more interesting did the 
spectacle become, when, starting into full life 
and animation, as a simultaneous call for " Pick- 
wick" burst from his followers, that illustrious 
man slowly mounted into the Windsor chair, on 
which he had been previously seated, and ad- 
dressed the club himself had founded. What 
a study for an artist did that exciting scene pre- 
sent ! The eloquent Pickwick, with one hand 
gracefully concealed behind his coat tails, and 
the other waving in air, to assist his glowing 
declamation ; his elevated position revealing 
those tights and gaiters, which, had they clothed 
an ordinary man, might have passed without 
observation, but which, when Pickwick clothed 
them — if we may use the expression — inspired 
voluntary awe and respect ; surrounded by the 
men who had volunteered to share the perils of 
his travels and who were destined to participate 
in the glories of his discoveries. On his right hand 
sat Mr. Tracy Tupman — the too-susceptible Tup- 
man, who to the wisdom and experience of 
maturer years superadded the enthusiasm and 
ardor of a boy, in the most interesting and 
pardonable of human weaknesses — love. Time 
and feeding had expanded that once romantic 
form ; the black silk waistcoat had become more 
and more developed ; inch by inch had the gold 
watch-chain beneath it disappeared from within 
the range of Tupman's vision ; and gradually 
had the capacious chin encroached upon the 
borders of the white cravat : but the soul of 
Tupman had known no change — admiration of 
the fair sex was still its ruling passion. On the 
left of his great leader sat the poetic Snodgrass, 
and near him again the sporting Winkle, the 
former poetically enveloped in a mysterious blue 
cloak with a canine-skin collar, and the latter 
communicating additional lustre to a new green 
shooting-coat, plaid neckerchief, and closely- 
fitted drabs. — Pickwick, Chap. i. 

PICKWICKIAN SENSE -The. 

" Mr. Blotton (of Aldgate) rose to order. Did 
the honorable Pickwickian allude to him ? (Cries 
of " Order," " Chair," " Yes," " No," " Go on," 
" Leave off," etc.) 

" Mr. Pickwick would not put up to be put 
down by clamor. He had alluded to the honor- 
able gentleman. (Great excitement.) 

" Mr. Blotton would only say then, that he re- 
pelled the hon. gent.'s false and scurrilous accu- 
sation, with profound contempt. 

" The Chairman was quite sure the hon. Pick- 
wickian would withdraw the expression he had 
just made use of. 

" Mr. Blotton, with all possible respect for the 
chair, was quite sure he would not. 

" The Chairman felt it his imperative duty to 
demand of the honorable gentleman whether he 
had used the expression which had just escaped 
him in a common sense ? 



" Mr. Blotton had no hesitation in saying 
that he had not — he had used the words in its 
Pickwickian sense. (Hear, hear.) He was 
bound to acknowledge that, personally, he enter- 
tained the highest regard and esteem for the 
honorable gentleman ; he had merely considered 
him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view. 
(Hear, hear.) 

" Mr. Pickwick felt much gratified by the fair, 
candid, and full explanation of his honorable 
friend. He begged it to be at once understood, 
that his own observations had been merely in- 
tended to bear a Pickwickian construction. 
(Cheers.)" — Pickwick, Chap. i. 

PICKWICK— Sam Weller's opinion of. 

" Bless his old gaiters," rejoined Sam, looking 
out at the garden-door. " He's a-keepin* guard 
in the lane vith that 'ere dark lantern, like a 
amiable Guy Fawkes ? I never see such a fine 
creetur in my days. Blessed if I don't think his 
heart must ha' been born five-and- twenty year 
arter his body, at least ! '^—Pickwick, Chap. 39. 

" None o' that, I say, young feller," repeated 
Sam, firmly. " No man serves him but me. And 
now we're upon it, I'll let you into another secret 
besides that," said Sam, as he paid for the beer. 
" I never heerd, mind you, nor read of in story- 
books, nor see in picters, any angel in tights 
and gaiters — not even in spectacles, as I remem- 
ber, though that may ha' been done for anythin* 
I know to the contrairey — but mark my vords, 
Job Trotter, he's a reg'lar thorough -bred angel 
for all that ; and let me see the man as wenturs 
to tell me he knows a better vun." 

Pickwick, Chap. 45. 

PICKWICK— His antiquarian discovery. 

As they turned back, Mr. Pickwick's eye fell 
upon a small broken stone, partially buried in 
the ground, in front of a cottage door. He 
paused. 

" This is very strange," said Mr. Pickwick. 

" What is strange ? " inquired Mr. Tupman, 
staring eagerly at every object near him, but the 
right one. " God bless me, what's the matter ? " 

This last was an ejaculation of iirepressible 
astonishment, occasioned by seeing Mr. Pick- 
wick, in his enthusiasm for discovery, fall on 
his knees before the little stone, and commence 
wiping the dust off it with his pocket handker- 
chief. 

" There is an inscription here," said Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

" Is it possible ? " said Mr. Tupman. 

" I can discern," continued Mr. Pickwick, 
rubbing away with all his might, and gazing in- 
tently through his spectacles ; " I can discern a 
cross, and a B, and then a T. This is import- 
ant," continued Mr. Pickwick, starting up ; 
" this is some very old inscription, existing per- 
haps long before the ancient alms-houses in this 
place. It must not be lost." 

He tapped at the cottage door. A laboring 
man opened it. 

" Do you know how this stone came here, 
my friend?" inquired the benevolent Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

" No, I doan't, sir," replied the man civilly. 
•' It was here long afore I war born or any on us." 

Mr. Pickwick glanced triumphantly at his 
companion. 



PICKWICK 



361 



PICKWICK 



*' You — you — are not particularly attached to 
it, I dare say," said Mr. Pickwick, trembling 
with anxiety. " You wouldn't mind selling it, 
now ? " 

" Ah ! but who'd buy it ? " inquired the man, 
with an expression of face which he probably 
meant to be very cunning. 

•* I'll give you ten shillings for it at once," 
said Mr. Pickwick, " if you would take it up for 
me." 

The astonishment of the village may be easily 
imagined, when (the little stone having been 
raised with one wrench of a spade), Mr. Pick- 
wick, by dint of great personal exertion bore it 
with his own hands to the inn, and after having 
carefully washed it, deposited it on the table. 

The exultation and joy of the Pickwickians 
knew no bounds, when their patience and assi- 
duity, their washing and scraping, were crowned 
with success. The stone was uneven and bro- 
ken, and the letters were straggling and irregu- 
lar, but the following fragment of an inscription 
was clearly to be deciphered : 

B I L S T 
U M 
P S H I 
S. M. 
ARK 
Mr. Pickwick's eyes sparkled with delight, as 
he sat and gloated over the treasure he had dis- 
covered. He had attained one of the greatest 
objects of his ambition. In a county known 
to abound in remains of the early ages ; in a 
village in which there still existed some memo- 
rials of the olden time, he — he, the Chairman 
of the Pickwick Club — had discovered a strange 
and curious inscription of unquestionable an- 
tiquity, which had wholly escaped the observa- 
tion of the many learned men who had preced- 
ed him. He could hardly trust the evidence of 
his senses. — Pickwick, Chap. ii. 

PICKWICK— The antiquarian controversy. 

It appears from the Transactions of the Club, 
then, that Mr. Pickwick lectured upon the dis- 
covery at a General Club Meeting, convened on 
the night succeeding their return, and entered 
into a variety of ingenious and erudite specula- 
tions on the meaning of the inscription. It also 
appears that a skillful artist executed a faithful 
delineation of the curiosity, which was engraven 
on stone, and presented to the Royal Antiquarian 
Society, and other learned bodies ; that heart- 
burnings and jealousies without number, were 
created by rival controversies which were penned 
upon the subject ; and that Mr. Pickwick himself 
wrote a Pamphlet, containing ninety-six pages of 
very small print, and twenty-seven different read- 
ings of the inscription. That three old gentlemen 
cut off their eldest sons with a shilling a-piece for 
presuming to doubt the antiquity of the fragment; 
and that one enthusiastic individual cut him- 
self off prematurely, in despair at being unable 
to fathom its meaning. That Mr. Pickwick was 
elected an honorary member of seventeen native 
and foreign societies, for making the discovery ; 
that none of the seventeen could make anything 
of it ; but that all the seventeen agreed it was 
very extraordinary. 

Mr. Blotton, indeed — and the name will be 
doomed to the undying contempt of those who 



cultivate the mysterious and the sublime — Mr. 
Blotton, we say, with the doubt and cavilling 
peculiar to vulgar minds, presumed to state a 
view of the case, as degrading as ridiculous. 
Mr. Blotton, with a mean desire to tarnish the 
lustre of the immortal name of Pickwick, actu- 
ally undertook a journey to Cobham in person, 
ana on his return, sarcastically observed in an 
oration at the club, that he had seen the man 
from whom the stone was purchased ; that the 
man presumed the stone to be ancient, but sol- 
emnly denied the antiquity of the inscription — 
inasmuch as he represented it to have been 
rudely carved by himself in an idle mood, and 
to display letters intended to bear neither more 
nor less than the simple construction of — " BILL 
STUMPS, HIS MARK ; " and that Mr. Stumps, 
being little in the habit of original composition, 
and more accustomed to be guided by the sound 
of words than by the strict rules of orthography, 
had omitted the concluding " L " of his chris- 
tian name. 

The Pickwick Club (as might have been ex- 
pected from so enlightened an Institution), re- 
ceived this statement with the contempt it de- 
served, expelled the presumptuous and ill-con- 
ditioned Blotton, and voted Mr. Pickwick a pair 
of gold spectacles, in token of their confidence 
and approbation ; in return for which, Mr. Pick- 
wick caused a portrait of himself to be painted, 
and hung up in the club-room. 

Mr. Blotton, though ejected, was not conquered. 
He also wrote a pamphlet, addressed to the sev- 
enteen learned societies, native and foreign, con- 
taining a repetition Of the statement he had al- 
ready made, and rather more than half intimating 
his opinion that the seventeen learned societies 
were so many " humbugs." Hereupon the virtu- 
ous indignation of the seventeen learned socie- 
ties, native and foreign, being roused, several 
fresh pamphlets appeared ; the foreign learned 
societies corresponded with the native learned 
societies ; the native learned societies translated 
the pamphlets of the foreign leai-ned societies 
into English ; the foreign learned societies trans- 
lated the pamphlets of the native learned socie- 
ties into all sorts of languages ; and thus com- 
menced that celebrated scientific discussion so 
well known to all men, as the Pickwick contro- 
versy. 

But this base attempt to injure Mr. Pickwick 
recoiled upon the head of its calumnious author. 
The seventeen learned societies unanimously 
voted the presumptuous Blotton an ignorant 
meddler, and forthwith set to work upon more 
treatises than ever. And to this day the stone 
remains, an illegible monument of Mr. Pick- 
wick's greatness, and a lasting trophy to the lit- 
tleness of his enemies. — Pickwick, Chap. ii. 

PICKWICK— In a ragre. 

If any dispassionate spectator could have 
beheld the countenance of the illustrious man 
whose name forms the leading feature of the 
title of this work, during the latter part of this 
conversation, he would have been almost in- 
duced to wonder that the indignant fire which 
flashed from his eyes did not melt the glasses 
of his spectacles — so majestic was his wrath. 
His nostrils dilated, and his fists clenched in- 
voluntarily, as he heard himself addressed by 
the villain. But he restrained himself again — 
he did not pulverize him. 



pia 



PIONEER 



" Here," continued the hardened traitor, toss- 
ing the license at Mr. Pickwick's feet : " get the 
name altered — take home the lady — ^o for 
Tuppy." 

Mr. Pickwick was a philosopher, but philoso- 
phers are only men in armor, after all. The 
shaft had reached him, penetrated through his 
philosophical harness, to his very heart. In the 
frenzy of his rage, he hurled the inkstand madly 
forward, and followed it up himself. But Mr. 
Jingle had disappeared, and he found himself 
caught in the arms of Sam. 

" Hallo," said that eccentric functionary, "fur- 
niter's cheap where you come from, sir. Self- 
acting ink, that 'ere ; it's wrote your mark upon 
the wall, old gen'lm'n. Hold still, sir ; wot's 
the use o' runnin' arter a man as has made his 
lucky, and got to t'other end of the Borough by 
this time ? " — Pickwick^ Chap. lo. 

PIQ— An Anxerican. 

Once more in Broadway ! Here are the same 
ladies in bright colors walking to and fro, in 
pairs and singly ; yonder the very same light 
blue parasol which passed and repassed the 
hotel window twenty times while we were sit- 
ting there. We are going to cross here. Take 
care of the pigs. Two portly sows are trotting 
up behind this carriage, and a select party of 
half-a-dozen gentlemen hogs have just now 
turned the corner. 

Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward 
by himself He has only one ear, having parted 
with the other to vagrant dogs in the course of 
his city rambles. But he gets on very well 
without it, and leads a roving, gentlemanly, 
vagabond kind of life, somewhat answering to 
that of our club men at home. He leaves his 
lodgings every morning at a certain hour, throws 
himself upon the town, gets through his day in 
some manner quite satisfactory to himself, and 
regularly appears at the door of his own house 
again at night like the mysterious master of Gil 
Bias. He is a free-and-easy, careless, indifferent 
kind of pig, having a very large acquaintance 
among other pigs of the same character,- whom 
he rather knows by sight than conversation, as 
he seldom troubles himself to stop and exchange 
civilities, but goes grunting down the kennel, 
turning up the news and small talk of the city 
in the shape of cabbage-stalks and offal, and 
bearing no tails but his own, which is a very 
short one, for his old enemies, the dogs, have 
been at that, too, and have left him hardly 
enough to swear by. He is in every respect a 
republican pig, going wherever he pleases, and 
mingling with the best society on an equal if not 
superior footing, for every one makes way when 
he appears, and the haughtiest give him the 
wall if he prefer it. He is a great philosopher, 
and seldom moved unless by the dogs before 
mentioned. Sometimes, indeed, you may see 
his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, 
whose carcass garnishes a butcher's door-post ; 
but he grunts out, "Such is life; all flesh is 
pork!" buries his nose in the mire again, and 
waddles down the gutter, comforting himself 
with the reflection that there is one snout the 
less to anticipate stray cabbage-stalks, at any 
rate. 

They are the city scavengers, these pigs. 
Ugly brutes they are ; having for the most part 
scanty, brown backs, like the lids of old horse- 



hair trunks, spotted with unwholesome black 
blotches. They have long, gaunt legs too, and 
such peaked snouts that if one of them could 
be persuaded to sit for his profile nobody 
would recognize it for a pig's likeness. They 
are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or 
caught, but are thrown upon their own re 
sources in early life, and become preternaturally 
knowing in consequence. Every pig knows 
where he lives much better than anybody could 
tell him. At this hour, just as evening is closing 
in, you will see them roaming towards bed by 
scores, eating their way to the last. Occasion- 
ally some youth among them who has over- 
eaten himself, or has been much worried by 
dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodi- 
gal son ; but this is a rare case : perfect self- 
possession and self-reliance and immovable 
composure being their foremost attributes. 

American Notes ^ Chap. 6. 

PIGS. 

Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road 
was perifectly alive with pigs of all ages ; lying 
about in every direction, fast asleep ; or grunt- 
ing along in quest of hidden dainties. I had 
always a sneaking kindness for these odd ani- 
mals, and found a constant source of amuse- 
ment, when all others failed, in watching their 
proceedings. As we were riding along this 
morning, I observed a little incident between 
two youthful pigs, which was so very human as 
to be inexpressibly comical and grotesque at the 
time, though I dare say, in telling, it is tame 
enough. 

One young gentleman (a very delicate porker, 
with several straws sticking about his nose, be- 
tokening recent investigations in a dunghill) 
was walking deliberately on, profoundly think- 
ing, when suddenly his brother, who was lying 
in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up immedi- 
ately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp 
mud. Never was pig's whole mass of blood so 
turned. He started back at least three feet, 
gazed for a moment, and then shot ofi' as hard 
as he could go ; his excessive little tail vibra- 
ting with speed and terror, like a distracted 
pendulum. But before he had gone very far, 
he began to reason with himself as to the na- 
ture of this frightful appearance ; and as he rea- 
soned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees 
until at last he stopped, and faced about. There 
was his brother, with the mud upon him glazing 
in the sun, yet staring out of the very same 
hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings ! He 
was no sooner assured of this — and he assured 
himself so carefully that one may almost say he 
shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better 
— than he came back at a round trot, pounced 
upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his 
tail, as a caution to him to be careful what he 
was about for the future, and never to play 
tricks with his family any more. 

American Notes, Chap. I2. 

PIONEER-A Western. 

The track of to-day had the same features as 
the track of yesterday. There was the swamp, 
the bush, the perpetual chorus of frogs, the rank 
unseemly growth, the unwholesome steaming 
earth. Here and there, and frequently too, we 
encountered a solitary broken-down wagon, full 
of some new settler's goods. It was a pitiful 



prPE-FILLINa 



PLAQIARISM 



sight to see one of these vehicles deep in the 
mire, the axle-tree broken, the wheel lying idly 
by its side, the man gone miles away to look for 
assistance, the woman seated among their wan- 
dering household gods, with a baby at her breast, 
a picture of forlorn, dejected patience, the team 
of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, 
and breathing forth such clouds of vapor from 
their mouths and nostrils, that all the damp 
mist and fog around seemed to have come direct 
from them. — American Azotes, Chap, 13. 



The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced 
old fellow (not so very old, either, for he was but 
just turned sixty, I should think), who had been 
out with the militia in the last war with Eng- 
land, and had seen all kinds of service — except 
a battle ; and he had been very near seeing that, 
he added — very near. He had all his life been 
i-estless and locomotive, with an irresistible de- 
sire for change, and was still the son of his old 
self, for if he had nothing to keep him at home, 
he said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb 
towards the window of the room in which the 
old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of the 
house), he would clean up his musket, and be 
off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one 
of the very many descendants of Cain, proper to 
this continent, who seem destined from their 
birth to serve as pioneers in the great human 
army, who gladly go on from year to year ex- 
tending its outposts, and leaving home after 
home behind them, and die at last, utterly re- 
gardless of their graves being left thousands of 
miles behind by the wandering generation who 
succeed. 

His wife was a domesticated, kind-hearted old 
soul, who had come with him " from the queen 
city of the world," which, it seemed, was Phila- 
delphia ; but had no love for this Western coun- 
try, and indeed had little reason to bear it any, 
having seen her children, one by one, die here 
of fever, in the full prime and beauty of their 
youth. Her heart was sore, she said, to think 
of them, and to talk on this theme, even to 
strangers, in that blighted place, so far from her 
old home, eased it somewhat, and became a me- 
lancholy pleasure. — American Notes, Chap, 14. 

PIPE-PILLINQ-A fine art. 

She was, out and out, the very best filler of a 
pipe, I should say, in the four quarters of the 
globe. To see her put that chubby little finger 
in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to 
clear the tube, and, when she had done so, affect 
to think that there was really something in the 
tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it to her 
eye like a telescope, with a most provoking 
twist in her capital little face, as she looked 
down it, was quite a brilliant thing. As to the 
tobacco, she was perfect mistress of the subject ; 
and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of pa- 
per, when the Carrier had it in his mouth — going 
so very near his nose, and yet not scorching it — 
was Art, high Art. 

And the Cricket and the Kettle, tuning up 
again, acknowledged it ! The bright fire, blaz- 
ing up again, acknowledged it ! The little Mow- 
er on the clock, in his unheeded work, acknow- 
ledged it ! The Carrier, in his smoothing fore- 
head and expanding face, acknowledged it, 
the readiest of all. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chirp i. 



PIPE— The picttires in the smoke. 

And as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his 
old pipe, and as the Dutch clock ticked, and as 
the red fire gleamed, and as the Cricket chirped ; 
that Genius of his Hearth and Home (for such 
the Cricket was) came out, in faiiy shape, into 
the room, and summoned many forms of Home 
about him. Dots of all ages and all sizes, 
filled the chamber. Dots who were meny chil- 
dren, running on before him, gathering flowers 
in the fields ; coy Dots, half shrinking from, 
half yielding to, the pleading of his own rough 
image ; newly-married Dots, alighting at the 
door, and taking wonderful possession of the 
household keys ; motherly little Dots, attended 
by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be 
christened ; matronly Dots, still young and 
blooming, watching Dots of daughters, as they 
danced at rustic balls ; fat Dots, encircled and 
beset by troops of rosy grand-children ; wither- 
ed Dots, who leaned on sticks, and tottered as 
they crept along. Old Carriers too, appeared, 
with blind old Boxers lying at their feet ; and 
newer carts with younger drivers (" Peerybingle 
Brothers," on the tilt) ; and sick old Carriers, 
tended by the gentlest hands ; and graves of 
dead and gone old Carriers, green in the church- 
yard. And as the Cricket showed him all these 
things— he saw them plainly, though his eyes 
were fixed upon the fire — the Carrier's heart 
grew light and happy, and he thanked his House- 
hold Gods with all his might, and cared no more 
for Gruff and Tackleton than you do. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chirp 1. 

PLAGIARISM— Dramatic. 

" You're quite right, sir," interrupted the 
literary gentleman, leaning back in his chair 
and exercising his toothpick. " Human intel- 
lect, sir, has progressed since his time, is pro- 
gressing, will progress." 

" Shot beyond him, I mean," resumed Nich- 
olas, " in quite another respect, for, whereas he 
brought within the magic circle of his genius, 
traditions peculiarly adapted for his purpose, 
and turned familiar things into constellations 
which should enlighten the world for ages, you 
drag within the magic circle of your dullness, 
subjects not at all adapted to the purposes of 
the stage, and debase as he exalted. For in- 
stance, you take the uncompleted books of liv- 
ing authors, fresh from their hands, wet from 
the press, cut, hack, and carve them to the pow- 
ers and capacities of your actors, and the capa- 
bility of your theatres, finish unfinished 
works, hastily and crudely vamp uj) ideas not 
yet worked out by their original ])rojector, but 
which have doubtless cost him many thougluful 
days and sleepless nights ; by a comparison of 
incidents and dialogue, down to the very last 
word he may have written a fortnight before, 
do your utmost to anticipate his plot — all this 
without his permission, and against his will ; 
and then, to crown the whole proceciling, pub- 
lish in some mean pamphlet, an unmeaning far- 
rago of garbled extracts from his work, to which 
you put your name as author, with the honor- 
able distinction annexed, of liaviug perpetrated 
a hundred other outrages of the same description. 
Now, show me the distinction between such pil- 
fering as this, and picking a n)an's pocket in 
the street : unless, indeed, it be, that the legis- 
lature has a regard for pocket-handkerchiefs 



PLATB-MAKTNQ 



364 



POETICAL OBITUARY 



and leaves men's brains (except when they are 
knocked out by violence) to take care of them- 
selves." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 48. 

PLATE-MAKING. 

Shall I break the plate ? First let me look at 
the back, and see who made it. Copeland. 

Copeland ! Stop a moment. Was it yester- 
day I visited Copeland's works, and saw them 
making plates ? In the confusion of travelling 
about, it might be yesterday or it might be yes- 
terday month ; but I think it was yesterday. I 
appeal to the plate. The plate says, decidedly, 
yesterday. I find the plate, as I look at it, 
growing into a companion. 

Don't you remember (says the plate) how you 
steamed away, yesterday morning, in the bright 
sun and the east wind, along the valley of the 
sparkling Trent ? Don't you recollect how many 
kilns you flew past, looking like the bowls of gi- 
gantic tobacco pipes, cut short off from the stem 
and turned upside down? And the fires — and 
the smoke — and the roads made with bits of 
crockery, as if all the plates and dishes in 
the civilized world had been Macadamised, ex- 
pressly for the laming of all the horses ? Of 
course I do ! 

And don't you remember (says the plate) how 
you alighted at Stoke — a picturesque heap of 
houses, kilns, smoke, wharfs, canals, and river, 
lying (as was most appropriate) in a basin — and 
how, after climbing up the sides of the basin to 
look at the prospect, you trundled down again at 
a walking-match pace, and straight proceeded to 
my father's, Copeland's, where the whole of my 
family, high and low, rich and poor, are turned 
out upon the world from our nursery and semi- 
nary, covering some fourteen acres of ground? 
And don't you remember what we spring from ; 
heaps of lumps of clay, partially prepared and 
cleaned in Devonshire and Dorsetshire — whence 
said clay principally comes — and hills of flint, 
without which we should want our ringing sound, 
and should never be musical ? And as to the 
flint, don't you recollect that it is first burnt in 
kilns, and is then laid under the four iron feet of 
a demon slave, subject to violent stamping fits, 
who, when they come on, stamps away insanely 
with his four iron legs, and would crush all the 
flint in the Isle of Thanet to powder, without 
leaving off"? And as to the clay, don't you recollect 
how it is put into mills or teazels, and is sliced, 
and dug, and cut at, by endless knives, clogged 
and sticky, but persistent — and is pressed out of 
that machine through a square trough, whose 
form it takes — and is cut off" in square lumps 
and thrown into a vat, and there mixed with 
water, and beaten to a pulp by paddle-wheels — 
and is then run into a rough house, all rugged 
beams and ladders splashed v/ith white, — super- 
intended by Grindoff, the Miller, in his working 
clothes, all splashed with white — where it passes 
through no end of machinery-moved sieves all 
splashed with white, arranged in an ascending 
scale of fineness (some so fine, that three hun- 
dred silk threads cross each other in a single 
square inch of their surface), and all in a violent 
state of ague, with their teeth for ever chattering, 
and their bodies for ever shivering ? And as to 
the flint again, isn't it mashed and mollified and 
troubled and soothed, exactly as rags are in a 
paper-mill, until it is reduced to a pap so fine 
that it contains no atom of "grit" perceptible 



to the nicest taste ? And as to the flint and the 
clay together, are they not, after all this, mixed 
in the proportion of five of clay to one of flint? 
and isn't the compound — known as " slip " — run 
into oblong troughs, where its superfluous mois- 
ture may evaporate ? and finally, isn't it slapped 
and banged and beaten and patted and kneaded 
and wedged and knocked about like butter, un- 
til it becomes a beautiful gray dough, ready for 
the potter's use ? 

In regard of the potter, popularly so-called 
(says the plate), you don't mean to say you have 
forgotten that a workman called a Thrower is 
the man under whose hand this gray dough takes 
the shapes of the simpler household vessels as 
quickly as the eye can follow ? You don't mean 
to say you cannot call him up before you, sitting 
with his attendant woman, at his potter's wheel 
— a disc about the size of a dinner-plate, revolv- 
ing on two drums slowly or quickly as he wills 
— who made you a complete breakfast set for a 
bachelor, as a good-humored little off"-hand joke ? 
You remember how he took up as much dough 
as he wanted, and, throwing it on his wheel, in 
a moment fashioned it into a tea-cup — caught 
up more clay and made a saucer — a larger dab 
and whirled it into a teapot — winked at a small- 
er dab and converted it into the lid of the tea- 
pot, accurately fitting by the measurement of his 
eye alone — coaxed a middle-sized dab for two 
seconds, broke it, turned it over at the rim, and 
made a milk-pot — laughed, and turned out a 
slop-basin — coughed, and provided for the 
sugar? — A Plated Article. Reprinted Pieces. 

POETRY— Its weakening effect on the mind. 

" Half-a-crown," said Wegg, meditating. 
" Yes. (It ain't much, sir.) Half-a-crown." 

*' Per week, you know." 

" Per week. Yes. As to the amount of strain 
upon the intellect now. Was you thinking at 
all of poetry ? " Mr. Wegg inquired, musing. 

" Would it come dearer ? " Mr. Boffin asked. 

" It would come dearer," Mr. Wegg returned. 
" For when a person comes to grind off" poetry 
night after night, it is but right he should ex- 
pect to be paid for its weakening eff"ect on his 
mind." 

" To tell you the truth, Wegg," said Boffin, 
" I wasn't thinking of poetry, except in so far as 
this: — If you was to happen now and then to 
feel yourself in the mind to tip me and Mrs. 
Boffin one of your ballads, why then we should 
drop into poetry." 

" I follow you, sir," said Wegg. " But not 
being a regular musical professional, I should 
be loth to engage myself for that ; and therefore, 
when I dropped into poetry, I should ask to be 
considered so fur, in the light of a friend." 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 5. 

POETICAL OBITUARY-By Joe. 

" Well ! " Joe pursued, " somebody must keep 
the pot a-biling, Pip, or the pot won't bile, don't 
you know ? " 

I saw that, and said so. 

" 'Consequence, my father didn't make objec- 
tions to my going to work ; so I went to work 
at my present calling, which were his too, if he 
would have followed it, and I worked tolerable 
hard, I assure you, Pip. In time I were able to 
keep him, and I kep him till he went off in a 
purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions to 



POLICE 



366 



POIilTICIAir 



have had put upon his tombstone that What- 
sume'er the failings on his part, Remember rea- 
der he were that good in his hart." 

Joe recited this couplet with such manifest 
pride and careful perspicuity, that I asked him 
if he had made it himself? 

" I made it," said Joe, " my own self. I made 
it in a moment. It was like striking out a horse- 
shoe complete, in a single blow. I never was so 
much surprised in all my life — couldn't credit 
my own ed — to tell you the truth, hardly believed 
it were my own ed. As I was saying, Pip, it 
were my intentions to have had it cut over him ; 
but poetry costs money, cut it how you will, small 
or large, and it were not done." 

Great Expectations^ Chap. 7. 

POLICE-The English detective. 

Just at dusk, Inspectors Wield and Stalker are 
announced ; but we do not undertake to war- 
rant the orthography of any of the names here 
mentioned. Inspector Wield presents Inspector 
Stalker, Inspector Wield is a middle-aged man 
of a portly presence, with a large, moist, know- 
ing eye, a husky voice, and a habit of empha- 
sizing his conversation by the aid of a corpulent 
fore-finger, which is constantly in juxtaposition 
with his eyes or nose. Inspector Stalker is a 
shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman — in appearance 
not at all unlike a very acute, thoroughly-trained 
schoolmaster, from the Normal Establishment 
at Glasgow. Inspector Wield one might have 
known, perhaps, for what he is — Inspector 
Stalker, never. 

The ceremonies of reception over, Inspectors 
Wield and Stalker observe that they have 
brought some sergeants with them. The ser- 
geants are presented — five in number. Sergeant 
Dornton, Sergeant Witchem, Sergeant Mith, 
Sergeant Fendall, and Sergeant Straw. We 
have the whole Detective force from Scotland 
Yard, with one exception. They sit down in a 
semi-circle (the two Inspectors at the two ends) 
at a little distance from the round table, facing 
the editorial sofa. Every man of them, in a 
glance, immediately takes an inventory of the 
furniture and an accurate sketch of the edito- 
rial presence. The Editor feels that any gen- 
tleman in company could take him up, if need 
should be, without the smallest hesitation, twen- 
ty years hence. 

The whole party are in plain clothes. Ser- 
geant Dornton, about fifty years of age, with a 
ruddy face and a high, sun-burnt forehead, has 
the air of one who has been a Sergeant in the 
army — he might have sat to Wilkie for the 
Soldier in the Reading of the Will. He is 
famous for steadily pursuing the inductive pro- 
cess, and, from small beginnings, working on 
from clue to clue until he bags his man. Ser- 
geant Witchem, shorter and thicker-set, and 
marked with the small-pox, has something of a 
reserved and thoughtful air, as if he were en- 
gaged in deep arithmetical c.lculations. He is 
renowned for his acquaintance with the swell 
mob. Sergeant Mith, a smooth-faced man with 
a fresh bright complexion, and a strange air of 
simplicity, is a dab at housebreakers. Sergeant 
Fendall, a light-haired, well-spoken," polite per- 
son, is a prodigious hand at pursuing private in- 
quiries of a delicate nature. Straw, a little wiry 
Sergeant of meek demeanor and strong sense, 
would knock at a door and ask a series of ques- 



tions m any mild character you choose to pres- 
cribe to him, from a charity-boy upwards, and 
seem as innocent as an infant. They are, one 
and all, respectable-looking men ; of perfectly 
good deportment and unusual intelligence ; with 
nothing lounging or slinking in their manners ; 
with an air of keen observation and quick per- 
ception when addressed ; and generally present- 
ing in their faces, traces more or less marked 
of habitually leading lives of strong mental ex- 
citement. They have all good eyes ; and they all 
can, and they all do, look full at whomsoever 
they speak to. 

Forever on the watch, with their wits stretched 
to the utmost, these officers have, from day to 
day and year to year, to set themselves against 
every novelty of trickery and dexterity that the 
combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals 
in England can devise, and to keep pace with 
every such invention that comes out. In the 
Courts of Justice, the materials of thousands of 
such stories as we have narrated — often elevated 
into the marvellous and romantic, by the circum- 
stances of the case — are dryly compressed into 
the set phrase, " in consequence of information 
I received, I did so and so." Suspicion was to 
be directed, by careful inference and deduction, 
upon the right person ; the right person was to 
be taken, wherever he had gone, or whatever he 
was doing to avoid detection ; he is taken ; there 
he is at the bar ; that is enough, From infor- 
mation I, the officer, received, I did it ; and, ac- 
cording to the custom in these cases, I say no 
more. 

These games of chess, played with live pieces, 
are played before small audiences, and are 
chronicled nowhere. The interest of the game 
supports the player. Its results are enough for 
Justice. To compare great things with small, 
suppose Leverrier or Adams informing the 
public that from information he had received he 
had discovered a new planet ; or Columbus in- 
forming the public of his day that from informa- 
tion he had received he had discovered a new 
continent ; so the Detectives inform it that they 
have discovered a new fraud or an old offender, 
and the process is unknown. 

The Detective Police. Reprinted Pieces. 

POLICE-OFFICE- A. 

The whitewashed room was pure white as of 
old, the methodical book-keeping was in peace- 
ful progress as of old, and some distant howler 
was banging against a cell door as of old. The 
sanctuary was not a permanent abiding-place, 
but a kind of criminal Pickford's. The lower 
passions and vices were regularly ticked off in 
the books, wareho\ised in the cells, carted away 
as per accompanying invoice, and left little 
mark upon it. 

Otir Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 12. 

POLITICIAN-His sentiments. 

He was a great politician, of course, and ex- 
plained his opinion at some length to one of our 
company ; but I only remember that he conclud- 
ed with two sentiments, one of which was, 
Somebody for ever, and the other. Blast every- 
body else ! which is by no means a bad abstract 
of the general creed in these matters. 

American /Votes, Chap, 13. 



POLITICIANS 



POOR AND UNFORTUNATE 



POLITICIANS. 

These are the great actors for whom the 
stage is reserved. A People there are, no 
doubt — a certam large number of supernumer- 
aries, who are to be occasionally addressed, and 
relied upon for shouts and choruses, as on the 
theatrical stage ; but Boodle and Buffy, their 
followers and families, their heirs, executors, 
administrators, and assigns, are the born first- 
actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can 
appear upon the scene for ever and ever. 

Bleak House, Chap. I2. 

POLITICAL ECONOMY-Toots»s idea of. 

Mr. Baps was a very grave gentleman, with a 
slow and measured manner of speaking ; and 
before he had stood under the lamp five 
minutes, he began to talk to Toots (who had 
been silently comparing pumps with him) about 
what you were to do with your raw materials 
when they came into your ports in return for 
your drain of gold. Mr. Toots, to whom the 
question seemed perplexing, suggested " Cook 
'em." — DoJ7ihey &^ Sotiy Chap. 14. 

POMPOSITY— Mr. Sapsea as a type of. 

Accepting the jackass as the type of self-suf- 
ficient stupidity and conceit, — a custom, per- 
haps, like some few other customs, more con- 
ventional than fair, — then the purest jackass in 
Cloisterham is Mr. Thomas Sapsea, Auctioneer. 

Mr. Sapsea has many admirers ; indeed, 
the proposition is carried by a large local ma- 
jority, even including non-believers in his 
wisdom, that he is a credit to Cloisterham. 
He possesses the great qualities of being por- 
tentous and dull, and of having a roll in 
his speech, and another roll in his gait ; 
not to mention a certain gravely flowing 
action with his hands, as if he were presently 
going to Confirm the individual with whom he 
holds discourse. Much nearer sixty years of 
age than fifty, with a flowing outline of stomach, 
and horizontal creases in his waistcoat ; reputed 
to be rich ; voting at elections in the strictly 
respectable interest ; morally satisfied that 
nothing but he himself has grown since he was 
a baby ; how can dunder-headed Mr. Sapsea be 
otherwise than a credit to Cloisterham, and 
society ? — Edwin Drood, Chap. 4. 

POMPOSITY-Its influence. 

" Well ! " said Wemmick, " that's over ! He's 
a wonderful man, without his living likeness ; 
but I feel that I have to screw myself up when 
I dine with him — and I dine more comfortably 
unscrewed." — Great Expectations^ Chap, 48. 

PONY— A theatrical. 

" He's a good pony at bottom," said Mr. 
Crummies, turning to Nicholas. 

He might have been at bottom, but he cer- 
tainly was not at top, seeing that his coat was 
of the roughest and most ill-favored kind. So, 
Nicholas merely observed that he shouldn't 
wonder if he was. 

" Many and many is the circuit this pony 
has gone," said Mr. Crummies, flicking him 
skillfully on the eyelid for old acquaintance sake. 
" He is quite one of us. His mother was on 
the stage." 

" Was she ? " rejoined Nicholas. 

" She ate apple-pie at a circus for upwards of 



fourteen years," said the manager ; " fired pis- 
tols, and went to bed in a night-cap ; and, in 
short, took the low comedy entirely. His 
father was a dancer." 

"Was he at all distinguished?" 

" Not very," said the manager. " He was 
rather a low sort of pony. The fact is, he had 
been originally jobbed out by the day, and he 
never quite got over his old habits. He was 
clever in melodrama too, but too broad — too 
broad. When the mother died, he took the 
port-wine business." 

" The port-wine business ! " cried Nicholas. 

" Drinking port-wine with the clown," said 
the manager ; '* but he was greedy, and one 
night bit off the bowl of the glass and choked 
himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at 
last." — Nicholas Nickleby^ Chap, 23. 

POOR— Their characteristics. 

There was a string of people already strag- 
gling in, whom it was not difficult to identify as 
the nondescript messengers, go-betweens, and 
errand-bearers of the place. Some of them had 
been lounging in the rain until the gate should 
open ; others, who had timed their arrival with 
greater nicety, were coming up now, and passing 
in with damp whitey-brown paper bags from the 
grocers, loaves of bread, lumps of butter, eggs, 
milk, and the like. The shabbiness of these at- 
tendants upon shabbiness, the poverty of these 
insolvent waiters upon insolvency, was a sight 
to see. Such threadbare coats and trousers, such 
fusty gowns and shawls, such squashed hats and 
bonnets, such boots and shoes, such umbrellas 
and walking-sticks, never were seen in Rag 
Fair. All of them wore the cast-oft* clothes of 
other men and women ; were made up of patches 
and pieces of other people's individuality, and 
had no sartorial existence of their own proper. 
Their walk was the walk of a race apart. They 
had a peculiar way of doggedly slinking round 
the corner, as if they were eternally going to the 
pawnbroker's. When they coughed, they coughed 
like people accustomed to be forgotten on door- 
steps and in draughty passages, waiting for an- 
swers to letters in faded ink, which gave the 
recipients of those manuscripts great mental 
disturbance, and no satisfaction. As they eyed 
the stranger in passing, they eyed him with bor- 
rowing eyes — hungry, sharp, speculative as to 
his softness if they were accredited to him, and 
the likelihood of his standing something hand- 
some. Mendicity on commission stooped in 
their high shoulders, shambled in their unsteady 
legs, buttoned and pinned and darned and drag- 
ged their clothes, frayed their button-holes, 
leaked out of their figures in dirty little ends of 
tape, and issued from their mouths in alcoholic 
breathings. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 9. 

POOR AND UNFORTUNATE -The voice 
of the. 

Oliver told them all his simple history, and was 
often compelled to stop, by pain and want of 
strength. It was a solemn thing, to hear, in 
the darkened room, the feeble voice of the sick 
child recounting a weary catalogue of evils and 
calamities which hard men had brought upon 
him. Oh ! if, when we oppress and grind our 
fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought 
on the daik evidences of human error, which, 
like dense and heavy clouds, are rising, slowly. 



POOB 



867 



POOR 



it is true, but not less surely, to Heaven, to pour 
their after- vengeance on our heads ; if we heard 
but one instant, in imagination, the deep testi- 
mony of dead men's voices, which no power 
can stifle, and no pride shut out ; where would 
be the injury and injustice, the suffering, misery, 
cruelty, and wrong, that each day's life brings 
with it ! — Oliver Twist, Chap. 30. 

POOR— The plea of the. 

" Now, gentlemen," said Will Fern, holding 
out his hand^, and flushing for an instant in his 
haggard face. " See how your laws are made to 
trap and hunt us when we're brought to this. I 
tries to live elsewhere. And I'm a vagabond. 
To jail with him ! I comes back here. I goes 
a-nutting in your woods, and breaks — who 
don't? — a limber branch or two. To jail with 
him I One of your keepers sees me in the broad 
day, near my own patch of garden, with a gun. 
To jail with him ! I has a nat'ral angry word 
with that man, when I'm free again. To jail 
with him ! I cut a stick. To jail with him ! 
I eats a rotten apple or a turnip. To jail with 
him ! It's twenty mile away ; and coming back, 
I begs a trifle on the road. To jail with him ! 
At last the constable, the keeper — anybody — 
finds me anywhere, a-doing anything. To jail 
with him, for he's a vagrant, and a jail-bird 
known ; and jail's the only home he's got." 

The Alderman nodded sagaciously, as who 
should say, " A very good home too ! " 

" Do I say this to serve MY cause ? " cried 
Fern. " Who can give me back my liberty, who 
can give me back my good name, who can give 
me back my innocent niece ? Not all the Lords 
and Ladies in wide England. But, gentlemen, 
gentlemen, dealing with other men like me, be- 
gin at the right end. Give us, in mercy, better 
homes when we're a-lying in our cradles ; give 
us better food when we're a-working for our 
lives ; give us kinder laws to bring us back when 
we're a-going wrong ; and don't set Jail, Jail, 
Jail, afore us, everywhere we turn. There an't 
a condescension you can show the Laborer then, 
that he won't take, as ready and as grateful as a 
man can be ; for he has a patient, peaceful, will- 
ing heart. But you must put his rightful spirit 
in him first ; for, whether he's a wreck and ruin 
such as me, or is like one of them that stand 
here now, his spirit is divided from you at this 
time. Bring it back, gentlefolks, bring it back ! 
Bring it back, afore the day comes when even 
his Bible changes in his altered mind, and the 
words seem to him to read, as they have some- 
times read in my own eyes — in Jail, ' Whither 
thou goest, I can Not go ; where thou lodgest, 
I do Not lodge ; thy people are Not my peo- 
ple ; Nor thy God my God ! ' " 

Chimes, "i^d quarter. 

POOR— The homes of the. 

Great heaps of ashes ; stagnant pools, over- 
grown with rank grass and duckweed ; broken 
turnstiles ; and the upright posts of palings long 
since carried off for firewood, which menaced all 
heedless walkers with their jagged and rusty 
nails, were the leading features of the land- 
scape ; while here and there a donkey, or a rag- 
ged horse, tethered to a stake, and cropping off 
a wretched meal from the coarse, stunted turf, 
were quite in keeping with the scene, and woukl 
have suggested (if the houses had not done so 



sufficiently, of themselves) how very poor the 
people were who lived in the crazy huts adja- 
cent, and how foclhardy it might prove for one 
who carried money, or wore decent clothes, to 
walk that way alone, unless by daylight. 

Poverty has its whims and shows of taste, as 
wealth has. Some of these cabins were turreted, 
some had false windows painted on their rotten 
walls ; one had a mimic clock, upon a crazy 
tower of four feet high, which screened the chim- 
ney ; each in its little patch of ground had a rude 
seat or arbor. The population dealt in bones, 
in rags, in broken glass, in old wheels, in birds, 
and dogs. These, in their several ways of stow- 
age, filled the gardens ; and shedding a perfume, 
not of the most delicious nature, in the air, filled 
it besides with yells, and screams, and howling. 
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 44. 

POOR— Hospital scenes among" the. 

Among this congregation were some evil-look- 
ing young women, and beetle-browed young 
men ; but not many — perhaps that kind oi 
characters kept away. Generally, the faces 
(those of the children excepted) were depressed 
and subdued, and wanted color. Aged people 
were there in every variety. Mumbling, blear- 
eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame ; vacantly 
winking in the gleams of sun that now and then 
crept in through the open doors from the paved 
yard ; shading their listening ears or blinking 
eyes with their withered hands ; poring over 
their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, 
crouching and drooping in corners. There were 
weird old women, all skeleton within, all bon- 
net and cloak without, continually wiping their 
eyes with dirty dusters of pocket-handkerchiefs j 
and there were ugly old crones, both male and 
female, with a ghastly kind of contentment upon 
them which was not at all comforting to see. 
Upon the whole, it was the dragon, Pauperism, 
in a very weak and impotent condition ; tooth- 
less, fangless, drawing his breath heavily enough, 
and hardly worth chaining up. 

***** 

In a room opening from a squalid yard, where 
a number of listless women were lounging to 
and fro, trying to get warm in the ineffectual 
sunshine of the tardy May morning — in the 
" Itch Ward," not to compromise the truth — a 
woman such as Hogarth has often drawn, was 
hurriedly getting on her gown before a dusty 
fire. She was the nurse, or wardswoman, of 
that insalubrious department — herself a pauper 
— flabby, raw-boned, untidy, unpromising, and 
coarse of aspect as need be. But, on being 
spoken to about the patients whom she had in 
charge, she turned round, with her shabby gown 
half on, half off, and fell a-crying with all her 
might. Not for show, not querulously, not in 
any mawkish sentiment, but in the deep grief 
and affliction of her heart ; turning away her 
dishevelled head : sobbing most bitterly, wring- 
ing her hands, and letting fall abundance of 
great tears, that choked her utterance. What 
was the matter with the nurse of the itch-ward? 
Oh, the " dropped child" was dead ! Oh, the 
child that was found in the street, and she had 
brought up ever since, had died an hour ago 
and see where the little creature lay, beneath 
this cloth ! The dear, the pretty dear ! 

The dropped child seemed too small and poor 
a thing for Death to be in earnest with, but 



POOR 



POOR 



Death had taken it ; and already its diminutive 
form was neatly washed, composed, and stretched 
as if in sleep upon a box. I thought I heard a 
voice from Heaven saying, It shall be well for 
thee, O nurse of the itch- ward, when some less 
gentle pauper does those offices to thy cold 
form, that such as the dropped child are the 
angels who behold my Father's face ! 

***** 

Groves of babies in arms ; groves of mothers 
and other sick women in bed ; groves of luna- 
tics ; jungles of men in stone-paved down-stairs 
day-rooms, waiting for their dinners ; longer and 
longer groves of old people, in up-stairs Infirm- 
ary wards, wearing out life, God knows how — 
this was the scenery through which the walk lay, 
for two hours. In some of these latter cham- 
bers, there were pictures stuck against the wall, 
and a neat display of crockery and pewter on a 
kind of sideboard ; now and then it was a treat 
to see a plant or two : in almost every ward 
there was a cat. 

In all of these Long Walks of aged and infirm, 
some old people were bed-ridden, and had been 
for a long time ; some were sitting on their beds 
half-naked ; some dying in their beds ; some out 
of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire. A 
sullen or lethargic indifference to what was ask- 
ed, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth 
and food, a moody absence of complaint as be- 
ing of no use, a dogged silence and resentful 
desire to be left alone again, I thought were 
generally apparent. 

Who could wonder, looking through those 
weary vistas of bed and infirmity, that it should 
do him good to meet with some other scenes, 
and assure himself that there was something 
else on earth ? Who could help wondering why 
the old men lived on as they did ; what grasp 
they had on life ; what crumbs of interest or oc- 
cupation they could pick up from its bare board ; 
whether Charley Walters had ever described to 
them the days when he kept company with some 
old pauper woman in the bud, or Billy Stevens 
ever told them of the time when he was a 
dweller in the far-off foreign land called 
Home ! 

The morsel of burnt child, lying in another 
room, so patiently, in bed, wrapped in lint, and 
looking steadfastly at us with his bright, quiet 
eyes when we spoke to him kindly, looked as if 
the knowledge of these things, and of all the 
tender things there are to think about, might 
have been in his mind — as if he thought, with 
us, that there was a fellow-feeling in the pauper 
nurses, which appeared to make them more 
kind to their charges than the race of common 
nurses in the hospitals — as if he mused upon 
the Future of some older children lying around 
him in the same place, and thought it best, per- 
haps, all things considered, that he should die 
— as if he knew, without fear, of those many 
coffins, made and unmade, piled up in the store 
below — and of his unknown friend, " the drop- 
ped child," calm upon the box-lid, covered with 
a cloth. But there was something wistful and 
appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in the 
midst of the hard necessities and incongruities 
he pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of the 
helpless and the aged poor, for a little more 
liberty — and a little more bread. 

A Walk in a Workhouse, Reprinted Pieces. 



POOR— Public duty to the. 

My Lords and Gentlemen and Honorable 
Boards, when you, in the course of your dust- 
shovelling and cinder-raking, have piled up a 
mountain of pretentious failure, you must off 
with your honorable coats for the removal of it, 
and fall to the work with the power of all the 
queen's horses and all the queen's men, or it 
will come rushing down and huiy us alive. 

Yes, verily, my Lords ai.d Gentlemen and 
Honorable Boards, adapting your Catechism to 
the occasion, and by God's help so you must. 
For when we have got things to the pass that 
with an enormous treasure at disposal to relieve 
the poor, the best of the poor detest our mer- 
cies, hide their heads from us, and shame us by 
starving to death in the midst of us, it is a pass 
impossible of prosperity, impossible of contin- 
uance. It may not be so written in the Gospel 
according to Podsnappery ; you may not " find, 
these words " for the text of a sermon, in the 
Returns of the Board of Trade ; but they have 
been the truth since the foundations of the 
universe were laid, and they will be the truth 
until the foundations of the universe are shaken 
by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of 
ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional 
pauper, the sturdy breaker of windows, and the 
rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a cruel 
and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is 
a horror to the deserving and unfortunate. We 
must mend it. Lords and Gentlemen and Hon- 
orable Boards, or in its own evil hour it will 
mar every one of us. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 8. 

POOR— To be cultivated. 

It was but a hurried parting in a common 
street, yet it was a sacred remembrance to these 
two common people. Utilitarian economists, 
skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of 
Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of 
many little dog's-eared creeds, the poor you will 
have always with you. Cultivate in them, while 
there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fan- 
cies and affections, to adorn their lives, so much 
in need of ornament ; or, in the day of youi 
triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of 
their souls, and they and a bare existence stand 
face to face. Reality will take a wolfish turn, 
and make an end of you. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 6. 

POOR— The parish. 

How much is conveyed in those two short 
words — " The Parish ! " And with how many 
tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune 
and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretch- 
edness and successful knavery, are they associated. 
A poor man with small earnings, and a large 
family, just manages to live on from hand to 
mouth, and to procure food from day to day ; he 
has barely sufficient to satisfy the present crav- 
ings of nature, and can take no heed of the fiiture. 
His taxes are in arrear, quarter-day passes by, ano- 
ther quarter-day arrives ; he can procure no morje 
quarter for himself, and is summoned by — the 
parish. His goods are distrained, his children are 
crying with cold and hunger, and the very bed 
on which his sick wife is lying, is dragged from 
beneath her. What can he do ? To whom is 
he to apply for relief? To private charity ? To 
benevolent individuals ? Certainly not — there 



POOR PATIENTS 



POSTER 



is his parish. There are the parish vestry, the 
parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish 
officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institu- 
tions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The wo- 
man dies — she is buried by the parish. The 
children have no protector — they are taken 
care of by the parish. The man first neglects, 
and afterwards cannot obtain, work — he is re- 
lieved by the parish : and when distress and 
drunkenness have done their work upon him, 
he is maintained, a harmless, babbling idiot, in 
the parish asylum. — Sketches {Scenes)y Chap. i. 

POOR PATIENTS-Their patronage. 

•' It's wonderful how the poor people patron- 
ize me," said Mr. Bob Sawyer, reflectively. 
" They knock me up, at all hours of the night ; 
they take medicine to an extent which I should 
have conceived impossible ; they put on blisters 
and leeches with a perseverance worthy of a 
better cause ; they make additions to their fam- 
ilies, in a manner which is quite awful. Six of 
those last-named little promissory notes, all due 
on the same day, Ben, and all entrusted to 
me!" 

" It's very gratifying, isn't it ? " said Mr. Ben 
Allen, holding his plate for some more minced 
veal. 

" Oh, very," replied Bob ; " only not quite so 
much so, as the confidence of patients with a 
shilling or two to spare, would be. This busi- 
ness was capitally described in the advertise- 
ment, Ben. It is a practice, a very extensive 
practice — and that's all." — Pickwick, Chap. 48. 

POOR— The tenderness of the. 

Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end 
of all things, it is very much harder for the poor 
to be virtuous than it is for the rich ; and the 
good that is in them shines the brighter for it. 
In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best 
of husbands and of fathers, whose private worth 
in both capacities is justly lauded to the skies. 
But bring him here, upon this crowded deck, 
strip from his fair young wife her silken dress 
and jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early 
wrinkles on her brow, pinch her pale cheek 
with care and much privation, array her faded 
form in coarsely patched attire, let there be 
nothing but his love to set her forth or deck 
her out, and you shall put it to the proof in- 
deed. So change his station in the world, that 
he shall see in those young things who climb 
about his knee, not records of his wealth and 
name, but little wrestlers with him for his daily 
bread, so many poachers on his scanty meal, so 
many units to divide his every sum of comfort, 
and further to reduce its small amount. In lieu 
of the endearments of childhood in its sweetest 
aspect, heap upon him all its pains and wants, 
its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice, 
and querulous endurance ; let its prattle be, not 
of engaging infant fancies, but of cold and thirst 
and hunger ; and if his fatherly affection outlive 
all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender, 
careful of his children's lives, and mindful al- 
ways of their joys and sorrows, then send him 
back to Parliament, and Pulpit, and to Quarter 
Sessions, and when he hears fine talk of the de- 
pravity of those who live from hand to mouth, 
and labor hard to do it, let him speak up, as one 
who knows, and telUhose holders forth that they, 
by parallel with such a class, should be High 



Angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble 
siege to Heaven at last. 

Which of us shall say what he would be, if 
such realities, with small relief or change all 
through his days, were his? Looking. round 
upon these people, far from home, houseless, in- 
digent, wandering, weary with travel and hard 
living, and seeing how patiently they nursed 
and tended their young children ; how they 
consulted over their wants first, then half sup- 
plied their own ; what gentle ministers of hope 
and faith the women were ; how the men prof- 
ited by their example ; and how very, very sel- 
dom even a moment's petulance or harsh com- 
plaint broke out among them — I felt a stronger 
love and honor of my kind come glowing on my 
heart, and wished to God there had been many 
Atheists in the better part of human nature 
there to read this simple lesson in the book of 
Life. — American Notes, Chap. 15. 

POOR— The— Their kindness to each other. 

How the heart of each to each was softened 
by the hard trials of their .lives! I think the 
best side of such people is almost hidden from 
us. What the poor are to the poor is little 
known, excepting to themselves and God. 

Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

POPULARITY (Slnrk, the Editor). 

"Are you the landlord?" inquired the gen- 
tleman. 

" I am, sir," replied the landlord. 

" Do you know me ? " demanded the gentle- 
man. 

" I have not that pleasure, sir," rejoined the 
landlord. 

" My name is Slurk," said the gentleman. 

The landlord slightly inclined his head. 

" Slurk, sir," repeated the gentleman, haugh- 
tily. " Do you know me now, man ? " 

The landlord scratched his head, looked at 
the ceiling and at the stranger, and smiled 
feebly. 

" Do you know me, man ? " inquired the 
stranger, angrily. 

The landlord made a strong effort, and at 
length replied : " Well, sir, I do not know you." 

" Great Heaven ! " said the stranger, dashing 
his clenched fist upon the table. " And this is 
popularity ! " 

The landlord took a step or two towards the 
door ; the stranger, fixing his eyes upon him, re- 
sumed. 

" This," said the stranger, " this is gratitude 
for years of labor and study in behalf of the 
masses. I alight wet and weary ; no enthusiastic 
crowds press forward to greet their champion ; 
the church-bells are silent ; the very name elicits 
no responsive feeling in their torpid bosoms. It 
is enough," said the agitated Mr. Slurk, pacing 
to and fro, " to curdle the ink in one's pen, and 
induce one to abandon their cause forever." 
Pickwick, Ouip. 51. 

PORTER— Toby Veck, the. 

They called him Trotty from his pace, which 
meant speed if it didn't make it. He could have 
walked faster perhaps ; most likely ; but rob him 
of his trot, and Toby would have taken to his 
bed and died. It bespattered him with mud in 
dirty weather ; it cost him a world of trouble ; 
he could have walked with infinitely greatei 



PORTEB 



370 



POST-BOYS AND DONKEYS 



ease ; but that was one reason for his clinging 
to it so tenaciously. A weak, small, spare old 
man, he was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his 
good intentions. He loved to earn his money. 
He delighted to believe — Toby was very poor, 
and couldn't well afford to part with a delight — 
that he was worth his salt. With a shilling or 
an eighteen-penny message or small parcel in 
hand, his courage, always high, rose higher. As 
he trotted on, he would call out to fast Postmen 
ahead of him, to get out of the way ; devoutly 
believing that in the'natural course of things he 
must inevitably overtake and run them down ; 
and he had perfect faith — not often tested — in 
his being able to carry anything that man could 
lift. 

Thus, even when he came out of his nook to 
warm himself on a wet day, Toby trotted. Mak- 
ing, with his leaky shoes, a crooked line of slushy 
footprints in the mire ; and blowing on his chilly 
hands and rubbing them against each other, 
poorly defended from the searching cold by 
threadbare mufflers of gray worsted, with a pri- 
vate apartment only for the thumb, and a com- 
mon room or tap for the rest of the fingers ; 
Toby, with his knees bent and his cane beneath 
his arm, still trotted. Falling out into the road 
to look up at the belfry when the Chimes re- 
sounded, Toby trotted still. 

Chimes, isf Quarter, 

PORTER— A solemn. 

Lest, with all these proofs and confirmations, 
any man should be suspicious of the Anglo-Ben- 
galee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance 
Company ; should doubt in tiger, cab, or person, 
Tigg Montague, Esquire (of Pall Mall and 
Bengal), or any other name in the imaginative 
List of Directors : there was a porter on the 
premises — a wonderful creature, in a vast red 
waistcoat and a short-tailed pepper-and-salt coat 
— who carried more conviction to the minds of 
sceptics than the whole establishment without 
him. No confidences existed between him 
and the Directorship ; nobody knew where he 
had served last ; no character or explanation 
had been given or required. No questions had 
been asked on either side. This mysterious 
being, relying solely on his figure, had applied 
for the situation, and had been instantly engaged 
on his own terms. They were high ; but he 
knew, doubtless, that no man could carry such 
an extent of waistcoat as himself, and felt the 
full value of his capacity to such an institution. 
When he sat upon a seat erected for him in a 
corner of the office, with his glazed hat hang- 
ing on a peg over his head, it was impossible to 
doubt the respectability of the concern. It 
went on doubling itself with every square inch 
of his red waistcoat, until, like the problem of 
the nails in the horse's shoes, the total became 
enormous. People had been known to apply to 
effect an insurance on their lives for a thousand 
pounds, and looking at him, to beg, before the 
form of proposal was filled up, that it might be 
made two. And yet he was not a giant. His 
coat was rather small than otherwise. The 
whole charm was in his waistcoat. Respecta- 
bility, competence, property in Bengal or any- 
where else, responsibility to any amount on the 
part of the company that employed him, were 
all expressed in that one garment. 

Martin Chuzzkwit, Chap. 27. 



POSITIVENESS-Mrs. Pratchett's. 

"For instance," I says, to give her a little 
encouragement, " who is Somebody ? " 

" I give you my sacred honor, Mr. Christo- 
pher," answers Pratchett, " that I haven't the 
faintest notion." 

But for the manner in which she settled hei 
cap-strings, I should have doubted this ; but in 
respect of positiveness it was hardly to be dis- 
criminated from an affidavit. 

" Then you never saw him ? " I followed hei 
up with. 

" Nor yet," said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting hei 
eyes and making as if she had just took a pill 
of unusual circumference — which gave a re 
markable force to her denial — " nor yet any 
servant in this house. All have been changed, 
Mr. Christopher, within five year, and Some- 
body left his Luggage here before then." 

Somebody's Luggage, Chap. i. 

POST-BOYS AND DONKEYS-Sam Wei- 
ler's idea of. 

" This is pleasant," said Bob Sawyer, turning 
up his coat collar, and pulling the shawl ovei 
his mouth to concentrate the fumes of a glas 
of brandy just swallowed. 

*' Wery," replied Sam, composedly. 

" You don't seem to mind it," observed Bob, 

" Vy, I don't exactly see no good my mindin' 
on it 'ud do, sir," replied Sam. 

" That's an unanswerable reason, anyhow," 
said Bob. 

" Yes, sir," rejoined Mr. Weller. " Wotevet 
is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly re- 
marked wen they put him down in the pension 
list 'cos his mother's uncle's vife's grandfather 
vunce lit the king's pipe with a portable tinder- 
box." 

" Not a bad notion that, Sam," said Mr. Bob 
Sawyer approvingly. 

"Just wot the young nobleman said ev'ry 
quarter-day after^vards for the rest of his life,'* 
replied Mr. Weller. 

"Wos you ever called in," inquired Sam, 
glancing at the driver, after a short silence, and 
lowering his voice to a mysterious whisper: 
" wos you ever called in, ven you wos 'prentice 
to a sawbones, to wisit a postboy ? " 

" I don't remember that I ever was," replied 
Bob Sawyer. 

" You never see a postboy in that 'ere hospital 
as you walked (as they says o' the ghosts), did 
you ? " demanded Sam. 

" No," replied Bob Sawyer. " I don't think 
I ever did." 

" Never know'd a churchyard were there wos 
a postboy's tombstone, or see a dead postboy, 
did you? " inquired Sam, pursuing his catechism, 

" No," rejoined Bob, " I never did." ■ 

"No!" rejoined Sam triumphantly. "Nofl 
never vill ; and there's another thing that no 
man ever see, and that's a dead donkey. No 
man never see a dead donkey, 'cept the 
gen'l'm'n in the black silk smalls as know'd the 
young 'ooman as kep a goat ; and that wos a 
French donkey, so wery likely he wam't wun o* 
the reg'lar breed." 

" Well, what has that got to do with the post- 
boys ? " asked Bob Sawyer. 

"This here," replied Sam. "Without goin' 
so far as to as-sert, as some wery sensible people 
do, that postboys and donkeys is both immortal 



i 



POVERTY 



871 



PBATEB 



wot I say is this ; that wenerer they feels their- 
selves gettin' stiff and past their work, they just 
rides off together, wun postboy to a pair in the 
usual way ; wot becomes on 'em nobody knows, 
but it's wery probable as they starts avay to take 
their pleasure in some other vorld, for there ain't 
a man alive as ever see either a donkey or a 
postboy a-takin' his pleasure in this ! " 

Pickwick, Chap. 51. 

POVERTY— The clutch of. 

Mother had the gripe and clutch of Poverty 
upon her face, upon her figure, and not least of 
all, upon her voice. Her sharp and high-pitched 
words were squeezed out of her, as by the com- 
pression of bony fingers on a leathern bag ; 
and she had a way of rolling her eyes about 
and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was 
gaunt and hungry. 

George Silverman's Explanation. 

POVERTY-The pride of. 

When this spirited young man, and his sister, 
had begun systematically to produce the family 
skeleton for the overawing of the College, this 
narrative cannot precisely state. Probably at 
about the period when they began to dine on 
the College charity. It is certain that the more 
reduced and necessitous they were, the more 
pompously the skeleton emerged from its tomb ; 
and that when there was anything particularly 
shabby in the wind, the skeleton always came 
out with the ghastliest flourish. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 20. 

POVERTY— And wrinkles. 

Mrs. Plomish was a young woman, made 
somewhat slatternly in herself and her belong- 
ings by poverty ; and so dragged at by poverty 
and the children together, that their united 
forces had already dragged her face into wrin- 
kles. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 12. 

POVERTY AND OYSTERS- Sam WeUer 
on. 

" It's a wery remarkable circumstance, sir," 
said Sam, " that poverty and oysters always 
seems to go together." 

" I don't understand you, Sam," said Mr. 
Pickwick. 

" What I mean, sir," said Sam, " is, that the 
poorer a place is, the greater call there seems to 
be for oysters. Look here, sir ; here's a oyster 
stall to every half-dozen houses. The street's 
lined vith 'em. Blessed if I don't think that ven 
a man's wery poor, he rushes out of his lodg- 
ings, and eats oysters in reg'lar desperation." 

" To be sure he does," said Mr. Weller 
senior ; " and it's just the same vith pickled 
salmon ! " 

" Those are two very remarkable facts, which 
never occurred to me before," said Mr. Pick- 
wick. — Pickwick, Chap. 22. 

POWER— Its attraction for low natures. 

Power (unless it be the power of intellect or 
virtue) has ever the greatest attraction for the 
lowest natures ; and the mere defiance of the 
unconscious house-front, with his power to strip 
the roof off the inhabiting family like the roof 
of a house of cards, was a treat which had a 
charm for Silas Wegg. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 7. 



POWER AND WTLL. 

" The power to serve is as seldom joined with 
the will, as the will is with the power, / think." 
Nicholas Nichleby, Chap. 20. 

POWER— The insolence of newly acquired. 

If Wegg had been worse paid for his office, 
or better qualified to discharge it, he would have 
considered these visits complimentary and agree 
able ; but, holding the position of a handsomely- 
remunerated humbug, he resented them. This 
was quite according to rule, for the incompetent 
servant, by whomsoever employed, is always 
against his employer. Even those born gov- 
ernors, noble and right honorable creatures, who 
have been the most imbecile in high places, 
have uniformly shown themselves the most op- 
posed (sometimes in belying distrust, sometimes 
in vapid insolence) to their employer. What is 
in such wise true of the public master and ser- 
vant, is equally true of the private master and 
servant all the world over. 

Our Mutual Priend, Book II., Chap. 7. 

PRAYER— Cruncher on. 

" Bust me, if she ain't at it again ! " 

A woman of orderly and industrious appear- 
ance rose from her knees in a corner, with suffi- 
cient haste and trepidation to show that she was 
the person referred to. 

" What ! " said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of 
bed for a boot. " You're at it agin, are you ? " 

After hailing the morn with this second salu- 
tation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. 
It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the 
odd circumstance connected with Mr. Crunch- 
er's domestic economy, that, whereas he often 
came home after banking hours with clean boots, 
he often got up next morning to find the same 
boots covered with clay. 

" What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apos- 
trophe after missing his mark — " what are you 
up to, Aggerawayter?" 

" I was only saying my prayers." 

" Saying your prayers ! You're a nice woman ! 
What do you mean by flopping yourself down 
and praying agin me ? " 

" I was not praying against you ; I was pray- 
ing for you." 

" You weren't. And if you were, I won't be 
took the liberty with. Here ! your mother's a 
nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin 
your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful 
mother, you have, my son. You've got a relig- 
ious mother, you have, my boy : goi-ng and flop- 
ping herself down, and praying that the bread- 
and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of 
her only child ! " 

* He * * * 

" Bu-u-ust me ! " said Mr. Cruncher, who all 
this time had been putting on his clothes, " if 1 
ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing 
and another, been choused this last week into 
as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest 
tradesman met with ! Young Jerry, dress your- 
self, my boy, and while I clean my boots, keep 
a eye upon your mother now and then, and if 
you see any signs of more flopping, give me a 
call. For, I tell you," here he addressed his 
wife once more, " I won't be gone agin, in this 
manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, 
I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained 
to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't 



PRACTICAL MAN 



372 



PRIDE 



for the pain in 'em, which was me and which 
somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in 
pocket ; and it's my suspicion that you've been 
at it from morning to night to prevent me from 
being the better for it in pocket, and I won't 
put up -Cvith it, Aggerawayter, and what do you 
say now ? " 

Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. i. 

PRACTICAL MAN-A. 

He was an affectionate father, after his man- 
ner ; but he would probably have described him- 
self (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a 
definition) as " an eminently practical " father. 
He had a particular pride in the phrase emi- 
nently practical, which was considered to have 
a special application to him. Whatsoever the 
public meeting held in Coketown, and whatso- 
ever the subject of such meeting, some Coke- 
towner was sure to seize the occasion of allud- 
ing to his eminently practical friend Gradgrind. 
This always pleased the eminently practical 
friend. He knew it to be his due, but his due 
was acceptable. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 3. 

PRECEPTS— Of married ladies. 

And to do Mrs. Nickleby justice, she never 
had lost — and to do married ladies, as a body, 
justice, they seldom do lose — any occasion of in- 
culcating similar golden precepts, whose only 
blemish is the slight degree of vagueness and 
uncertainty in which they are usually enveloped. 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. ig. 

PREDICAMENT. 

It is always the person not in the predicament 
who knows what ought to have been done in it, 
and would unquestionably have done it too. 
Christmas Carol, Stave 3. 

PRESS— The American. 

Schools may be erected. East, West, North, 
and South ; pupils be taught, and masters reared, 
by scores upon scores of thousands ; colleges 
may thrive, churches may be crammed, temper- 
ance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge 
in all other forms walk through the land with 
giant strides ; but while the newspaper press of 
America is in, or near, its present abject state, 
high moral improvement in that country is hope- 
less. Year by year it must and will go back ; 
year by year the tone of public feeling must sink 
lower down ; year by year the Congress and the 
Senate must become of less account before all 
decent men ; and year by year the memory of 
the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be out- 
raged more and more in the bad life of their 
degenerate child. 

Among the herd of journals which are pub- 
lished in the States there are some, the reader 
scarcely need be told, of character and credit. 
From personal intercourse with accomplished 
gentlemen connected with publications of this 
class, I have derived both pleasure and profit. 
But the name of these is Few, and of the others 
Legion ; and the influence of the good is power- 
less to counteract the mortal poison of the bad. 
* * * * * 

Among the gentry of America, among the 
well-informed and moderate, in the learned pro- 
fessions, at the bar and on the bench, th^re is, 
as there can be, but one opinion, in reference to 
the vicious character of these infamous journals. 



It is sometimes contended — I will not say 
strangely, for it is natural to seek excuses for 
such a disgrace — that their influence is not so 
great as a visitor would suppose. I must be 
pardoned for saying that there is no warrant for 
this plea, and that every fact and circumstance 
tends directly to the opposite conclusion. 

When any man, of any grade of desert in in- 
tellect or character, can climb to any public dis- 
tinction, no matter what, in America, without 
first grovelling down upon the earth, and bend 
ing the knee before this monster of depravity 
when any private excellence is safe from its at- 
tacks ; when any social confidence is left un- 
broken by it, or any tie of social decency and 
honor is held in the least regard ; when any 
man in that Free Country has freedom of opin- 
ion, and presumes to think for himself, and 
speak for himself, without humble reference to 
a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance 
and base, dishonesty, he utterly loathes and de- 
spises in his heart ; when those who most acute- 
ly feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon 
the nation, and who most denounce it to each 
other, dare to set their heels upon, and crush it 
openly, in the sight of all men ; then I will be 
lieve that its influence is lessening, and men 
are returning to their manly senses. But while 
that Press has its evil eye in every house, and 
its black hand in every appointment in the state, 
from a president to a postman ; while, with ri 
bald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the 
standard literature of an enormous class, who 
must find their reading in a newspaper, or they 
will not read at all ; so long must its odium be 
upon the country's head, and so long must the 
evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic, 

To those who are accustomed to the leading 
English journals, or to the respectable journals 
of the Continent of Europe — to those who are 
accustomed to anything else in print and papet 
— it would be impossible, without an amount 
of extract for which I have neither space nor 
inclination, to convey an adequate idea of 'this 
frightful engine in America. 

American Notes, Chap. 18. 

PRIDE— The arrogance of. 

"His presence! His dignity! No portrait 
that I have ever seen of any one has been half 
so replete with those qualities. Something so 
stately, you know ; so uncompromising ; so very 
wide across the chest ; so upright ! A pecuniary 
Duke of York, my love} and nothing short of 
it ! " said Miss Tox. " That's what / should 
designate him." — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. i. 

* * * * 4 

Towards his first wife, Mr. Dombey, in his 
cold and lofty arrogance, had borne himself like 
the removed Being he almost conceived him 
self to be. He had been " Mr. Dombey " with 
her when she first saw him, and he was " Mr. 
Dombey " when she died. He had asserted his 
greatness during their whole married life, and 
she had meekly recognized it. He had kept hi 
distant seat of state on the top of his throne, and 
she her humble station on its lowest step ; and 
much good it had done him, so to live in solitary 
bondage to his one idea ! He had imagined that 
the proud character of his second wife would 
have been added to his own — would have 
merged into it, and exalted his greatness. He 
had pictured himself haughtier than ever, witli 




Mr. Dombey. 



372 



PRIDB 



373 



PBIDE 



Edith's haughtiness subservient to his. He had 
never entertained the possibility of its arraying 
itself against him. And now, when he found it 
rising in his path at every step and turn of his 
daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and contempt- 
uous face upon him, this pride of his, instead of 
withering, or hanging down its head beneath 
the shock, put forth new shoots, became more 
concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen, 
irksome, and unyielding, than it had ever been 
before. 

Who wears such armor, too, bears with him 
ever another heavy retribution. It is of proof 
against conciliation, love, and confidence ! 
against all gentle sympathy from without, all 
trust, all tenderness, all soft emotion ; but to 
deep stabs in the self-love it is as vulnerable as 
the bare breast to steel ; and such tormenting 
festers rankle there, as follow on no other 
wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand 
of Pride itself, on weaker pride, disarmed and 
thrown down. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 40. 

PRIDE-A duty. 

" There is a kind of pride. Sir," she returned, 
after a moment's silence, " or what may be sup- 
posed to be pride, which is mere duty ; I hope I 
cherish no other." — Dombey 6^ Soriy Chap, 33. 

PRIDE— Its egrotism. 

" He is, if I may say so, the slave of his own 
greatness, and goes yoked to his own triumphal 
car like a beast of burden, with no idea on earth 
but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on, 
over everything and through everything." 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 45. 

.PRIDE— Its characteristics. 

It was not in the nature of things that a man 
of Mr, Dombey 's mood, opposed to such a spirit 
as he had raised against himself, should be soft- 
ened in the imperious asperity of his temper ; or 
that the cold hard armor of pride in which he 
lived encased, should be made more flexible by 
constant collision with haughty scorn and de- 
fiance. It is the curse of such a nature — it is a 
main part of the heavy retribution on itself it 
bears within itself — that while deference and con- 
cession swell its evil qualities, and are the food 
it grows upon, resistance and a questioning of 
its exacting claims, foster it too no less. The 
evil that is in it finds equally its means of growth 
and propagation in opposites. It draws support 
and life from sweets and bitters ; bowed down 
before, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the 
breast in which it has its throne ; and worshipped 
or rejected, is as hard a master as the Devil in 
dark fables. — Dombey of Son, Chap. 40. 

PRIDE— ControUingr power of. 

He silenced the distant thunder with the roll- 
ing of his sea of pride. He would bear noth- 
ing but his pride. And in his pride, a heap of 
inconsistency, and misery, and self-inflicted tor- 
ment, he hated her. — Dombey (Sr* Son, Chap. 40. 

PRIDE— Ita ragre. 

Prying and tormenting as the world was, 
it did Mr. Dombey the service of nerving 
him to pursuit and revenge. It roused his pas- 
sion, stung his pride, twisted the one idea of 
his life into a new shape, and made some 
gratification of his wrath, the object into 



which his whole intellectual existence re- 
solved itself. All the stubbornness and impla* 
cability of his nature, all its hard impenetrable 
quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its exag- 
gerated sense of personal importance, all its jeal- 
ous disposition to resent the least flaw in the 
ample recognition of his importance by others, 
set this way like many streams united into one, 
and bore him on upon their tide. The most im- 
petuously passionate and violently impulsive of 
mankind would have been a milder enemy to 
encounter than the sullen Mr. Dombey wrought 
to this. A wild beast would have been easier 
turned or soothed than the grave gentleman 
without a wrinkle in his starched cravat. 

But the very intensity of his purpose became 
almost a substitute for action in it. While he 
was yet uninformed of the traitor's retreat, it 
served to divert his mind from his own calamity, 
and to entertain it with another prospect. The 
brother and sister of his false favorite had no 
such relief; everything in their history, past and 
present, gave his delinquency a more afflicting 
meaning to them. — Dombey &" Son, Chap. 53. 

PRIDE-Its faU. 

And it was strange, very strange, even to him- 
self, to find, how by quick, though almost imper- 
ceptible degrees he lost his delicacy and self- 
respect, and gradually came to do that as a 
matter of course, without the least compunction, 
which, but a few short days before, had galled 
him to the quick. The first time he visited the 
pawnbroker's, he felt on his way there as if every 
person whom he passed suspected whither he was 
going ; and on his way back again as if the whole 
human tide he stemmed knew well where he 
had come from. When did he care to think of 
their discernment now ? In his first wanderings 
up and down the weary streets, he counterfeited 
the walk of one who had an object in his view ; 
but soon there came upon him the sauntering, 
slipshod gait of listless idleness, and the loung- 
ing at street-corners, and plucking and biting 
of stray bits of straw, and strolling up and 
down the same place, and looking into the same 
shop-windows, with a miserable indifference, 
fifty times a day. At first, he came out from 
his lodging with an uneasy sense of being ob- 
served — even by those chance passers-by, on 
whom he had never looked before, and hundreds 
to one would never see again — issuing in the 
morning from a public-house ; but now, in his 
comings-out and goings-in he did not mind to 
lounge about the door, or to stand sunning him- 
self in careless thought beside the wooden stem, 
studded from head to heel with pegs, on which 
the beer-pots dangled like so many boughs upon 
a pewter-tree. And yet it took but five weeks 
to reach the lowest round of this tall ladder. 

Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and 
self-respect, innate in every sphere of life, and 
shedding light on every grain of dust in God's 
highway, so smooth below your carriage-wheels, 
so rough beneath the tread of naked feet, be- 
think yourselves, in looking on the swift descent 
of men who ha7^e lived in their own esteem, that 
there are scores of thousands breathing now, 
and breathing thick with painful toil, who in 
that high respect have never lived at all, nor 
had a chance of life ! Go ye, who rest so pla- 
cidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, 
and when he strung his harp was old, and had 



PRINCIPLE 



874 



PRISON 



never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed 
begging their bread ; go, Teachers of content 
and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the 
forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, 
and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say 
can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul 
that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as 
fast as it is kindled ! And, oh ! ye Pharisees of 
the nineteen hundredth year of Christian Know- 
ledge, who soundingly appeal to human nature, 
see first that it be human. Take heed it has 
not been transformed, during your slumber and 
the sleep of generations, into the nature of the 
Beasts. — Martin Chuzzletuit, Chap. 13. 

PRINCIPLE-Skimpole's idea of. 

" And he would probably add, ' Is there such 
a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?' " 

" To which Harold Skimpole would reply, 
you know," he returned in his gayest manner, 
and with his most ingenuous smile, " ' Upon my 
life I have not the least idea ! I don't know 
what it is you call by that name, or where it is, 
or who possesses it. If you possess it, and find 
it comfortable, I am quite delighted, and con- 
gratulate you heartily. But I know nothing 
about it, I assure you, for I am a mere child, 
and I lay no claim to it, and I don't want it ! ' 
So, you see, excellent Boythorn and I would go 
to dinner after all ! "—Bleak House, Chap. 18. 

PRINCIPLE-A man of (WeUer). 

" The fame of the gentleman in question 
never reached my ears." 

" No, sir ! " exclaimed Mr. Weller. " You 
astonish me, sir ; he wos a clerk in a gov'ment 
office, sir." 

" Was he ? " said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Yes, he wos, sir," rejoined Mr. Weller , " and 
a wery pleasant gen'lm'n too — one o' the precise 
and tidy sort, as puts their feet in little india- 
rubber fire-buckets wen it's wet weather, and 
never has no other bosom friends but hare- 
skins ; he saved up his money on principle, wore 
a clean shirt ev'ry day on principle ; never spoke 
to none of his relations on principle, 'fear they 
shou'd want to borrow money of him ; and wos 
altogether, in fact, an uncommon agreeable 
character. He had his hair cut on principle 
vunce a fortnight, and contracted for his clothes 
on the economic principle — three suits a year, 
and send back the old uns. Being a wery 
reg'lar gen'lm'n, he din'd ev'ry day at the same 
place, were it was one and nine to cut off the 
joint, and a wery good one and nine's worth he 
used to cut, as the landlord often said, with the 
tears a tricklin' down his face ; let alone the 
way he used to poke the fire in the vinter time, 
which wos a dead loss o' four-pence ha'-penny a 
day ; to say nothin' at all o' the aggrawation o' 
seein' him do it. So uncommon grand with it 
too ! • Post arter the next gen'lm'n,' he sings 
out ev'ry day ven he comes in. ' See arter the 
Times, Thomas ; let me look at the Mornin' 
Herald, wen it's out o' hand ; don't forget to be- 
speak the Chronicle ; and just bring the 'Tizer, 
vill you ; ' and then he'd set with his eyes fixed 
on the clock, and rush out, just a quarter of a 
minit afore the time, to waylay the boy as was a 
comin' in with the evenin' paper, wich he'd read 
with sich intense interest and persewerance as 
worked the other customers up to the wery con- 
fines o' desperation and insanity, 'specially one 



i-rascible old genTm'n as the vaiter wos always 
obliged to keep a sharp eye on, at sich times, 
fear he should be tempted to commit some rash 
act with the carving-knife. Yell, sir, here he'd 
stop, occupyin' the best place for three hours, 
and never takin* nothin' arter his dinner, but 
sleep, and then he'd go away to a coffee-house a 
few streets off, and have a small pot o' coffee 
and four crumpets, arter wich he'd walk home 
to Kensington and go to bed.'* 

Pickwick, Chap, 44. 

PRISON-Newffate. 

" The force of habit " is a trite phrase in 
everybody's mouth ; and it is not a little remark- 
able that those who use it most as applied to 
others, unconsciously afford in their own per- 
sons singular examples of the power which habit 
and custom exercise over the minds of men, and 
of the little reflection they are apt to bestow 
on subjects with which every day's experience 
has rendered them familiar. If Bedlam could 
be suddenly removed, like another Aladdin's 
palace, and set down on the space now occupied 
by Newgate, scarcely one man out of a hundred 
whose road to business every morning lies through 
Newgate Street, or the Old Bailey, would pass the 
building without bestowing a hasty glance on its 
small, grated windows, and a transient thought 
upon the condition of the unhappy beings im- 
mured in its dismal cells ; and yet these same 
men, day by day, and hour by hour, pass and 
repass this gloomy depository of the guilt and 
misery of London, in one perpetual stream of 
life and bustle, utterly unmindful of the throng 
of wretched creatures pent up within it — nay, 
not even knowing, or if they do, not heeding 
the fact, that as they pass one particular angle 
of the massive wall, with a light laugh or a 
merry whistle, they stand within one yard of a 
fellow-creature, bound and helpless, whose hours 
are numbered, from whom the last feeble ray of 
hope has fled forever, and whose miserable ca- 
reer will shortly terminate in a violent and 
shameful death. Contact with death, even in 
its least terrible shape, is solemn and appalling. 
How much more awful is it to reflect on this 
near vicinity to the dying — to men in full health 
and vigor, in the flower of youth or the prime 
of life, with all their faculties and perceptions 
as acute and perfect as your own ; but dying, 
nevertheless — dying as surely — with the hand 
of death imprinted upon them as indelibly — as 
if mortal disease had wasted their frames to 
shadows, and corruption had already begun ! 
Sketches ( Scenes), Chap. 25. 

PRISON— Sunrise in. 

When she had stolen down stairs, and along 
the empty yard, and had crept up to her own 
high garret, the smokeless housetops and the 
distant country hills were discernible over the 
wall in the clear morning. As she gently open- 
ed the window, and looked eastward down the 
prison-yard, the spikes upon the walls were tip- 
ped with red, then made a sullen purple pattern 
on the sun as it came flaming up into tho heav- 
ens. The spikes had never looked so sharp 
and cruel, nor the bars so heavy, nor the prison 
space so gloomy and contracted. She thought 
of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the sunrise 
on wide seas, of the sunrise on rich landscapes, 
of the sunrise on great forests where the birds 



PBISON 



875 



PRISON DISCIPLINE 



were waking and the trees were rustling ; and 
she looked down into the living grave on which 
the sun had risen, with her father in it, three- 
and-twenty years, and said, in a burst of sorrow 
and compassion, " No, no, I have never seen 
him in my life." 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 19. 

PRISON— In the French Revolution. 

The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, 
dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul 
sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome 
flavor of imprisoned sleep becomes manifest in 
all such places that are ill cared for ! 

" Come ! " said the chief, at length, taking up 
his keys, " come with me, emigrant." 

Through t-he dismal prison twilight, his new 
charge accompanied him by corridor and stair- 
case, many doors clanging and locking behind 
them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted 
chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. 
The women were seated at a long table, reading 
and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroider- 
ing ; the men were for the most part, standing 
behind their chairs, or lingering up and down 
the room. 

In the instinctive association of prisoners 
with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer 
recoiled from this company. But the crowning 
unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all 
at once rising to receive him, with every refine- 
ment of manner known to the time, and with 
all the engaging graces and courtesies of life. 

So strangely clouded were these refinements 
by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral 
did they become in the inappropriate squalor 
and misery through which they were seen, that 
Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company 
of the dead. Ghosts all ! The ghost of beauty, 
the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, 
the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the 
ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of 
age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate 
shore, all turning on him eyes that were chang- 
ed by the death they had died in coming there. 
It struck him motionless. The gaoler stand- 
ing at his side, and the other gaolers moving 
about, who would have been well enough as to 
appearance in the ordinary exercise of their func- 
tions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted 
with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters 
who were there — with the apparitions of the co- 
quette, the young beauty, and the mature woman, 
delicately bred — that the inversion of all experi- 
ence and likelihood which the scene of shadows 
presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely, 
ghosts all ! Surely, the long unreal ride some 
progress of disease that had brought him to 
these gloomy shades ! 

" In the name of the assembled companions 
in misfortune," said a gentleman of courtly ap- 
pc;arance and address, coming forward, " I have 
the honor of giving you welcome to La Force, 
and of condoling with you on the calamity that 
has brought you among us. May it soon termi- 
nate happily ! "* 

Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. I. 

PRISON. 

A prison taint was on everything there. The 
imprisoned air, the imprisoned light, the impris- 
oned damps, the imprisoned men, were all de- 
teriorated by confinement. As the captive 



men were faded and haggard, so the iron wag 
rusty, the stone was slimy, the wood was rotten, 
the air was faint, the light was dim. Like a 
well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no 
knowledge of the brightness outside ; and would 
have kept its polluted atmosphere intact, in one 
of the spice islands of the Indian Ocean. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. I. 

PRISON-Old BaUey. 

They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the 
street outside Newgate had not obtained one in- 
famous notoriety that has since attached to it. 
But the gaol was a vile place, in which most 
kinds of debauchery and villany were practised, 
and where dire diseases were bred, that came 
into court with the prisoners, and sometimes 
rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief 
Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. 
It had more than once happened, that the judge 
in the black cap pronounced his own doom as 
certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before 
him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous 
as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale 
travellers set out continually, in carts and 
coaches, on a violent passage into the other 
world ; traversing some two miles and a half of 
public street and road, and shaming few good 
citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so de- 
sirable to be good use in the beginning. It was 
famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institu- 
tion, that inflicted a punishment of which no 
one could foresee the extent ; also, for the whip- 
ping-post, another dear old institution, very 
humanising and softening to behold in action ; 
also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, 
another fragment of ancestral wisdom, system- 
atically leading to the most frightful mercen- 
ary crimes that could be committed under 
Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that 
date, was a choice illustration of the precept, 
that " Whatever is, is right ; " an aphorism that 
would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include 
the troublesome consequence, that nothing that 
ever was, was wrong. 

Making his way through the tainted crowd, 
dispersed up and down this hideous scene of 
action, with the skill of a man accustomed to 
make his way quietly, the messenger found out 
the door he sought, and handed in his letter 
through a trap in it. For people then paid to 
see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid 
to see the play in Bedlam — only the former en- 
tertainment was much the dearer. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book II., Chap. 2. 

PRISON DISCIPLINE. 

The whip is a very contagious kind of thing, 
and diflicult to confine within one set of bounds. 
Utterly abolish punishment by fine — a barbarous 
device, quite as much out of date as wager by 
battle, but particularly connected in the vulgar 
mind with this class of off"ence — at least quadru- 
ple the term of imprisonment for aggravated as- 
saults — and, above all, let us, in such cases, 
have no Pet Prisoning, vain-glorifying, strong 
soup, and roasted meats, but hard work, and one 
unchanging and uncompromising dietary of 
bread and water, well or ill ; and we shall do 
much belter than by going down into the dark 
to grope for the whip among the rusty fragments 
of the rack, and the branding-iron, and the 
chains and gibbet from the public roads, and 



PRISON 



370 



PRISON 



the weights that pressed men to death in the 
cells of Newgate. 

Lying A wake. Reprinted Pieces. 

PRISON— The peace of a. 

" That a child would be born to you in a place 
like this?" said the doctor. "Bah, bah, sir, 
what does it signify? A little more elbow-room 
is all we want here. We are quiet here ; we 
don't get badgered here ; there's no knocker 
here, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and 
bring a man's heart into his mouth. Nobody 
comes here to ask if a man's at home, and to say 
he'll stand on the door-mat till he is. Nobody 
writes threatening letters about money, to this 
place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom ! I have 
had to-day's practice at home and abroad, on a 
march, and aboard ship, and I'll tell you this: 
I don't know that I have ever pursued it under 
such quiet circumstances, as here this day. 
Elsewhere, people are restless, worried, hurried 
about, anxious respecting one thing, anxious 
respecting another. Nothing of the kind here, 
sir. We have done all that — we know the worst 
of it ; we have got to the bottom, we can't fall, 
and what have we found ? Peace. That's the 
word for it. Peace." With this profession of 
faith, the doctor, who was an old jail-bird, and 
was more sodden than usual, and had the addi- 
tional and unusual stimulus of money in his 
pocket, returned to his associate and chum in 
hoarseness, puffine^s, red-facedness, all-fours, to- 
bacco, dirt, and brandy. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 6. 

PRISON— Solitary confinement in an Amer- 
ican. 

In the outskirts stands a great prison, called 
the Eastern Penitentiary, conducted on a plan 
peculiar to the State of Pennsylvania. The sys- 
tem here is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary 
confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be 
cruel and wrong. 

In its intention, I am well convinced that it is 
kind, humane, and meant for reformation ; but I 
am persuaded that those who devised this sys- 
tem of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent 
gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not 
know what it is that they are doing. I believe 
that very few men are capable of estimating the 
immense amount of torture and agony which 
this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, 
inflicts upon the sufferers ; and in guessing at it 
myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen 
written upon their faces, and what to my certain 
knowledge they feel within, I am only the more 
convinced that there is a depth of terrible en- 
durance in it which none but the sufferers them- 
selves can fathom, and which no man has a 
right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold 
this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries 
of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any 
torture of the body ; and because its ghastly 
signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye 
and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh, — be- 
cause its wounds are not upon the surface, and 
it extorts few cries that human ears can hear, — 
therefore I the more denounce it as a secret 
punishment which slumbering humanity is not 
roused up to stay. I hesitated once, debating 
with myself, whether, if I had the power of say- 
ing "Yes," or "No," I would allow it to be 
tried in certain cases, where the terms of im- 



prisonment were short ; but now I solemnly de- 
clare, that with no rewards or honors could I 
walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, 
or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the 
consciousness that one human creature, for any 
length of time, no mattei what, lay suffering 
this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and 
I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least 
degree. 

***** 

Over the head and face of every prisoner who 
comes into this melancholy house a black hood 
is drawn ; and in this dark shroud, an emblem 
of the curtain dropped between him and the 
living world, he is led to the cell from which he 
never again comes forth, until his whole term 
of imprisonment has expired. He never hears 
of wife or children, home or friends, the life or 
death of any single creature. He sees the 
prison officers, but, with that exception, he never 
looks upon a human countenance or hears a 
human voice. He is a man buried alive, — to be 
dug out in the slow round of years ; and in the 
mean time, dead to everything but torturing 
anxieties and horrible despair. 

His name, and crime, and term of suffering 
are unknown, even to the officer who delivers 
him his daily food. There is a number over his 
cell door, and in a book of which the governor 
of the prison has one copy, and the moral in- 
structor another — this is the index to his history. 
Beyond these pages the prison has no record of 
his existence ; and, though he live to be in the 
same cell ten weary years, he has no means of 
knowing, down to the very last hour, in what 
part of the building it is situated ; what kind 
of men there are about him ; whether in the 
long winter nights there are living people near, 
or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail, 
with walls and passages and iron doors between 
him and the nearest sharer in its solitary hor- 
rors. — American Notes ^ Chap. 7. 

PRISON— Solitary confinement in. 

As I walked among these solitary cells, and 
looked at the faces of the men within them, I 
tried to picture to myself the thoughts and feel- 
ings natural to their condition. I imagined the 
hood just taken off, and the scene of their cap- 
tivity disclosed to them in all its dismal mono- 
tony. 

At first, the man is stunned. His confine- 
ment is a hideous vision ; and his old life a 
reality. He throws himself upon his bed, and lies 
there, abandoned to despair. By degrees the 
insupportable solitude and barrenness of the 
place rouse him from this stupor, and when the 
trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly 
begs and prays for work. " Give me some work 
to do, or I shall go raving mad ! " 

He has it, and by fits and starts applies him- 
self to labor ; but every now and then there 
comes upon him a burning sense of the years 
that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and an 
agony so piercing in the recollection of those 
who are hidden from his view and knowledge, 
that he starts from his seat, and, striding up and 
down the narrow room with both hands clasped 
on his uplifted head, hears spirits tempting him 
to beat his brains out on the wall. 

Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there 
moaning. Suddenly he starts up, wondering 
whether any other man is near ; whether there 



PRISON 



377 



PBISONEB 



is another cell like that on either side of him ; 
and listens keenly. 

There is no sound ; but other prisoners may 
be near, for all that. He remembers to have 
heard once, when he little thought of coming 
here himself, that the cells were so constructed 
that the prisoners could not hear each other, 
though the officers could hear them. Where is 
the nearest man — upon the right, or on the left ? 
or is there one in both directions ? Where is he 
sitting now— with his face to the light? or is 
he walking to and fro ? How is he dressed ? 
Has he been here long? Is he much worn 
away? Is he very white and spectre-like? 
Does he think of his neighbor too ? 

Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening 
while he thinks, he conjures up a figure with his 
back towards him, and imagines it moving 
about in this next cell. He has no idea of the 
face, but he is certain of the dark form of a 
stooping man. In the cell upon the other side 
he puts another figure, whose face is hidden from 
him also. Day after day, and often when he 
wakes up in the middle of the night, he thinks 
of these two men until he is almost distracted. 
He never changes them. There they are 
always, as he first imagined them — an old man 
on the right ; a younger man upon the left— 
whose hidden features torture him to death, and 
have a mystery that makes him tremble. 

The weary days pass on with solemn pace, 
like mourners at a funeral ; and slowly he 
begins to feel that the white walls of the cell 
have something dreadful in them ; that their 
color is horrible ; that their smooth surface 
chills his blood ; that there is one hateful corner 
which torments him. Every morning when he 
awakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet, 
and shudders to see the ghastly ceiling looking 
down upon him. The blessed light of day itself 
peeps in, an ugly phantom face, through the 
unchangeable crevice which is his prison 
window. 

By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that 
hateful corner swell until they beset him at all 
times, invade his rest, make his dreams hide- 
ous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took 
a strange dislike to it ; feeling as though it gave 
birth in his brain to something of correspond- 
ing shape which ought not to be there, and 
racked his head with pains. Then he began to 
fear it, then to dream of it, and of men whis- 
pering its name and pointing to it. Then he 
could not bear to look at it, nor yet to turn 
his back upon it. Now it is every night the 
lurking-place of a ghost ; a shadow ; a silent 
something, horrible to see, but whether bird or 
beast, or muffled human shape, he cannot tell. 

When he is in his cell by day, he fears the 
little yard without. When he is in the yard, he 
dreads to re-enter the cell. When night comes, 
there stands the phantom in the corner. If he 
have the courage to stand in its place, and drive 
it out (he had once, being desperate), it broods 
upon his bed. In the twilight, and always at 
the same hour, a voice calls to him by name ; as 
the darkness thickens, his Loom begins to live ; 
and even that, his comfort, is a hideous figure, 
watching him till daybreak. 

Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies 
depart from him one by one ; returning some- 
times, unexpectedly, but at longei intervals, and 
in less alarming shapes. He ha* talked upon 



religious matters with the gentleman who visits 
him, and has read his Bible, and has written a 
prayer upon his slate, and hung it up as a kind 
of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly 
companionship. He dreams now, sometimes, of 
his children or his wife, but is sure that they are 
dead, or have deserted him. He is easily moved 
to tears ; is gentle, submissive, and broken- 
spirited. Occasionally, the old agony comes 
back ; a very little thing will revive it ; even a 
familiar sound, or the scent of summer flowers 
in the air ; but it does not last long now ; for 
the world without has come to be the vision, 
and this solitary life the sad reality. 

On the haggard face of every man among 
these prisoners the same expression sat. I 
know not what to liken it to. It had some- 
thing of that strained attention which we see 
upon the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled 
with a kind of horror, as though they had all 
been secretly terrified. In every little chamber 
that I entered, and at every grate through which 
I looked, I seemed to see the same appalling 
countenance. It lives in my memory, with the 
fascination of a remarkable picture. Parade 
before my eyes a hundred men, with one among 
them newly released from his solitary suffering, 
and I would point him out. 

The faces of the women, as I have said, it 
humanizes and refines. Whether this be because 
of their better nature, which is elicited in soli- 
tude, or because of their being gentler creatures, 
of greater patience and longer suffering, I do 
not know ; but so it is. That the punishment 
is, nevertheless, to my thinking, fully as cruel 
and as wrong in their case as in that of the men, 
I need scarcely add. 

My firm conviction is that, independent of the 
mental anguish it occasions — an anguish so 
acute and so tremendous, that all imagination 
of it must fall far short of the reality — it wears 
the mind into a morbid state, which renders it 
unfit for the rough contact and busy action of 
the world. It is my fixed opinion that those 
who have undergone this punishment MUST pass 
into society again morally unhealthy and dis- 
eased. There are many instances on record of 
men who are chosen or have been condemned 
to lives of perfect solitude, but I scarcely re- 
member one, even among sages of strong and 
vigorous intellect, where its effect has not be- 
come apparent in some disordered train of 
thought or some gloomy hallucination. What 
monstrous phantoms, bred of despondency and 
doubt, and born and reared in solitude, have 
stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly, 
and darkening the face of Heaven ! 

American Notes, Chap. 7. 

PRISONER— Before execution. 

We entered the first cell. It was a stone dun- 
geon, eight feet long by six wide, with a bench 
at the upper end, under which were a common 
rug, a Bible, and prayer-book. An iron candle- 
stick was fixed into the wall at the side ; and a 
small, high window in the back admitted as 
much air and light as could struggle in between 
a double row of heavy, crossed iron bars. It 
contained no other furniture of any description. 

Conceive the situation of a man, spending his 
last night on earth in this cell. Buoyed up with 
some vague and undefined hope of reprieve, he 
knew not why — indulging in some wild in.** 



PBISONEB 



378 



PRISONER 



visionary idea of escaping, he knew not how — 
hour after hour of the three preceding days al- 
lowed liim for preparation, has fled with a speed 
tvhich no man living would deem possible, for 
none hut this dying man can know. He has 
wearied his friends with entreaties, exhausted 
the attendants with imj)ortunities, neglected in 
his feverish restlessness the timely warnings of 
his spiritual consoler ; and, now that the illu- 
sion IS at last dispelled, now that eternity is 
before him and guilt behind, now that his fears 
of death amount almost to madness, and an 
overwhelming sense of his helpless, hopeless 
state rushes upon him, he is lost and stupified, 
and has neither thoughts to turn to, nor power 
to call upon, the Almighty Being, from whom 
alone he can seek mercy and forgiveness, and 
before whfjm his repentance can alone avail. 

Hours have glided l)y, and still he sits upon 
the same stone bench with folded arms, heed- 
less alike of the fast-decreasing time before 
him, and the urgent entreaties of the good man 
at his side. The feeble light is wasting gradu- 
ally, and the deathlike stillness of the street 
without, broken only by the ruml)ling of some 
passing vehicle which echoes mournfully tlirough 
the empty yards, warns him that the night is 
waning fast away. The deep bell of St. I'aul's 
strikes — one I He heard it ; it has roused him. 
Seven hours left ! He paces the narrow limits 
of his cell with rapid strides, cold drops of ter- 
ror starting on his forehead, and every muscle 
of his frame quivering with agony. Seven 
hours ! He suffers himself to be led to his scat, 
mechanically takes the Hible which is placed in 
his hand, and tries to read and listen. No : his 
thoughts will wander. The book is torn and 
soiled by use — and like the book he read his 
lessons in, at school, just forty years ago ! He 
has never bestowed a thought upon it, perhaps, 
since he left it as a child : and yet the place, 
the time, the room — nay, the very boys he 
played with, crowd as vividly before him as if 
they were scenes of yesterday ; and some for- 
gotten phrase, some childish word, rings in his 
ears like the echo of one uttered but a minute 
since. The voice of the clergyman recalls him 
to himself. He is reading from the sacred book 
its solemn ])romises of jiardon for repentance, 
and its awful denunciation of ol)durate men. 
He falls upon his knees and clasps his hands 
to pray, llush ! what sound was that? He 
starts upon his feet. It canr^ot be two yet. 
Hark I Two quarters have struck — the third 
—the fourth. It is ! Six hours left. Tell him 
not of repentance ! Six hours' repentance for 
eight times six years of guilt and sin ! He 
buries his face in his hands, and throws himself 
on the bench. 

Worn with watching and excitement, he 
sleeps, and the same unsettled state of mind 

fmrsues him in his dreams. An insupportable 
oad is taken from his breast ; he is walking 
with his wife in a pleasant field, with the bright 
sky above them, and a fresh an(l boundless pros- 
pect on every side — how different from the stone 
walls of Newgate ! She is looking — not as she 
did when he saw her for the last time in that 
dreadful place, but as she used when he loved 
her — long, long ago, before misery and ill-treat- 
ment had altered her looks, and vice had changed 
his nature — and she is leaning upon his arm, and 
looking up into his face with tenderness and 



affection — and he does not strike her now, nor 
rudely shake her from him. And oh ! how glad 
he is to tell her all he had forgotten in that last 
hurried interview, and to fall on his knees 
before her and fervently beseech her pardon for 
all the unkindness and cruelty that wasted her 
form and broke her heart ! The scene suddenly 
changes. He is on his trial again • there are 
the judge and jury, and proseculorH, and wit- 
nesses, just as they were before. How full the 
court is — what a sea of heads — with a gallows, 
too, and a scaffold — and how all those people 
stare at him t Verdict, " Guilty." No matter ; he 
will escape. 

The night is dark and cold, the gates have 
been left open, and in an instant he is in the 
street, flying from the scene of his imprisonment 
like the wind. The streets are cleared, the 
open fields are gained, and the broad wide coun- 
try lies before him. Onward he dashes in the 
midst of darkness, over hedge and ditch, through 
mud and pool, bounding from spot to spot with a 
speed and lightness astonishing even to himself. 
At length he pauses ; he must be safe from pur- 
suit now ; he will stretch himself on that bank 
and sleep till sunrise. 

A period of unconsciousness succeeds. He 
wakes, cold and wretched. The dull gray light 
of morning is stealing into the cell, and falls 
upon the form of the attendant turnkey. Con- 
fused by his dreams, he starts from his uneasy 
bed in momentary uncertainty. It is but mo- 
mentary. Every object in the narrow cell is too 
frightfully real to admit of doubt or mistake. 
He is the condemned felon again, guilty and 
despairing ; and in two hours more will be 
dead. — Sketches ^ Chap. 25. 

PRISONER-The old. 

He was a sallow man — all cobblers are ; and 
had a strong bristly beard — all cobblers have. 
His face was a queer, good-tempered, crooked- 
featured piece of workmanship, ornamented 
with a couple of eyes that must have worn a 
very joyous expression at one time, for they 
sparkled yet. The man was sixty, by years, and 
Heaven knows how old by imprisonment, so 
that his having any look approaching to mirth 
or contentment, was singular enough. He was 
a little man, and being half doubled up as he 
lay in bed, looked about as long as he ought to 
have been without his legs. He had a great red 
pipe in his mouth, and was smoking, and staring 
at the rushlight, in a state of enviable placidity. 

" Have you been here long? " inquired Sam, 
breaking the silence which had lasted for some 
time. 

" Twelve year," replied the cobbler, biting the 
end of his pipe as he spoke. 

•' Contempt ? " inquired Sam. 

The cobbler nodded. 

" Well, then," said Sam, with some sternness, 
"wot do you persevere in bein' obstinit for, 
vastin' your ))recious life away, in this here mag- 
nified pound? Wy don't you give in, and tell 
the Chancellorship that you're wery sorry for 
makin' his court contemptible, and you won't 
do so no more ? " 

The cobbler put his pipe in the corner of his 
mouth, while he smiled, and then brought it back 
to its old place again ; but said nothing. 

" Wy don't you? " said Sam, urging his ques- 
tion strenuously. 



PRISONEB 



379 



PRISONER 



" Ah," said the cobbler, " you don't quite un- 
derstand these matters. What do you suppose 
ruined me, now ? " 

" Wy," said Sam, trimming the rush-light, " I 
s'pose the beginnin' wos, that you got into debt, 
eh ? " 

" Never owed a farden," said the cobbler ; 
" try again." 

" Well, perhaps," said Sam, " you bought 
houses, wicli is delicate English forgoin' mad ; 
or took to buildin', wich is a medical term for 
bein' incurable." 

The cobbler shook his head and said, '* Try 
again." 

" You didn't go to law, I hope ? " said Sam, 
suspiciously. 

" Never in my life," replied the cobbler. 
" The fact is, I was ruined by having money 
left me." 

" Come, come," said Sam, " that von't do. I 
wish some rich enemy 'ud try to vork my de- 
struction in that 'ere vay. I'd let him." 

Fickzuick, Chap. 44. 

PRISONER-The dead. 

All was noise and tumult — save in a little 
miserable shed a few yards off, where lay, all 
quiet and ghastly, the body of the Chancery 
prisoner who had died the night before, await- 
ing the mockery of an inquest. The body ! 
It is the lawyer's term for the restless, whirling 
mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes, 
and griefs, that make up the living man. The 
law had his body ; and there it lay, clothed in 
grave-clothes, an awful witness to its tender 
mercy. — Pickwick, Chap. 45. 

PRISONER-The friendless. 

" Friends ! " interposed the man, in a voice 
which rattled in his throat. " If I lay dead at 
the bottom of the deepest mine in the world ; 
tight screwed down and soldered in my coffin ; 
rotting in the dark and filthy ditch that drags 
its slime along, beneath the foundations of this 
prison ; I could not lie more forgotten or un- 
heeded than I am here. I am a dead man ; 
dead to society, without the pity they bestow 
on those whose souls have passed to judgment. 
Friends to see me t My God ! I have sunk 
from the prime of life into old age, in this place, 
and there is not one to raise his hand above 
my bed, when I lie dead upon it, and say, 
• It is a blessing he is gone ! ' ' 



Pick-ivick, Chap, 42. 



PRISONER— Conviction of Sampson Brass. 

Mr. Sampson, then, being detained, as already 
has been shown, by the justice upon whom he 
called, and being so strongly pressed to protract 
his stay that he could by no means refuse, re- 
mained under his protection for a considerable 
time, during which the great attention of his en- 
tertainer kept liim so extremely close, that he was 
quite lost to society, and never even went abroad 
for exercise saving into a small paved yard. So 
well, indeed, was his modest and retiring 
temper understood by those with whom he had 
to deal, and so jealous were they of his absence, 
that they required a kind of friendly bond to be 
entered into by two substantial housekeepers, in 
the sum of fiflcen hundred pounds a-piece, before 
they would suffer him to quit their hospitable 
roof — doubting, it appeared, that he would re- 



turn, if once let loose, on any other terms. Mr. 
Brass, struck with the humor of this jest, and 
carrying out its spirit to the utmost, sought from 
his wide connection a pair of friends whose 
joint possessions fell some halfpence short of 
fifteen pence, and proffered them as bail — for 
that was the merry word agreed upon on both 
sides. These gentlemen being rejected after 
twenty-four hours' pleasantry, Mr. Brass con- 
sented to remain, and did remain until a club of 
choice spirits called a Grand Jury (who were in 
the joke) summoned him to a trial before twelve 
other wags for perjury and fraud, who in their 
turn found him guilty with a most Hicctious joy 
— nay, the very populace entered into the whim, 
and when Mr. Brass was moving in a hackney- 
coach towards the building where these wags 
assembled, saluted him with rotten eggs and 
carcases of kittens, and feigned to wish to tear 
him into shreds, which greatly increased the com- 
icality of the thing, and made him relish it the 
more, no doubt. 

* * * the upshot was, that, instead of 
being desired to travel for a time in foreign parts, 
he was permitted to grace the mother country, 
under certain insignificant restrictions. 

These were, that he should, for a term of 
years, reside in a spacious mansion where sev- 
eral other gentlemen were lodged and boarded 
at the public charge, who went clad in a sober 
uniform of grey turned up with yellow, had 
their hair cut extremely short, and chiefly lived 
on gruel and light soup. It was also required 
of him that he should partake of their exercise 
of constantly ascending an endless flight of 
stairs ; and, lest his legs, unused to such exer- 
tion, should be weakened by it, that he should 
wear upon one ankle an amulet or charm of 
iron. These conditions being arranged, he was 
removed one evening to his new abode, and en- 
joyed, in common with nine other gentlemen 
and two ladies, the privilege of being taken 
to his place of retirement in one of Royalty's 
own carriages. — Old Cunosity Shop, Chap. 73. 

PRISONER— For debt (Sam Weller's story). 

" It strikes me, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, 
leaning over the iron rail at the stair-head, " It 
strikes me, Sam, that imprisonment for debt is 
scarcely any ])unishnient at all." 

'* Think not, sir? " incjiiired Mr. Weller. 

" You see how these fellows drink, and smoke, 
and roar," replied Mr. Pickwick. "It's quite 
impossible that they can mind it much." 

"Ah, that's just the wery thing, sir," rejoined 
Sam, " they don't mind it ; it's a regular holiday 
to them — all porter and skittles. It's the t'other 
vuns as gets done over, vith this sort o' thing ; 
them down-hearted fellers as can't svig avay at 
the beer, nor play at skittles neither ; them as 
vould pay if they could, and gets low by being 
boxed up. I'll tell you wot it is, sir ; them as 
is always a idlin' in public houses it don't dam- 
age at all, and them as is alvays a workin' wen 
they can, it damages too much, * It's unekal,' 
as my father used to say when his grog worn't 
made half-and-half: * It's unekal, and that's the 
fault on it.'" 

" I think you're right, Sam," said Mr. Pick- 
wick, after a few moments' reflection, " quite 
right." 

" P'raps, now and then, there's some honest 
people as likes it," observed Mr. WcUcr, in a 



FBISONEB 



380 PROFESSION Ali ENTHUSIASM 



ruminative tone, " but I never heerd o' one as I 
can call to mind, 'cept the little dirty-faced 
man in the brown coat : and that was force of 
habit." 

" And who was he ? " inquired Mr. Pickwick. 

" Wy, that's just the wery point as nobody 
never know'd," replied Sam. 

" But what did he do ? " 

" Wy, he did wot many men as has been much 
better know'd has done in their time, sir," re- 
plied Sam, " he run a match agin the constable, 
and vun it." 

" In other words, I suppose," said Mr. Pick- 
wick, " he got into debt." 

" Just that, sir," replied Sam, " and in course 
o' time he come here in consekens. It warn't 
much — execution for nine pound nothin', multi- 
plied by five for costs ; but hows'ever here he 
stopped for seventeen year. If he got any wrin- 
kles in his face, they was stopped up vith the 
dirt, for both the dirty face and the brown coat 
wos just the same at the end o' that time as they 
wos at the beginnin'. He wos a wery peaceful 
inoffendin' little creetur, and wos alvays a 
bustlin' about for somebody, or playin' rackets 
and never vinnin' ; till at last the turnkeys they 
got quite fond on him, and he wos in the lodge 
ev'ry night, a chattering vith 'em, and tellin' 
stories, and all that 'ere. Vun night he wos in 
there as usual, along vith a wery old friend of 
his, as wos on the lock, ven he says all of a sud- 
den, * I ain't seen the market outside. Bill,' he 
says (Fleet Market wos there at that time) — 
' I ain't seen the market outside. Bill,' he says, 
* for seventeen year.' ' I know you ain't,' says 
the turnkey, smoking his pipe. ' I should like 
to see it for a minit. Bill,' he says. ' Wery pro- 
bable,' says the turnkey, smoking his pipe wery 
fierce, and making believe he warn't up to what 
the little man wanted. ' Bill,' says the little man 
more abrupt than afore, ' I've got the fancy in 
my head. Let me see the public streets once 
more afore I die ; and if I ain't struck with 
apoplexy, I'll be back in five minits by the clock.' 
' And wot 'ud become o' me if you was struck 
with apoplexy ? ' said the turnkey. * Wy,' says 
the little creetur, ' whoever found me 'ud bring 
me home, for I have got my card in my pocket, 
Bill,' he says, ' No. 20, Coffee-room Flight ; ' and 
that was true, .sure enough, for wen he wanted 
to make the acquaintance of any new-comer, he 
used to pull out a little limp card vith them 
words on it and nothin' else : in consideration 
of vich, he wos alvays called Number Tventy. 
The turnkey takes a fixed look at him, and at 
last he says in a solemn manner, ' Tventy,' he 
says, ' I'll trust you ; you won't get your old 
friend into trouble.' ' No, my boy ; I hope I've 
somethin' better behind here,' says the little man, 
and as he said it he hit his little veskit wery hard, 
and then a tear started out o' each eye, which 
wos wery extraordinary, for it wos supposed as 
water never touched his face. He shook the 
turnkey by the hand ; out he vent " 

" And never came back again," said Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

" Wrong for vunce, sir," replied Mr. Weller, 
" for back he come, two minits afore the time, a 
bilin' with rage ; sayin' how he'd been nearly 
run over by a hackney coach ; that he warn't 
used to it : and he was blowed if he wouldn't 
write to the Lord Mayor. They got him pacifi- 
ed at last ; and for five years arter that, he 



never even so much as peeped out o' the lodge- 
gate." 

" At the expiration of that time he died, I sup- 
pose," said Mr. Pickwick. 

" No he didn't, sir," replied Sam. " He got a 
curiosity to go and taste the beer at a new public- 
house over the way, and it wos such a wery nice 
parlor, that he took it into his head to go there 
every night, wich he did for a long time, always 
comin' back reg'lar about a quarter of an hour 
afore the gate shut, wich wos all wery snug and 
comfortable. At last he began to get so precious 
jolly, that he used to forget how the time vent, 
or care nothin' at all about it, and he vent on 
gettin' later and later, till vun night his old 
friend wos just a shuttin' the gate — had turned 
the key in fact — wen he come up. ' Hold hard. 
Bill,* he says. ' Wot, ain't you come home yet, 
Tventy ? ' says the turnkey, ' I thought you wos 
in, long ago.' ' No I wasn't,' says the little man, 
vith a smile. ' Well then, I'll tell you wot it is, 
my friend,' says the turnkey, openin' the gate 
very slow and sulky, ' it's my 'pinion as you've 
got into bad company o' late, which I'm wery 
sorry to see. Now, I don't wish to do nothing 
harsh,' he says, ' but if you can't confine your- 
self to steady circles, and find your vay back at 
reglar hours, as sure as you're a standin' there, 
I'll shut you out altogether ! ' The little man 
was seized with a wiolent fit o' tremblin', and 
never vent outside the prison walls artei'vards ! " 
Pickwick, Chap. 41. 

PROFANITY. 

A variety of expletive adjectives let loose up- 
on society without any substantive to accom- 
pany them. — Pickwick, Chap. 42. 

PROFANITY-Of Old Lobbs. 

" Now it did unfortunately happen, that old 
Lobbs, being very hungry, was monstrous cross. 
Nathaniel Pipkin could hear him growling away 
like an old mastiff with a sore throat ; and when- 
ever the unfortunate apprentice with the thin 
legs came into the room, so surely did old Lobbs 
commence swearing at him in a most Saracenic 
and ferocious manner, though apparently M'ith no 
other end or object than that of easing his bosom 
by the discharge of a few superfluous oaths." 
Pickwick, Chap. 17. 

PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASM. 

" It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's," said 
Mrs. Badger, " speaking in his figurative naval 
manner, that when you make pitch hot, you can- 
not make it too hot ; and that if you only have 
to swab a plank, you should swab it as if Davy 
Jones were after you. It appears to me that this 
maxim is applicable to the medical, as well as to 
the nautical profession." 

" To all professions," observed Mr. Badger, 
" it was admirably said by Captain Swosser. 
Beautifully said." 

" People objected to Professor Dingo, when 
we were staying in the North of Devon, after 
our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, " that he dis- 
figured some of the houses and other buildings, 
by chipping off fragments of those edifices with 
his little geological hammer. But the Professor 
replied that he knew of no building, save the 
Temple of Science. The principle is the same, 
I think ' " 

"Precisely the same," said Mr. Badger. 



PROOFS 



381 



PUGILIST 



" Finely expressed ! The Professor made the 
same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last ill- 
ness ; when (his mind wandering) he insisted on 
keeping his little hammer under the pillow, and 
chipping at the countenances of the attendants. 
The ruling passion ! " — Bleak House, Chap. 17. 

PROOFS— Smeared. 

He smeared himself and he smeared the 
Proofs, the night through, to that degree that 
when Sol gave him warning to depart (in a four- 
wheeler), few could have said which was them, 
and which was him, and which was blots. His 
last instructions was, that I should instantly run 
and take his corrections to the office of the 
present Journal. I did so. They most likely 
will not appear in print, for I noticed a message 
being brought round from Beauford Printing 
House, while I was a throwing this concluding 
statement on paper, that the ole resources of 
that establishment was unable to make out 
what they meant. — Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 3. 

PROSPERITY-The effect of (Mark Tapley). 
There's a surprisin' number of men, sir, who, 
as long as they've only got their own shoes and 
stockings to depend upon, will walk down-hill, 
along the gutters, quiet enough, and by them- 
selves, and not do much harm. But set any on 
'em up with a coach and horses, sir ; and it's 
wonderful what a knowledge of drivin' he'll 
show, and how he'll fill his vehicle with passen- 
gers, and start off in the middle of the road, 
neck or nothing, to the Devil ! 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 52. 

PROVERB— A flowingr-bearded and patri- 
archal. 

" Stop ! " cried Mr. Tigg, holding out his 
hand. " Hold ! There is a most remarkably 
long-headed, flowing-bearded, and patriarchal 
proverb, which observes that it is the duty of a 
man to be just before he is generous. Be just 
now, and you can be generous presently. Do 
not confuse me with the man Slyme. Do not 
distinguish the man Slyme as a friend of mine, 
for he is no such thing. I have been compelled, 
sir, to abandon the party whom you call Slyme. 
I have no knowledge of the party whom you 
call Slyme. I am, sir," said Mr. Tigg, striking 
himself upon the breast, " a premium tulip, of a 
very different growth and cultivation from the 
cabbage Slyme, sir." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13. 

PUBLIC MAN— His self-importance. 

For a gentleman M'ho was rejoiced to see a 
body of visitors, Mr. Gregsbury looked as un- 
comfortable as might be ; but perhaps this was 
occasioned by senatorial gravity, and a states- 
manlike habit of keeping his feelings under con- 
trol. He was a tough, burly, thick-headed gen- 
tleman, with a loud voice, a pompous manner, a 
tolerable command of sentences with no mean- 
ing in them, and, in short, every requisite for a 
very good member indeed. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 16. 

PUBLIC MAN— The duties of his secretary. 

*' There are other duties, Mr. Nickleby, which 
a secretary to a parliamentary gentleman must 
never lose sight of. I should require to be 
crammed, sir." 



" I beg your pardon," interposed Nicholas, 
doubtful whether he had heard aright. 

" — To be crammed, sir," repeated Mr. Gregs- 
bury. 

" May I beg your pardon again, if I inquire 
what you mean, sir?" said Nicholas. 

" My meaning, sir, is perfectly plain," re- 
plied Mr. Gregsbury, with a solemn aspect. 
" My secretary would have to make himself 
master of the foreign policy of the world, as it is 
mirrored in the newspapers ; to run his eye over 
all accounts of public meetings, all leading arti- 
cles, and accounts of the proceedings of public 
bodies ; and to make notes of anything which it 
appeared to him might be made a point of, in 
any little speech upon the question of some pe- 
tition lying on the table, or anything of that 
kind. Do you understand ? " 

" I think I do, sir," replied Nicholas. 

" Then," said Mr. Gregsbury, " it would be 
necessary for him to make himself acquainted, 
from day to day, with newspaper paragraphs on 
passing events ; such as ' Mysterious disappear- 
ance, and supposed suicide of a pot-boy,' or any- 
thing of that sort, upon which I might found a 
question to the Secretary of State for the Home 
Department. Then, he would have to copy the 
question, and as much as I remembered of the 
answer (including a little compliment about in- 
dependence and good sense) ; and to send the 
manuscript in a frank to the local paper, with 
perhaps half a dozen lines of leader to the effect, 
that I was always to be found in my place in 
Parliament, and never shrunk from the respon- 
sible and arduous duties, and so forth. You see." 

Nicholas bowed. 

"Besides which," continued Mr. Gregsbury, 
" I should expect him, now and then, to go 
through a few figures in the printed tables, and 
to pick out a few results, so that I might come 
out pretty well on timber duty questions, and 
finance questions, and so on ; and I should like 
him to get up a few little arguments about the 
disastrous effects of a return to cash payments 
and a metallic currency, with a touch now and 
then about the exportation of bullion, and the 
Emperor of Russia, and bank notes, and all that 
kind of thing, which it's only necessary to talk 
fluently about, because nobody understands it. 
Do you take me ? " — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. i6. 

PUDDINGS— A successful. 

I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you 
what I knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner 
in the Library Cart, I knocked up a beefsteak 
pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oys- 
ters, and a couple of mushrooms, thrown in. 
It's a pudding to put a man in good-humor with 
everything, except the two bottom buttons of his 
waistcoat. — Dr. Marigold. 

PUGILIST-" Chicken," the. 

With that, Mr. Toots, repairing to the shop- 
door, sent a peculiar whistle into the night, which 
produced a stoical gentleman in a shaggy white 
great-coat and a flat-brimmed hat, with very 
short hair, a broken nose, and a considerable 
tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear. 

" Sit down. Chicken," said Mr. Toots. 

The compliant Chicken spat out some small 
pieces of straw on which he was regaling him- 
self, and took in a fresh supply from a reserve 
he carried in his hand. 



PUNCH 



882 



PUNCH 



" There ain't no drain of nothing short handy, 
is there ? " said the Chicken, generally. " This 
here sluicing night is hard lines to a man as lives 
on his condition ! '' 

Captain Cuttle proffered a glass of rum, which 
the Chicken, throwing back his head, emptied 
into himself, as into a cask, after proposing the 
brief sentiment, " Towards us ! " 

Donibey &' Son^ Chap. 32. 



This gentleman awakened in Miss Nipper 
some considerable astonishment ; for, having 
been defeated by the Larkey Boy, his visage 
was in a state of such great dilapidation, as to 
be hardly presentable in society with comfort 
to the beholders. The Chicken himself attrib- 
uted this punishment to his having had the 
misfortune to get into Chancery early in the 
proceedings, when he was severely fibbed by 
the Larkey one, and heavily grassed. But it 
appeared from the published records of that 
great contest that the Larkey Boy had had it 
all his own way from the beginning, and that 
the Chicken had been tapped, and bunged, and 
had received pepper, and had been made grog- 
gy, and had come up piping, and had endured 
a complication of similar strange inconven- 
iences, until he had been gone into and finished. 
Dombev dr» Son, Chap. 50. 



Mr. Toots informs the Chicken, behind his 
hand, that the middle gentleman, he in the 
fawn-colored pantaloons, is the father of his 
love. The Chicken hoarsely whispers Mr. 
Toots that he's as stiff a cove as ever he see, 
but that it is within the resources of science to 
double him up, with one blow in the waist- 
coat. — Doinbey df Son, Chap. 31. 

Not being able quite to make up his mind 
about it, he consulted the Chicken — without 
taking that gentleman into his confidence ; 
merely informing him that a friend in York- 
shire had written to him (Mr. Toots) for his opin- 
ion on such a question. The Chicken replying 
that his opinion always was, " Go in and win," 
and further, " When your man's before you and 
your work cut out, go in and do it." 

Dombey <5r» Son, Chap. 23. 



PUNCH— Mr. Micawber's. 

To divert his thoughts from this melancholy 
subject, I informed Mr. Micawber that I 
relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led 
him to the lemons. His recent despondency, 
not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I 
never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself 
amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, 
the odor of burning rum, and the steam of 
boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that after- 
noon. It was wonderful to see his face shin- 
ing at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate 
fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and 
looked as if he were making, instead of punch, 
a fortune for his family down to the latest pos- 
terity. As to Mrs. Micawber, I don't know 
whether it was the effect of the cap, or the 
lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or the 
wax-candles, but she came out of my room, 
comparatively speaking, lovely. And the lark 
was never gayer than that excellent woman. 

***** 

" Punch, my dear Copperfield," said Mr. 



Micawber, tasting it, " like time and tide, waits 
for no man. Ah ! it is at the present moment 
in high flavor." — David Copperfield, Chap. 28. 

PUNCH- Bob Sawyer's. 

They sat down to dinner ; the beer being 
served up, as Mr. Sawyer remarked, " in its native 
pewter." 

After dinner, Mr. Bob Sawyer ordered in the 
largest mortar in the shop, and proceeded to 
brew a reeking jorum of ram-punch therein ; 
stirring up and amalgamating the materials 
with a pestle in a very creditable and apothe- 
cary-like manner. Mr. Sawyer, being a bach- 
elor, had only one tumbler in the house, which 
was assigned to Mr. Winkle as a compliment 
to the visitor ; Mr. Ben Allen being accommo- 
dated with a funnel with a cork in the narrow 
end ; and Bob Sawyer contented himself with 
one of those widfr-lipped crystal vessels in- 
scribed with a variety of cabalistic characters, 
in which chemists are wont to measure out 
their liquid drugs in compounding prescrip- 
tions. These preliminaries adjusted, the punch 
was tasted, and pronounced excellent ; and it 
having been arranged that Bob Sawyer and 
Ben Allen should be considered at liberty to 
fill twice to Mr. Winkle's once, they started 
fair, with great satisfaction and good-fellowship, 
Pickwick, Chap. 38. 

PUNCH— And its results. 

" Well, that certainly is most capital cold 
punch," said Mr. Pickwick, looking earnestly at 
the stone bottle ; " and the day is extremely 
warm, and — Tupman, my dear friend, a glass of 
punch ? " 

"With the greatest delight," replied Mr. Tup- 
man ; and having drank that glass, Mr. Pick- 
wick took another, just to see whether there 
was any orange peel in the punch, because 
orange peel always disagreed with him ; and find- 
ing that there was not, Mr. Pickwick took 
another glass to the health of their absent friend, 
and then felt himself imperatively called on to 
propose another in honor of the punch-com- 
pounder, unknown. 

This constant succession of glasses produced 
considerable effect upon Mr. Pickwick ; his coun- 
tenance beamed with the most sunny smiles, 
laughter played around his lips, and good-hu- 
mored merriment twinkled in his eye. Yield- 
ing by degrees to the influence of the exciting 
liquid, rendered more so by the heat, Mr. Pick- 
wick expressed a strong desire to recollect a 
song which he had heard in his infancy, and 
the attempt proving abortive, sought to stimu- 
late his memory with more glasses of punch, 
which appeared to have quite a contrary effect ; 
for, from forgetting the words of the song, he 
began to forget how to articulate any words at 
all ; and finally, after rising to his legs to address 
the company in an eloquent speech, he fell into 
the ban-ow and fast asleep, simultaneously. 

Pickwick, Chap. ig. 

PUNCH— Feeling, the grrotmdwork of. 

" Why, you smell rather comfortable here ! " 
said Wegg, seeming to take it ill, and stopping 
and sniffing as he entered. 

•• I am rather comfortable, sir ! " said Venus. 

" You don't use lemon in your business, do 
you ? " asked Wegg, sniffing again. 



PURSE 



auiiiP 



♦' No, Mr. Wegg," said Venus. " When I use 
it at all, I mostly use it in cobblers' punch." 

*' What do you call cobblers' punch ? " de- 
manded Wegg, in a worse humor than before. 

" It's difficult to impart the receipt for it, 
sir," returned Venus, *' because, however par- 
ticular you may be in allotting your materials, 
so much will still depend upon the individual 
gifts, and there being a feeling thrown into it. 
But the groundwork is gin." 

" In a Dutch bottle ? " said Wegg, gloomily, 
as he sat himself down. 

Our Muttial Friend, Book IV., Chap. 14. 

PTJB.SE— An empty. 

Joe bought a roll, and reduced his purse to 
the condition (with a difference) of that cele- 
brated purse of Fortunatus, which, whatever 
were its favored owner's necessities, had one 
unvarying amount in it. In these real times, 
when all the Fairies are dead and buried, there 
are still a great many purses which possess that 
quality. The sum-total they contain is expressed 
in arithmetic by a circle, and whether it be 
added to or multiplied by its own amount, the 
result of the problem is more easily stated than 
any known in figures. 

Barnaby Budge, Chap. 31. 



Q 



dTTIIiP— A post-mortem examination of. 

" They think you're — you're drowned," re- 
plied the boy, who in his malicious nature had 
a strong infusion of his master. " You was last 
seen on the brink of the wharf, and they think 
you tumbled over. Ha ha ! " 

The prospect of playing the spy under such 
delicious circumstances, and of disappointing 
them all by walking in alive, gave more delight 
to Quilp than the greatest stroke of good for- 
tune could possibly have inspired him with. He 
was no less tickled than his hopeful assistant, 
and they both stood for some seconds, grinning 
and gasping and wagging their heads at each 
other, on either side of the post, like an un- 
matchable pair of Chinese idols. 

***** 

'* Ah ! " said Mr. Brass, breaking the silence, 
and raising his eyes to the ceiling with a sigh, 
" Who knows but he may be looking down upon 
us now ! Who knows but he may be surveying 
of us from — from somewheres or another, and 
contemplating us with a watchful eye 1 Oh 
Lor ! " 

Here Mr. Brass stopped to drink half his 
punch, and then resumed ; looking at the other 
half, as he spoke, with a dejected smile. 

" I can almost fancy," said the lawyer, shak- 
ing his head, •* that I see his eye glistening 
down at the very bottom of my liquor. When 
shall we look upon his like again? Never, 
never ! One minute we are here " — holding 
his tumbler before his eyes — " the next we are 
there" — gii'p^'^S <^^own its contents, and strik- 
ing himself emphatically a little below the chest 
— " in the tomb. To think that I should be 
drinking his very rum I It seems like a dream." 

With the view, no doubt, of testing the real- 



ity of his position, Mr. Brass pushed his tum- 
bler as he spoke towards Mrs. Jiniwin for the 
purpose of being replenished ; and turned to- 
wards the attendant mariners. 

" The search has been quite unsuccessful 
then?" 

" Quite, master. But I should say that if he 
turns up anywhere, he'll come ashore some- 
where about Grinidge to-morrow, at ebb tide, 
eh, mate ? " 

The other gentleman assented, observing that 
he was expected at the Hospital, and that sev- 
eral pensioners would be ready to receive him 
whenever he arrived. 

" Then we have nothing for it but resigna- 
tion," said Mr. Brass ; " nothing but resigna- 
tion, and expectation. It would be a comfort 
to have his body ; it would be a dreary com- 
fort." 

" Oh, beyond a doubt," assented Mrs. Jini- 
win, hastily ; " if we once had that, we should 
be quite sure." 

"With regard to the descriptive advertise- 
ment," said Sampson Brass, taking up his pen. 
" It is a melancholy pleasure to recall his traits. 
Respecting his legs now — ? " 

" Crooked, certainly," said Mrs. Jiniwin. 

'* Do you think they were crooked ? " said 
Brass, in an insinuating tone. " I think I see 
them now coming up the street very wide apart, 
in nankeen pantaloons a little shrunk and with- 
out straps. Ah ! what a vale of tears we live 
in. Do we say crooked ? " 

" I think they were a little so," observed Mrs. 
Quilp with a sob. 

" Legs crooked," said Brass, writing as he 
spoke. "Large head, short body, legs crook- 
ed — " 

" Very crooked," suggested Mrs. Jiniwin. 

" We'll not say very crooked, ma'am," said 
Brass, piously. " Let us not bear hard upon the 
weaknesses of the deceased. He is gone, ma'am, 
to where his legs will never come in question. 
We will content ourselves with crooked, Mrs. 
Jiniwin." 

" I thought you wanted the truth," said the 
old lady. " That's all." 

" Bless your eyes, how I love you," muttered 
Quilp. " There she goes again. Nothing but 
punch ! " 

" This is an occupation," said the lawyer, lay- 
ing down his pen and emptying his glass, 
" which seems to bring him before my eyes like 
the Ghost of Hamlet's father, in the very clothes 
that he wore on work-a-days. His coat, his 
waistcoat, his shoes and stockings, his trousers, 
his hat, his wit and humor, his pathos and his 
umbrella, all come before me like visions of my 
youth. His linen ! " said Mr. Brass, smiling 
fondly at the wall, "his linen, which was always 
of a particular color, for such was his whim 
and fancy — how plain I see his linen now !" 

" You had better go on, sir," said Mrs. Jini- 
win impatiently. 

" True, ma'am, true," cried Mr. Brass. " Our 
faculties must not freeze with grief. I'll trou- 
ble you for a little more of that, ma'am. A 
question now arises, with relation to his nose." 

" Flat," said Mrs. Jiniwin. 

"Aquiline!" cried Quilp, thrusting in his 
head, and striking the feature with his fist. 
" Aquiline, you hag. Do you see it? Do you 
call this flat ? Do you ? Eh ? " 



QTTTLP 



BACJJIS 



" Oh capital, capital ! " shouted Brass, from 
the mere force of habit. " Excellent ! How 
very good he is ! He's a most remarkable man 
— so extremely whimsical ! Such an amazing 
power of taking people by surprise ! " 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 49. 

aUTLP— At home. 

" Mrs. Quilp ! " 

" Ves, Quilp." 

"Am I nice to look at? Should I be the 
handsomest creature in the world if I had but 
whiskers ? Am I quite a lady's man as it is ? — 
am I, Mrs. Quilp?" 

Mrs. Quilp dutifully replied, "Yes, Quilp;" 
and fascinated by his gaze, remained looking 
timidly at him, while he treated her with a suc- 
cession of such horrible grimaces as none but 
himself and nightmares had the power of assum- 
ing. During the whole of this performance, 
which was somewhat of the longest, he preserved 
a dead silence, except when, by an unexpected 
skip or leap, he made his wife start backward 
with an irrepressible shriek. Then he chuckled. 

" Mrs. Quilp," he said at last. 

" Yes, Quilp," she meekly replied. 

Instead of pursuing the theme he had in his 
mind, Quilp arose, folded his arms again, and 
looked at her more sternly than before, while 
she averted her eyes and kept them on the 
ground. 

" Mrs. Quilp." 

" Yes, Quilp." 

" If ever you listen to these beldames again, 
I'll bite you." — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap, 4. 

Q,TJIIiP— His domestic system. 

" How are you now, my dear old darling?" 
Slight and ridiculous as the incident was, it 
made him appear such a little fiend, and withal 
such a keen and knowing one, that the old 
woman felt too much afi»aid of him to utter a 
single word, and suffered herself to be led with 
extraordinary politeness to the breakfast table. 
Here he by no means diminished the impression 
he had just produced, for he ate hard eggs, shell 
and all, devoured gigantic prawns with the heads 
and tails on, chewed tobacco and water-cresses 
at the same time and with extraordinary greedi- 
ness, drank boiling tea without winking, bit his 
fork and spoon till they bent again, and, in 
short, performed so many horrifying and uncom- 
mon acts that the women were nearly frightened 
out of their wits and began to doubt if he were 
really a human creature. At last, having gone 
through these proceedings, and many others 
which were equally a part of his system, Mr. 
Quilp left them, reduced to a very obedient and 
humbled state, and betook himself to the river- 
side, where he took boat for the wharf on which 
he had bestowed his name. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 4. 



R 



RACES— Going- to the. 

Meanwhile, they were drawing near the town 
where the races were to begin next day ; for, 
from passing numerous groups of gipsies and 



trampers on the road, wending their way to- 
wards it, and straggling out from every by-way 
and cross-country lane, they gradually fell into 
a stream of people, some walking by the side of 
covered carts, others with horses, others with 
donkeys, others toiling on with heavy loads 
upon their backs, but all tending to the same 
point. The public-houses by the wayside, from 
being empty and noiseless as those in the re- 
moter parts had been, now .sent out boisterous 
shouts and clouds of smoke ; and, from the 
misty windows, clusters of broad red faces 
looked down upon the road. On every piece of 
waste or common ground, some small gambler 
drove his noisy trade, and bellowed to the idle 
passers-by to stop and try their chance ; the 
crowd grew thicker and more noisy ; gilt gin- 
gerbread in blanket-stalls exposed its glories to 
the dust ; and often a four-horse carriage, dash- 
ing by, obscured all objects in the gritty cloud 
it raised, and left them, stunned and blinded, 
far behind- 

It was dark before they reached the town it- 
self, and long indeed the few last miles had 
been. Here all was tumult and confusion ; the 
streets were filled with throngs of people — many 
strangers were there, it seemed, by the looks 
they cast about — the church-bells rang out their 
noisy peals, and flags streamed from windows 
and house-tops. In the large inn-yards waiters 
flitted to and fro and ran against each other, 
horses clattered on the uneven stones, carriage- 
steps fell rattling down, and sickening smells 
from many dinners came in a heavy, lukewarm 
breath upon the sense. In the smaller public- 
houses, fiddles with all their might and main 
were squeaking out the tune to staggering feet ; 
drunken men, oblivious of the burden of their 
song, joined in a senseless howl, which drowned 
the tinkling of the feeble bell, and made them 
savage for their drink ; vagabond groups assem- 
bled round the doors to see the stroller woman 
dance, and add their uproar to the shrill flageo- 
let and deafening drum. 

***** 

As the morning wore on, the tents assumed a 
gayer and more brilliant appearance, and long 
lines of carriages came rolling softly on the turf. 
Men who had lounged about all night in smock- 
frocks and leather leggings, came out in silken 
vests and hats and plumes, as jugglers or mounte- 
banks ; or in gorgeous liveries, as soft-spoken 
servants at gambling booths ; or in sturdy yeo- 
man dress, as decoys at unlawful games. Black- 
eyed gipsy girls, hooded in showy handkerchiefs, 
sallied forth to tell fortunes, and pale slender 
women with consumptive faces lingered upon 
the footsteps of ventriloquists and conjurors, and 
counted the sixpences with anxious eyes long 
before they were gained. As many of the chil- 
dren as could be kept within bounds, were 
stowed away, with all the other signs of dirt and 
poverty, among the donkeys, carts, and horses 
and as many as could not thus be disposed of 
ran in and out in all intricate spots, crept be- 
tween people's legs and carriage -wheels, and 
came forth unharmed from under horses' hoofs. 
The dancing-dogs, the stilts, the little lady and 
the tall man, and all the other attractions, with 
organs out of number and bands innumerable, 
emerged from the holes and corners in which 
they had passed the night, and flourished boldly 
in the sun. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 19. 



RACE-COURSE 



385 



RACE-COURSE 



RACE-COURSE— The scenes upon a. 

The little race-course at Hampton was in the 
full tide and height of its gaiety ; the day as 
dazzling as day could be ; the sun high in the 
cloudless sky, and shining in its fullest splendor. 
Every gaudy color that fluttered in the air from 
carriage-seat and garish tent-top, shone out in its 
gaudiest hues. Old dingy flags grew new again, 
faded gilding was re-burnished, stained rotten 
canvas looked a snowy white, the very beggars' 
rags were freshened up, and sentiment quite for- 
got its charity in its fervent admiration of poverty 
so picturesque. 

It was one of those scenes of life and anima- 
tion, caught in its very brightest and freshest 
moments, which can scarcely fail to please ; for, 
if the eye be tired of show and glare, or the ear 
be weary with the ceaseless round of noise, the 
one may repose, turn almost where it will, on 
eager, happy, and expectant faces, and the other 
deaden all consciousness of more annoying sounds 
in those of mirth and exhilaration. Even the 
sunburnt faces of gypsy children, half naked 
though they be, suggest a drop of comfort. It 
is a pleasant thing to see that the sun has been 
there ; to know that the air and light are on them 
every day ; to feel that they are children, and 
lead children's lives ; that if their pillows be 
damp, it is with the dews of Heaven, and not 
with tears ; that the limbs of their girls are free, 
and that they are not crippled by distortions, 
imposing an unnatural and horrible penance 
upon their sex ; that their lives are spent, from 
day to day, at least among the waving trees, and 
not in the midst of dreadful engines which make 
young children old before they know what child- 
hood is, and give them the exhaustion and in- 
firmity of age, without, like age, the privilege to 
die. God send that old nursery tales were true, 
and that gypsies stole such children by the 
score ! 

The great race of the day had just been run ; 
and the close lines of people, on either side of 
the course, suddenly breaking up and pouring 
into it, imparted a new liveliness to the scene, 
which was again all busy movement. Some 
hurried eagerly to catch a glimpse of the win- 
ning horse ; others darted to and fro, searching, 
no less eagerly, for the carriages they had left in 
quest of better stations. Here, a little knot 
gathered round a pea-and-thimble table to watch 
the plucking of some unhappy greenhorn ; and 
there, another proprietor, with his confederates 
in various disguises — one man in spectacles, an- 
other, with an eye-glass and a stylish hat ; a third, 
dressed as a farmer well-to-do in the world, with 
his top-coat over his arm, and his flash notes in 
a large leathern pocket-book ; and all with heavy- 
handled whips to represent most innocent coun- 
try fellows, who had trotted there on horseback 
— sought, by loud and noisy talk and pretended 
play, to entrap some unwary customer ; while the 
gentlemen confederates (of more villanous aspect 
still, in clean linen and good clothes) betrayed 
their close interest in the concern by the anxious, 
furtive glance they cast on all new-comers. 
These would be hanging on the outskirts of a 
wide circle of people assembled round some 
itinerant juggler, opposed, in his turn, by a noisy 
band of music, or the classic game of " Ring 
the Bull," while ventriloquists holding dialogues 
with wooden dolls, and fortune-telling women 
smothering the cries of real babies, divided with 



them, and many more, the general attention of 
the company. Drinking-tents were full, glasses 
began to clink in carriages, hampers to be un- 
packed, tempting provisions to be set forth, 
knives and forks to rattle, champagne corks to 
fly, eyes to brighten that were not dull before, 
and pickpockets to count their gains during the 
last heat. The attention so recently strained on 
one object of interest, was now divided among 
a hundi-ed ; and, look where you would, there 
was a motley assemblage of feasting, laughing, 
talking, begging, gamblmg, and mummery. 

Of the gambling-booths there was a plentiful 
show, flourishing in all the splendor of carpeted 
ground, striped hangings, crimson cloth, pin- 
nacled roofs, geranium pots, and livery servants. 
There were the Stranger's club-house, the Athe- 
naeum club-house, the Hampton club-house, the 
Saint James's club-house, half-a-mile of club- 
houses, to play in ; and there were rouge-et-noir^ 
French hazard, and other games, to play at. It 
is into one of these booths that our story takes 
its way. 

Fitted up with three tables for the purposes 
of play, and crowded with players and lookers- 
on, it was, although the largest place of the kind 
upon the course, intensely hot, notwithstanding 
that a portion of the canvas roof was rolled back 
to admit more air, and there were two doors for 
a free passage in and out. Excepting one or 
two men who, each with a long roll of half- 
crowns chequered with a few stray sovereigns, 
in his left hand, staked their money at every 
roll of the ball with a business-like sedateness 
which showed that they were used to it, and had 
been playing all day, and most probably all the 
day before, there was no very distinctive charac- 
ter about the players. They were chiefly young 
men, apparently attracted by curiosity, or stak- 
ing small sums as part of the amusement of the 
day, with no very great interest in winning or 
losing. There were two persons present, how- 
ever, who, as peculiarly good specimens of a 
class, deserve a passing notice. 

Of these, one was a man of six or eight and 
fifty, who sat on a chair near one of the entrances 
of the booth, with his hands folded on the top 
of his stick, and his chin appearing above them. 
He was a tall, fat, long-bodied man, buttoned 
up to the throat in a light green coat, which 
made his body look still longer than it was. He 
wore, besides drab breeches and gaiters, a white 
neckerchief, and a broad-brimmed white hat. 
Amid all the buzzing noise of the games, and 
the perpetual passing in and out of people, he 
seemed perfectly calm and abstracted, without 
the smallest particle of excitement in his com- 
position. He exhibited no indication of weari- 
ness, nor, to a casual observer, of interest either. 
There he sat, quite still and collected. Some- 
times, but very rarely, he nodded to some pass- 
ing face, or beckoned to a waiter to obey a call 
from one of the tables. The next instant he 
subsided into his old state. He might have 
been some profoundly deaf old gentleman, who 
had come in to take a rest, or he might have 
been patiently waiting for a friend, without the 
least consciousness of anybody's presence, or he 
might have been fixed in a trance, or under the 
influence of opium. People turned round and 
looked at him ; he made no gesture, caught no- 
body's eye, let them pass away, and others come 
on and be succeeded by others, and took no 



RACE-COURSE 



886 



RAILROAD 



notice. When he did move, it seemed wonder- 
ful how he could have seen anything to occasion 
it. And so, in truth, it was. But there was not 
a face that passed in or out, which this man 
failed to see ; not a gesture at any one of the 
three tables that was lost upon him ; not a word, 
spoken by the bankers, but reached his ear ; not 
a winner or loser he could not have marked. 
And he was the proprietor of the place. 

The other presided over the rottge-et-twir 
table. He was probably some ten years young- 
er, and was a plump, paunchy, sturdy-looking 
fellow, with his underlip a little pursed, from a 
habit of counting money inwardly, as he paid 
it, but with no decidedly bad expression in his 
face, which was rather an honest and jolly one 
than otherwise. He wore no coat, the weather 
being hot, and stood behind the table with a 
huge mound of crowns and half-crowns before 
him, and a cash-box for notes. This game was 
constantly playing. Perhaps twenty people 
would be staking at the same time. This man 
had to roll the ball, to watch the stakes as 
they were laid down, to gather them off the 
color which lost, to pay those who won, 
to do it all with the utmost despatch, to roll 
the ball again, and to keep this game perpet- 
ually alive. He did it all with a rapidity abso- 
lutely marvellous ; never hesitating, never 
making a mistake, never stopping, and never 
ceasing to repeat such unconnected phrases as 
the following, which, partly from habit, and 
partly to have something appropriate and busi- 
ness-like to say, he constantly poured out with 
the same monotonous emphasis, and in nearly 
the same order, all day long ; 

" Rooge-a-nore from Paris ! Gentlemen, 
make your game and back your own opinions 
— any time while the ball rolls — rooge-a-nore 
from Paris, gentlemen, it's a French game, gen- 
tlemen, I brought it over myself, I did indeed ! 
Rooge-a-nore from Paris — black wins — black 
— stop a minute, sir, and I'll pay you directly 
— two there, half a pound there, three there 
and one there — gentlemen, the ball's a-rolling 
— any time, sir, while the ball rolls ! — The beau- 
ty of this game is, that you can double 
your stakes or put down your money, gen- 
tlemen, any time while the ball rolls — 
black again — black wins — I never saw such 
a thing — I never did, in all my life, upon 
my word I never did ; if any gentleman had 
been backing the black in the last five minutes 
he must have won five and forty pound in four 
rolls of the ball, he must indeed. Gentlemen, 
we've port, sherry, cigars, and most excellent 
champagne. Here, wai-ter, bring a bottle of 
champagne, and let's have a dozen or fifteen 
cigars here — and let's be comfortable, gen- 
tlemen — and bring some clean glasses — any 
time while the ball rolls ! — I lost one hundred 
and thirty-seven pound yesterday, gentlemen, 
at one roll of the ball, I did indeed ! — how do 
you do, sir " (recognizing some knowing gen- 
tleman without any halt or change of voice, 
and giving a wink so slight that it seems an acci- 
dent), " will you take a glass of sherry, sir ? — 
here, wai-ter ! bring a clean glass, and hand 
the sherry to this gentleman — and hand it 
round, will you, waiter — this is the rooge-a- 
nore from Paris, gentlemen — any time while 
the ball rolls ! — gentlemen, make your game 
and back your own opinions — it's the rooge-a- 



nore from Paris — quite a new game, I brought 
it over myself, I did indeed — gentlemen, the 
ball's a-rolling ! " — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 50. 

RAG-E— Its effervescence. 

He darted swiftly from the room with every 
particle of his hitherto-buttoned-up indignation 
effervescing, from all parts of his countenance, 
in a perspiration of passion. — Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

RAGrE— A mad-liouse style of manner. 

" Gad, Nickleby," said Mr. Mantalini, retreat- 
ing towards his wife, " what a demneble fierce 
old evil genius you are? You're enough to 
frighten my life and soul out of her little de- 
licious wits — flying all at once into such a blaz- 
ing, ravaging, raging passion as never was, dem- 
mit ! " 

" Pshaw," rejoined Ralph, forcing a smile. 
" It is but manner." 

" It is a demd uncomfortable, private-mad- 
house sort of manner," said Mr. Mantalini, pick- 
ing up his cane. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34. 

RAGE-Of Mr. SmaUweed. 

This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Small- 
weed, who finds it so difficult to resume his ob- 
ject, whatever it may be, that he becomes exas- 
perated, and secretly claws the air with an im- 
potent vindictiveness expressive of an intense 
desire to tear and rend the visage of Mr. George. 
As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long 
and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and 
his eyes green and watery ; and, over and above 
this, as he continues, while he claws, to slide 
down in his chair and to collapse into a shape- 
less bundle ; he becomes such a ghastly spectacle, 
even in the accustomed eyes of Judy, that that 
young virgin pounces at him M'ith something 
more than the ardor of affection, and so shakes 
him up, and pats and pokes him in divers parts 
of his body, but particularly in that part which 
the science of self-defence would call his wind, 
that in his grievous distress he utters enforced 
sounds like a pavior's rammer. 

Bleak House, Chap. 26. 

RAILROAD— Construction of the. 

The first shock of a great earthquake had, 
just at that period, rent the whole neighborhood 
to its centre. Traces of its course were visible 
on every side. Houses were knocked down ; 
streets broken through and stopped ; deep pits 
and trenches dug in the ground ; enormous heaps 
of earth and clay thrown up ; buildings that 
were undermined and shaking, propped by great 
beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, over- 
thrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at 
the bottom of a steep unnatural hill ; there, con- 
fused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in 
something that had accidentally become a pond. 
Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere ; 
thoroughfares that were wholly impassable ; 
Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their 
height ; temporary wooden houses and en- 
closures, in the most unlikely situations ; car- 
cases of ragged tenements, and fragments of un- 
finished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, 
and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of 
cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. 
There were a hundred thousand shapes and sub-, 
stances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out 
of their places, upside down, burrowing in the 



RAILROAD 



387 



RATLROAD 



earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the 
water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot 
springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants 
upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of 
confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed 
and heaved within dilapidated walls ; whence, 
also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing 
forth ; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights 
of way, and wholly changed the law and custom 
of the neighborhood. 

In short, the yet unfinished and unopened 
Railroad was in progress ; and, from the very 
core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly 
away, upon its mighty course of civilization and 
improvement. 

But as yet, the neighborhood was shy to own 
the Railroad. One or two bold speculators had 
projected streets ; and one had built a little, but 
had stopped among the mud and ashes to con- 
sider farther of it. A bran-new Tavern, redolent 
of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at 
all, had taken for its sign The Railway Arms ; but 
that might be rash enterprise — and then it 
hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the 
Excavators' House of Call had sprung up from 
a beer shop ; and the old-established Ham and 
Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating 
House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through 
interested motives of a similar immediate and 
popular description. Lodging-house keepers 
were favorable in like manner ; and for the like 
reasons were not to be trusted. The general 
belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields, 
and cow-houses, and dung-hills, and dust-heaps, 
and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, 
and carpet-beating grounds at the very door of 
the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster-shells in 
the oyster season, and of lobster-shells in the 
lobster season, and of broken crockery and 
faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached 
upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old 
cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean 
houses, and patches of wretched vegetation, 
stared it out of countenance. Nothing was 
the better for it, or thought of being so. If the 
miserable waste ground lying near it could have 
laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like 
many of the miserable neighbors. 

Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredu- 
lous. It was a little row of houses, with little 
squalid patches of ground before them, fenced 
off with old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tar- 
paulin, and dead bushes ; with bottomless tin 
kettles and exhausted iron fenders thrust into 
the gaps. Here, the Staggs's Gardeners trained 
scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits, erected 
rotten summer-houses (one was an old boat), 
dried clothes, and smoked pipes. Some were of 
opinion that Staggs's Gardens derived its name 
from a deceased capitalist, one Mr. Staggs, who 
had built it for his delectation. Others, who 
had a natural taste for the country, held that 
it dated from those rural times when the 
antlered herd, under the familiar denomination 
of Staggses, had resorted to its shady precincts. 
Be this as it may, Staggs's Gardens was regard- 
ed by its population as a sacred grove, not to be 
withered by railroads ; and so confident were 
they generally of its long outliving any such 
ridiculous inventions, that the master chimney- 
sweeper at the corner, who was understood to 
take the lead in the local politics of the Gar- 
dens, had publicly declared that on the occasion 



of the Railroad opening, if ever it did open^ 
two of his boys should ascend the flues of his 
dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure 
with derisive jeers from the chimney-pots. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 6. 

RAILROAD— A flnislied. 

There was no such place as Staggs's Gardens, 
It had vanished from the earth. Where the old 
rotten summer-houses once had stood, palaces 
now reared their heads, and granite columns of 
gigantic girth opened a vista to the railway 
world beyond. The miserable waste ground, 
where the refuse-matter had been heaped of 
yore, was swallowed up and gone ; and in its 
frowzy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed 
with rich goods and costly merchandise. The 
old bye-streets now swarmed with passengers 
and vehicles of every kind ; the new streets, 
that had stopped disheartened in the mud and 
wagon-ruts, formed towns within themselves, 
originating wholesome comforts and conveni- 
ences belonging to themselves, and never tried 
nor thought of until they sprung into existence. 
Bridges that had led to nothing, led to villas, 
gardens, churches, healthy public walks. The 
carcasses of houses, and beginnings of new 
thoroughfares, had started off upon the line at 
steam's own speed, and shot away into the coun- 
try in a monster train. 

As to the neighborhood which had hesitated 
to acknowledge the railroad in its straggling 
days, that had grown wise and penitent, as any 
Christian might in such a case, and now boasted 
of its powerful and prosperous relation. There 
were railway patterns in its drapers' shops, and 
railway journals in the windows of its newsmen. 
There were railway hotels, coffee-houses, lodg- 
ing-houses, boarding-houses ; railway plans, 
maps, views, wrappers, bottles, sandwich-boxes, 
and time-tables ; railway hackney-coach and 
cab-stands ; railway omnibuses, railway streets 
and buildings, railway hangers-on and para- 
sites, and flatterers out of all calculation. There 
was even railway time observed in clocks, as if 
the sun itself had given in. Among the van- 
quished was the master chimney-sweeper, v/hi- 
lome incredulous at Staggs's Gardens, who now 
lived in a stuccoed house three stories high, and 
gave himself out, with golden flourishes upon a 
varnished board, as contractor for the cleansing 
of railway chimneys by machinery. 

To and from the heart of this great change, 
all day and night, throbbing currents rushed 
and returned incessantly like its life's blood. 
Crowds of people and mountains of goods, de- 
parting and arriving scores upon scores of times 
in every four-and -twenty hours, produced a fer- 
mentation in the place that was always in action. 
The very houses seemed disposed to pack up 
and take trips. Wonderful Members of Parlia- 
ment, who, little more than twenty years before, 
had made themselves merry with the wild rail- 
road theories of engineers, and given them the 
liveliest rubs in cross-examination, went down 
into the north with their watches in their hands, 
and sent on messages before by the electric tel- 
egraph, to say that they were coming. Night 
and day the conquering engines rumbled at their 
distant work, or, advancing smoothly to their 
journey's end, and gliding like tame dragons 
into the allotted corners grooved out to the 
inch for their reception, stood bubbling and 



RAILBOAIJ 



888 



RATLROAD 



trembling there, making the walls quake, as if 
they were dilating with the secret knowledge of 
great powers yet unsuspected in them, and strong 
purposes not yet achieved. 

But Staggs's Gardens had been cut up root 
and branch. Oh, woe the day when "not a 
rood of English ground" — laid out in Staggs's 
Gardens — is secure. 

Dombey dr» Son^ Chap. 15. 

RAILROAD— Tlie course of. 

He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. 
Tortured by these thoughts he carried monotony 
with him, through the rushing landscape, and 
hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied 
country, but a wilderness of blighted plans and 
gnawing jealousies. The very speed at which 
the train was whirled along mocked the swift 
course of the young life that had been borne 
away so steadily and so inexorably to its fore- 
doomed end. The power that forced itself upon 
its iron way — its own — defiant of all paths and 
roads, piercing through the heart of every obsta- 
cle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, 
ages, and degrees behind it, was a type of the 
triumphant monster. Death. 

Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, 
from the town, burrowing among the dwellings 
of men and making the streets hum, flashing 
out into the meadows for a moment, mining in 
through the damp earth, booming on in darkness 
and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny 
day so bright and wide ; away, with a shriek, 
and a roar, and a rattle, through the fields, 
through the woods, through the corn, through 
the hay, through the chalk, through the mould, 
through the clay, through the rock, among ob- 
jects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever 
flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance 
ever moving slowly within him : like as in the 
track of the remorseless monster. Death ! 

Through the hollow, on the height, by the 
heath, by the orchard, by the park, by the gar- 
den, over the canal, across the river, where the 
sheep are feeding, where the mill is going, where 
the barge is floating, where the dead are lying, 
where the factory is smoking, where the stream 
is running, where the village clusters, where the 
great cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies, 
and the wild breeze smooths or ruffles it at its 
inconstant will ; away, with a shriek, and a roar, 
and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind but 
dust and vapor : like as in the track of the re- 
morseless monster, Death ! 

Breasting the wind and light, the shower and 
sunshine, away, and still away, it rolls and roars, 
fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and great 
works and massive bridges crossing up above, 
fall like a beam of shadow an inch broad, upon 
the eye, and then are lost. Away, and still 
away, onward and onward ever; glimpses of 
cottage-homes, of houses, mansions, rich estates, 
of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of old 
roads and paths that look deserted, small, and 
insignificant as they are left behind : and so they 
do, and what else is there but such glimpses, in 
the track of the indomitable monster. Death ! 

Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, 
plunging down into the earth again, and work- 
mg on in such a storm of energy and persever- 
ance, that amidst the darkness and whirlwind 
the motion seems reversed, and to tend furiously 
backward, until a ray of light upon the wet wall 



shows its surface flying past like a fierce stream. 
Away once more into the day, and through the 
day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring, rat 
tling, tearing on, spurning everything with its 
dark breath, sometimes pausing for a minute 
where a crowd of faces are, that in a minute 
more are not : sometimes lapping water greedily, 
and before the spout at which it drinks has ceased 
to drip upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rat 
tling, through the purple distance ! 

Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as 
it comes tearing on resistless to the goal ; and 
now its way, still like the way of Death, is strewn 
with ashes thickly. Everything around is black- 
ened. There are dark pools of water, muddy 
lanes, and miserable habitations far below, 
There are jagged walls and falling houses close 
at hand, and through the battered roofs and 
broken windows, wretched rooms are seen 
where want and fever hide themselves in many 
wretched shapes, while smoke, and crowded 
gables, and distorted chimneys, and deformity of 
brick and mortar penning up deformity of mind 
and body, choke the murky distance. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 20, 

RAILROAD— The rush of the engine. 

The ground shook, the house rattled, the 
fierce impetuous rush was in the air ! He felt it 
come up, and go darting by ; and even when he 
had hurried to the window, and saw what it 
was, he stood, shrinking from it, as if it were not 
safe to look. 

A curse upon the fiery devil, thundering aloni 
so smoothly, tracked through the distant valle 
by a glare of light and lurid smoke, and gone 
He felt as if he had been plucked out of its 
path, and saved from being torn asunder. It 
made him shrink and shudder even now, when 
its faintest hum was hushed, and when the lines 
of iron road he could trace in the moonlight, 
running to a point, were as empty and as silent 
as a desert. 

A trembling of the ground, and quick vibra- 
tion in his ears ; a distant shriek ; a dull light 
advancing, quickly changed to two red eyes, 
and a fierce fire, dropping glowing coals ; an 
irresistible bearing on of a great roaring and 
dilating mass ; a high wind, and a rattle — 
another come and gone, and he holding to a 
gate, as if to save himself. 

He waited for another, and for another. He 
walked back to his former point, and back again 
to that, and still, through the wearisome vision 
of his journey, looked for these approaching 
monsters. He loitered about the station, wait- 
ing until one should stay to call there ; and 
when one did, and was detached for water, he 
stood parallel with it, watching its heavy wheels 
and brazen front, and thinking what a cruel 
power and might it had ! Ugh ! To see the 
great wheels slowly turning, and to think of 
being run down and crushed ! 

Dombey 6r» Son, Chap, 55. 

RAILROAD— On a. 

Ah ! The fresh air is pleasant after the forc- 
ing-frame, though it does blow over these inter 
minable streets, and scatter the smoke of this 
vast wilderness of chimneys. Here we are — no, 
I mean there we were, for it has darted far into 
the rear — in Bermondsey, where the tanners 
live. Flash! The distant shipping in the 



RAILROAD 



RAILROAD JOURNEY 



Thames is gone. Whirr ! The little streets of 
new brick and red tile, with here and there a 
flag-staff growing like a tall weed out of the scar- 
let beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open 
sewer and ditch for the promotion of the public 
health, have been fired off in a volley. Whizz ! 
Dust-heaps, market gardens, and waste grounds. 
Rattle ! New Cross Station. Shock ! There 
we were at Croydon. Bu-r-r-r ! The tun- 
nel. 

I wonder why it is that when I shut my 
eyes in a tunnel I begin to feel as if I were 
going at an Express pace the other way. I am 
clearly going back to London now. Compact 
Enchantress must have forgotten something, 
and reversed the engine. No ! After long 
darkness, pale fitful streaks of light appear. I 
am still flying on for Folkestone. The streaks 
grow stronger — become continuous — become 
the ghost of day — become the living day — ^be- 
came, I mean — the tunnel is miles and miles 
away, and here I fly through sunlight, all 
among the harvest and the Kentish hops. 

There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying. I 
wonder where it was, and when it was, that we 
exploded, blew into space somehow, a Parlia- 
mentary Train, with a crowd of heads and fa- 
ces looking at us out of cages, and some hats 
waving. Moneyed Interest says it was at Rei- 
gate Station. Expounds to Mystery how Rei- 
gate Station is so many miles from London, 
which Mystery again develops to Compact 
Enchantress. There might be neither a Reigate 
nor a London for me, as I fly away among the 
Kentish hops and harvest. What do / care ! 
: Bang ! We have let another Station off, and 
fly away regardless. Everything is flying. The 
hop-gardens turn gracefully towards me, pre- 
senting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight, 
then whirl away. So do the pools and rushes, 
hay-stacks, sheep, clover in full bloom, deli- 
cious to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves, 
cherry-orchards, apple-orchards, reapers, glean- 
ers, hedgers, gates, fields that taper off into lit- 
tle angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and 
then a church. Bang, bang ! A double-bar- 
relled Station ! Now a wood, now a bridge, 
now a landscape, now a cutting, now a — Bang ! 
a single-barrelled Station — there was a cricket 
match somewhere, with two white tents, and 
then four flying cows, then turnips — now the 
wires of the electric telegraph are all alive, 
and spin, and blur their edges, and go up and 
down, and make the intervals between each 
other most irregular ; contx-acting and expand- 
ing in the strangest manner. Now we slacken. 
With a screwing, and a grinding, and a smell 
of water thrown on ashes, now we stop. 

A Flight, Reptinted Pieces. 

RAILROAD— Preparations for a. 

Railroads shall soon traverse all this coun- 
try, and with a rattle and a glare the engine 
and train shall shoot like a meteor over the 
wide night-landscape, turning the moon paler ; 
but, as yet, such things are non-existent in these 
parts, though not wholly unexpected. Prep- 
arations are afoot, measurements are made, 
ground is staked out. Bridges are begun, and 
their not yet united piers desolately look at one 
another over roads and streams, like brick and 
mortar couples with an obstacle to their union ; 
fragments of embankments are thrown up, and 



left as precipices, with torrents of rusty carts 
and barrows tumbling over them ; tripods of 
tall poles appear on hill-tops, where there are 
rumors of tunnels ; everything looks chaotic, 
and abandoned in full hopelessness. Along 
the freezing roads, and through the night, the 
post-chaise makes its way without a railroad 
on its mind. — Bleak House, Chap. 55. 

RAILROAD TRAIN. 

Then, the train rattled among the house-tops, 
and among the ragged sides of houses torn down 
to make way for it, and over the swarming 
streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot 
across the river ; bursting over the quiet surface 
like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had 
exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and 
glare. A little more, and again it roared across 
the river, a great rocket ; spurning the watery 
turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, 
and going straight to its end, as Father Time 
goes to his. To whom it is no matter what liv- 
ing waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly 
lights and darknesses, produce their little growth 
of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are 
noisy or still, are troubled or at rest, for their 
course has one sure termination, though their 
sources and devices are many. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. ii. 

RAILROAD— Arrival of the train. 

The seizure of the station with a fit of trem- 
bling, gradually deepening to a complaint of the 
heart, announced the train. Fire, and steam, 
and smoke, and red light ; a hiss, a crash, a bell, 
and a shriek ; the little station a desert speck in 
the thunder-storm. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap, ii 

RAILROAD JOURNEY-In America. 

Now you emerge for a few brief minutes on an 
open country, glittering with some bright lake 
or pool, broad as many an English river, but so 
small here that it scarcely has a name ; now 
catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its 
clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its 
prim New England church and school-house ; 
when whi-r-r-r ! almost before you have seen 
them, comes the same dark screen, the stunted 
trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water — 
all so like the last that you seem to have been 
transported back again by magic. 

The train calls at stations in the woods, where 
the wild impossibility of anybody having the 
smallest reason to get out is only to be equalled 
by the apparently desperate hopelessness of 
there being anybody to get in. It rushes across 
the turnpike road, where there is no gate, no 
policeman, no signal, nothing but a rough wood- 
en arch, on which is painted, " When the bell 

RINGS, LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE." On 

it whirls headlong, dives through the woods 
again, emerges in the light, clatters over frail 
arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots 
beneath a wooden bridge which intercepts the 
light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens 
all the slumbering echoes in the main street of 
a large town, and dashes on, hap-hazard, pell- 
mell, neck or nothing, down the middle of the 
road. There — with mechanics working at their 
trades, and people leaning from their doors and 
windows, and boys flying kites and playing 
marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, 



RAILROAD CARS 



390 



BAIN 



and children crawling, and pigs burrowing, and 
unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close 
to the very rails — there — on, on, on — tears the 
mad dragon of an engine, with its train of cars ; 
scattering in all directions a shower of burning 
sparks from its wood fire ; sci-eeching, hissmg, 
yelling, panting ; until at last the thirsty monster 
stops beneath a covered way to drink, the peo- 
ple cluster round, and you have time to breathe 
again. — American Notes, Chap. 4. 

RAILROAD CARS— In America. 

The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but 
larger ; holding thirty, forty, fifty people. The 
seats, instead of stretching from end to end, 
are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two per- 
sons. There is a long row of them on each side 
of the caravan, a narrow passage up the middle, 
and a door at both ends. In the centre of the 
carriage there is usually a stove, fed with char- 
coal or anthracite coal, which is for the most part 
red-hot. It is insufferably close ; and you see 
the hot air fluttering between yourself and 
any other object you may happen to look 
at, like the ghost of smoke. 

American Notes, Chap. 4. 

RAILROAD— Its irresponsibility. 

How its wheels clank and rattle, and the 
tram-road shakes, as the train rushes on ! And 
now the engine yells, as it were lashed and tor- 
tured like a living laborer, and writhed in agony. 
A poor fancy ; for steel and iron are of infinitely 
greater account, in this commonwealth, than flesh 
and blood. If the cunning work of man be urged 
beyond its power of endurance, it has within it 
the elements of its own revenge ; whereas, the 
wretched mechanism of the Divine Hand is 
dangerous with no such property, but may be 
tampered with, and crushed, and broken, at the 
driver's pleasure. Look at that engine ! It 
shall cost a man more dollars in the way of 
penalty, and fine, and satisfaction of the outrag- 
ed law, to deface in wantonness that senseless 
mass of metal, than to take the lives of twenty 
human creatures. Thus the stars wink upon 
the bloody stripes ; and Liberty pulls down her 
cap upon her eyes, and owns Oppression in its 
vilest aspect, for her sister. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 21. 

RAILROAD DEPOT. 

When there was no market, or when I want- 
ed variety, a railway terminus with the morning 
mails coming in was remunerative company. 
But, like most of the company to be had in this 
world, it lasted only a very short time. The 
station lamps would burst out ablaze, the por- 
ters would emerge from places of concealment, 
the cabs and trucks would rattle to their places 
(the post-oflice carts were already in theirs), and 
finally the bell would strike up, and the train 
would come banging in. But there were few 
passengers and little luggage, and everything 
scuttled away with the greatest expedition. 
The locomotive post-offices, with their great 
nets — as if they had been dragging the coun- 
try for bodies — would fly open as to their doors, 
and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhaust- 
ed clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags 
of letters ; the engine would blow and heave 
and perspire, like an engine wiping its forehead, 
and saving what a run it had had ; and within 



ten minutes the lamps were out, and I was 
houseless and alone again. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 13. 

RAIN-In the city. 

Presently the rain began to fall in slanting 
lines between him and those houses, and people 
began to collect under cover of the public pass- 
age opposite, and to look out hopelessly at the 
sky as the rain dropped thicker and faster. 
Then wet umbrellas began to appear, draggled 
skirts, and mud. What the mud had been doing 
with itself, or where it came from, who could 
say ? But it seemed to collect in a moment, as 
a crowd will, and in five minutes to have 
splashed all the sons and daughters of Adam. 
The lamplighter was going his rounds now ; and 
as the fiery jets sprang up under his touch, one 
might have fancied them astonished at being 
suffered to introduce any show of brightness in- 
to such a dismal scene. 

In the country, the rain would have developed 
a thousand fresh scents, and every drop would 
have had its bright association with some beau- 
tiful form of growth or life. In the city, it de- 
veloped only foul, stale smells, and was a sickly, 
lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addition to the 
gutters. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 3. 

RAIN. 

The rain seemed to have worn itself out by 
coming down so fast. 



It must be confessed that, at that moment, he 
had no very agreeable employment either for his 
moral or his physical perceptions. The day was 
dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, 
and sullen clouds came driving up before it, from 
which the rain descended in a thick, wet mist. 
It streamed from every twig and bramble in the 
hedge ; made little gullies in the path ; ran down 
a hundred channels in the road ; and punched in- 
numerable holes into the face of every pond and 
gutter. It fell with an oozy, slushy sound among 
the grass ; and made a muddy kennel of every 
furrow in the ploughed fields. No living creature 
was anywhere to be seen. The prospect could 
hardly have been more desolate if animated 
nature had been dissolved in water, and poured 
down upon the earth again in that form. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13. 

Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and 
an angel could not have concealed the fact that 
the eaves were shedding sooty tears outside the 
window, like some weak giant of a Sweep. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 27. 

RAIN-After a. 

The superabundant moisture, trickling from 
everything after the late rain, set him off" well. 
Nothing near him was thirsty. Certain top- 
heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his 
neat, well-ordered garden, had swilled as much 
as they could carry — perhaps a trifle more — and 
may have been the worse for liquor ; but the 
sweet-briar, roses, wall-flowers, the plants at the 
windows, and the leaves on the old tree, were 
in the beaming state of moderate company that 
had taken no more than was wholesome for 
them, and had served to develop their best 
qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them 
on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent 



RAMPAQE 



391 



ILEADINQ 



and sparkling mirth, that did good where it 
lighted, softening neglected corners which the 
steady rain could seldom reach, and hurting 
nothing. — Battle of Life, Chap. 3. 

RAMPAGrE— Mrs. Joe on a. 

Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having 
confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence 
to me the moment I raised the latch of the door, 
and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in 
the chimney corner. 

" Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, look- 
ing for you, Pip. And she's out now, making 
it a baker's dozen." 

"Is she?" 

" Yes, Pip," said Joe ; " and what's worse, 
she's got Tickler with her." 

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only 
button on my waistcoat round and round, and 
looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler 
was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by 
collision with my tickled frame. 

" She sot down," said Joe, " and she got up, 
and she made a grab at Tickler, and she Ram- 
paged out. That's what she did," said Joe, 
slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars 
with the poker, and looking at it : " she Ram- 
paged out, Pip." 

"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always 
treated him as a larger species of child, and as 
no more than my equal. 

" Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch 
clock, "she's been on the Ram-page, this last 
spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming ! 
Get behind the door, old chap, and have the 
jack-towel betwixt you." 

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throw- 
ing the door wide open, and finding an obstruc- 
tion behind it, immediately divined the cause, 
and applied Tickler to its further investigation. 
She concluded by throwing me — I often served 
her as a connubial missile — at Joe, who, glad to 
get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into 
the chimney and quietly fenced me up there 
with his great leg. 

" Where have you been, you young monkey ? " 
said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot. " Tell me direct- 
ly what you've been doing to wear me away with 
fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of 
that corner if you was fifty Pips, and he was five 
hundred Gargerys." — Great Expectations , Chap. 2. 

READINO— A boy's. 

My father had left a small collection of books 
/ in a little room up-stairs, to which I had access 
/ (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else 
'\ in our house ever troubled. From that blessed 
\ little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, 
Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of 
Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and Robin- 
son Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep 
me company. They kept alive my fancy, and 
my hope of something beyond that place and 
time — they, and the Arabian Nights, and the 
Tales of the Genii — and did me no harm ; for 
whatever harm was in some of them was not 
there for me ; / knew nothing of it. It is as- 
tonishing to me now, how I found time, in the 
midst of my porings and blunderings over heav- 
ier themes, to read those books as I did. It is 
curious to me how I could ever have consoled 
myself under my small troubles (which were 
great troubles to me), by impersonating my fa- 



vorite characters in them — as I did — and by 
putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the 
bad ones — which I did too. I have been Tom 
Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless crea- 
ture) for a week together. I have sustained my 
own idea of Roderick Random for a month at 
a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy rel- 
ish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels — 
I forget what, now — that were on those shelves ; 
and for days and days I can remember to have 
gone about my region of our house, armed with 
the centrepiece out of an old set of boot-trees 
— the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, 
of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being 
beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at 
a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, 
from having his ears boxed with the Latin Gram- 
mar. I did ; but the Captain was a Captain 
and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all 
the languages in the world, dead or alive. 

This was my only and my constant comfort. 
When I think of it, the picture always rises in 
my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play 
in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, 
reading as if for life. Every barn in the neigh- 
borhood, every stone in the church, and every 
foot of the churchyard, had some association of 
its own, in my mind, connected with these 
books, and stood for some locality made famous 
in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing 
up the church-steeple ; I have watched Strap, 
with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest 
himself upon the wicket-gate ; and I know that 
Commodore Trunnion held that Club with Mr. 
Pickle, in the parlor of our little village ale- 
house. — David Copperfield, Chap. 4. 

READING— Wopsle's manner of. 

Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large 
shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which 
he was uncommonly proud of; indeed, it was 
understood among his acquaintance that if you 
could only give him his head, he would read the 
clergyman into fits ; he himself confessed that 
if the church was " thrown open," meaning to 
competition, he would not despair of making 
his mark in it. The church not being " thrown 
open," he was, as I have said, our clerk. But 
he punished the amens tremendously ; and when 
he gave out the psalm — always giving the whole 
verse — he looked all round the congregation 
first, as much as to say, " You have heard our 
friend overhead ; oblige me with your opinion 
of this style !" — Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

RE ADING— Words delicious to taste. 

I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to 
such phrases as " The people's representatives 
in Parliament assembled," " Your petitioners 
therefore humbly approach your honorable 
house," " His gracious Majesty's unfortunate 
subjects," as if the words were something real 
in his mouth, and delicious to taste : Mr. Mi- 
cawber, meanwhile, listening with a little of an 
author's vanity, and contemplating (not severely) 
the spikes on the opposite wall. 

David Copperfield, Chap. II. 

READINGK-Mr. Wegrg's difficulty in. 

Mr. Wegg's laboring bark became beset by 
polysyllables, and embarrassed among a perfect 
archipelago of hard words. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap 14. 



READING 



RECREATION 



READING— Dr. Blimber's style of. 

The Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with 
his hand in his breast as usual, held a book 
from him at arm's length, and read. There 
was something very awful in this manner of 
reading. It was such a determined, unimpas- 
sioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going to 
work. It left the Doctor's countenance ex- 
posed to view ; and when the Doctor smiled aus- 
piciously at his author, or knit his brows, or 
shook his head and made wry faces at him, 
as much as to say, " Don't tell me, Sir ; I 
know better," it was terrific. 

Dombey &^ Son, Chap. il. 

READING— Captain Cuttle's style of. 

Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, 
shouldered his book — for he made it a point of 
duty to read none but very large books on a 
Sunday, as having a more staid appearance ; and 
had bargained, years ago, for a prodigious vol- 
ume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterly 
confounded him at any time, insomuch that he 
had not yet ascertained of what subject it 
treated — and withdrew. 

Dombey &^ Son, Chap, 50. 

READING— On g-in and water. 

" Now, what'll you read on ? " 

" Thank you, sir," returned Wegg, as if there 
were nothing new in his reading at all. " I gen- 
erally do it on gin and water." 

"Keeps the organ moist, does it, Wegg?" 
asked Mr. Boffin, with innocent eagerness. 

" N-no, sir," replied Wegg, coolly, *' I should 
hardly describe it so, sir. I should say, mellers 
it. Mellers it, is the word I should employ, 
Mr. Boffin." — Our Mutual Friend, Chap. 5. 

RECEPTION— An American. 

Up they came with a rush. Up they came 
until the room was full, and, through the open 
door, a dismal perspective of more to come, was 
shown upon the stairs. One after another, one 
after another, dozen after dozen, score after 
score, more, more, more, up they came ; all 
shaking hands with Martin. Such varieties of 
hands, the thick, the thin, the short, the long, 
the fat, the lean, the coarse, the fine ; such dif- 
ferences of temperature, the hot, the cold, the 
dry, the moist, the flabby ; such diversities of 
grasp, the tight, the loose, the short-lived, and 
the lingering ! Still up, up, up, more, more, 
more : and ever and anon the Captain's voice 
was heard above the crowd ; " There's more 
below ! there's more below. Now, gentlemen, 
you that have been introduced to Mr. Chuzzle- 
wit, will you clear, gentlemen ? Will you clear ? 
Will you be so good as clear, gentlemen, and 
make a little room for more ? " 

Regardless of the Captain's cries, they didn't 
clear at all, but stood there, bolt upright, and 
staring. Two gentlemen connected with the 
Watertoast Gazette had come express to get 
the matter for an article on Martin. They had 
agreed to divide the labor. One of them took 
him below the waistcoat ; one above. Each 
stood directly in front of his subject, with his 
head a little on one side, intent on his depart- 
ment. If Martin put one boot before the other, 
the lower gentleman was down upon him ; he 
rubbed a pimple on his nose, and the upper gen- 
tleman booked it. He opened his mouth to 



speak, and the same gentleman was on one knee 
before him, looking in at his teeth with the nice 
scrutiny of a dentist. Amateurs in the physiog- 
nomical and phrenological sciences roved about 
him with watchful eyes and itching fingers, and 
sometimes one, more daring than the rest, made 
a mad grasp at the back of his head, and van- 
ished in the crowd. They had him in all points 
of view : in front, in profile, three-quarter face, 
and behind. Those who were not professional 
or scientific, audibly exchanged opinions on his 
looks. New lights shone in upon him, in respect 
of his nose. Contradictory rumors were abroad 
on the subject of his hair. And still the Cap- 
tain's voice was heard — so stifled by the con- 
course, that he seemed to speak from underneath 
a feather-bed, exclaiming, " Gentlemen, you that 
have been introduced to Mr. Chuzzlewit, will 
you clear ? " 

Even when they began to clear, it was no bet- 
ter : for then a stream of gentlemen, every one 
with a lady on each arm (exactly like the chorus 
to the National Anthem, when Royalty goes in 
state to the play), came gliding in ; every new 
group fresher than the last, and bent on staying 
to the latest moment. If they spoke to him, 
which was not often, they invariably asked the 
same questions, in the same tone : with no more 
remorse, or delicacy, or consideration, than if 
he had been a figure of stone, purchased, and 
paid for, and set up there, for their 'delight. 
Even when, in the slow course of time, these 
died off, it was as bad as ever, if not worse ; for 
then the boys grew bold, and came in as a class 
of themselves, and did everything that the 
grown-up people had done. Uncouth stragglers 
too, appeared ; men of a ghostly kind, who, be- 
ing in, didn't know how to get out again : inso- 
much that one silent gentleman with glazed and 
fishy eyes, and only one button on his waistcoat 
(which was a very large metal one, and shone 
prodigiously), got behind the door, and stood 
there, like a clock, long after everybody else 
was gone. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 11. 

RECREATION— Gardening in London. 

There is another and a very different class of 
men, whose recreation is their garden. An indi- 
vidual of this class resides some short distance 
from town — say in the Hampstead Road, or the 
Kilburn Road, or any other road where the 
houses are small and neat, and have little slips 
of back garden. He and his wife — who is as 
clean and compact a little body as himself— have 
occupied the same house ever since he retired 
from business twenty years ago. They have no 
family. They once had a son, who died at about 
five years old. The child's portrait hangs over 
the mantelpiece in the best sitting-room, and a 
little cart he used to draw about is carefully 
preserved as a relic. 

In fine weather the old gentleman is almost 
constantly in the garden ; and when it is too wet 
to go into it, he will look out of the window at 
it by the hour together. He has always some- 
thing to do there, and you will see him digging, 
and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with 
manifest delight. In spring-time, there is no 
end to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little 
bits of wood over them, with labels, which look 
like epitaphs to their m.emory ; and in the even- 
ing, when the sun has gone down, the persever- 
ance with which he lugs a great watering-pot 



RECREATIONS 



RED TAPE 



about is perfectly astonishing. The only other 
recreation he has, is the newspaper, which he 
peruses every day, from beginning to end, gen- 
erally reading the most interesting pieces of in- 
telligence to his wife, during breakfast. The old 
lady is very fond of flowers, as the hyacinth- 
glasses in the parlor window, and geranium-pots 
in the little front court, testify. She takes great 
pride in the garden, too ; and when one of the 
four fruit-trees produces rather a larger goose- 
berry than usual, it is carefully preserved under 
a wine-glass on the sideboard, for the edification 
of visitors, who are duly informed that Mr. So- 
and-so planted the tree which produced it, with 
his own hands. On a summer's evening, when 
the large watering-pot has been filled and emp- 
tied some fourteen times, and the old couple 
have quite exhausted themselves by trotting 
about, you will see them sitting happily together 
in the little summer-house, enjoying the calm 
and peace of the twilight, and watching the shad- 
ows as they fall upon the garden and, gradually 
growing thicker and more sombre, obscure the 
tints of their gayest flowers — no bad emblem 
of the years that have silently rolled over their 
heads, deadening in their course the brightest 
hues of early hopes and feelings which have 
long since faded away. These are their only 
recreations, and they require no more. They 
have within themselves the materials of com- 
fort and content ; and the only anxiety of each, 
is to die before the other. 

This is no ideal sketch. There used to be 
many old people of this description ; their num- 
bers may have diminished, and may decrease 
still more. Whether the course female educa- 
tion has taken of late days — whether the pur- 
suit of giddy frivolities, and empty nothings, has 
tended to unfit women for that quiet domestic 
life, in which they show far more beautifully 
than in the most crowded assembly, is a ques- 
tion we should feel little gratification in dis- 
cussing ; we hope not. 

Sketches {Scenes)y Chap. 9. 

atECREATIONS-London. 

The wish of persons in the humbler class- 
es of life to ape the manners and customs 
of those whom fortune has placed above them, 
is often the subject of remark, and not unfre- 
quently of complaint. The inclination may, 
and no doubt does, exist to a great extent, 
among the small gentility — the would-be aristo- 
crats — of the middle classes. Tradesmen and 
clerks, with fashionable novel-reading families, 
and circulating-library-subscribing daughters, 
get up small assemblies in humble imitation of 
Almack's, and promenade the dingy " large 
room " of some second-rate hotel with as much 
complacency as the enviable few who are priv- 
ileged to exhibit their magnificence in that 
exclusive haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspir- 
ing young ladies, who read flaming accounts 
of some " fancy fair in high life," suddenly 
grow desperately charitable ; visions of admi- 
ration and matrimony float before their eyes ; 
some wonderfully meritorious institution, which, 
by the strangest accident in the world, has 
never been heard of before, is discovered to be 
in a languishing condition ; Thomson's great 
room, or Johnson's nursery-ground is forthwith 
engaged, and the aforesaid young ladies, from 
mere charity exbib't themselves for three days, 



from twelve to four, for the small charge of 
one shilling per head ! With the exception of 
these classes of society, however, and a few 
weak and insignificant persons, we do not think 
the attempt at imitation to which we have 
alluded, prevails in any great degree. 

Sketches {Scenes), Chap. g. 

RED TAPE. 

She was a Fairy, this Tape, and was a bright 
red all over. She was disgustingly prim and 
formal, and could never bend herself a hair's 
breadth this way or that way, out of her natu- 
rally crooked shape. But she was very po- 
tent in her wicked art. She could stop the 
fastest thing in the world, change the strongest 
thing into the weakest, and the most useful into 
the most useless. To do this she had only to 
put her cold hand upon it, and repeat her own 
name. Tape. Then it withered away. 

At the Court of Prince Bull — at least I don't 
mean literally at his court, because he was a 
very genteel Prince, and readily yielded to his 
god-mother when she always resei-ved that for 
his hereditary Lords and Ladies — in the do- 
minions of Prince Bull, among the great mass 
of the community who were called in the lan- 
guage of that polite countr}' the Mobs and 
the Snobs, were a number of very ingenious 
men, who were always busy with some inven- 
tion or other, for promoting the prosperity of 
the Prince's subjects, and augmenting the 
Prince's power. But, whenever they submitted 
their models for the Prince's approval, his god- 
mother stepped forward, laid her hand upon 
them, and said " Tape." Hence it came to 
pass, that when any particularly good discovery 
was made, the discoverer usually carried it off 
to some other Prince, in foreign parts, who had 
no old godmother who said Tape. This was 
not on the whole an advantageous state of 
things for Prince Bull, to the best of my un- 
derstanding. 

***** 

This, again, was very bad conduct on the 
part of the vicious old nuisance, and she ought 
to have been strangled for it if she had done 
nothing worse ; but, she did something worse 
still, as you shall learn. For she got astride of 
an official broomstick, and muttered as a spell 
these two sentences, " On Her Majesty's ser- 
vice," and " I have the honor to be, sir, your 
most obedient servant," and presently alighted 
in the cold and inclement country where the 
army of Prince Bull were encamped to fight the 
army of Prince Bear. On the sea-shore of that 
country, she found piled together a number of 
houses for the army to live in, and a quantity of 
provisions for the army to live upon, and a 
quantity of clothes for the army to wear ; while, 
sitting in the mud gazing at them, were a group 
of officers as red to look at as the wicked old 
woman herself. So she said to one of them, 
" Who are you, my darling, and how do you 
do ? " "I am the Quarter-master General's 
Department, god-mother, and I am pretty well." 
Then she said to another, " Who are j^w, my 
darling, and how do you do ? " "I am the Com- 
missariat Department, god-mother, and / am 
pretty well." Then she said to another, *' Who 
are you^ my darling, and how do yoj4 do ? " 
" I am the head of the Medical Department, 
god-mother, and I am pretty well." Then she 



BED-FACED MEN 



394 



REPORMS 



said to some gentlemen scented with lavender, 
who kept themselves at a great distance from 
the rest, " And who are ^fou, my pretty pets, 
and how do you do ? " and they answered, 
" We-aw-are-the-aw-Staff-aw-Department, god- 
mother, and we are very well indeed." " I am 
delighted to see you all, my beauties," says this 
wicked old fairy, " — Tape ! " Upon that, the 
houses, clothes, and provisions, all mouldered 
away ; and the soldiers who were sound, fell 
sick ; and the soldiers who were sick, died 
miserably, and the noble army of Prince Bull 
perished. — Pruice Bull. Reprinted Pieces, 

RED-FACED MEN. 

A numerous race are these red-faced men ; 
there is not a parlor, or club-room, or benefit 
society, or humble party of any kind, without 
its red-faced man. Weak-pated dolts they are, 
and a great deal of mischief they do to their 
cause, however good. So, just to hold a pattern 
one up to know the others by, we took his like- 
ness at once, and put him in here. And that is 
the reason why we have written this paper. 
Sketches {Characters)^ Chap. 5. 

REFERENCES. 

"As to being a reference," said Pancks, 
"you know, in a general way, what being a 
reference means. It's all your eye, that is ! 
Look at your tenants down the Yard here. 
They'd all be references for one another, if 
you'd let 'em. What would be the good of let- 
ting 'em? It's no satisfaction to be done by 
two men instead of one. One's enough. A per- 
son who can't pay, gets another person who 
can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like 
a person with two wooden legs getting another 
person with two wooden legs to guarantee 
that he has got two natural legs. It don't make 
either of them able to do a walking-match. And 
four wooden legs are more troublesome to you 
than two, when you don't want any." Mr. 
Pancks concluded by blowing off that steam of 
his. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 23. 

REFINEMENT— An evidence of. 

" May I take this opportunity of remarking 
that it is scarcely delicate to look at vagrants 
with the attention which I have seen bestowed 
upon them by a very dear young friend of mine ? 
They should not be looked at. Nothing disa- 
greeable should ever be looked at. Apart from 
such a habit standing in the way of that grace- 
ful equanimity of surface which is so expressive 
of good breeding, it hardly seems compatible 
with refinement of mind. A truly refined mind 
will seem to be ignorant of the existence of any- 
thing that is not perfectly proper, placid, and 
pleasant." Having delivered this exalted senti- 
ment, Mrs. General made a sweeping obeisance, 
and retired with an expression of mouth indica- 
tive of Prunes and Prism. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 5. 

REFORMERS— A party of female. 

Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party — 
Mr. Pardiggle, aji obstinate-looking man, with 
a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who was 
always talking in a loud bass voice about his 
mite, or Mrs. Pardiggle's mite, or their five boys' 
mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair brushed back 
as usual, and his knobs of temples shining' very 



much, was also there ; not in the character of a 
disappointed lover, but as the Accepted of a 
young — at least, an unmarried — lady, a Miss 
Wisk, who was also there. Miss Wisk's mission, 
my guardian said, was to show the world that 
woman's mission was man's mission ; and that 
the onl) genuine mission of both man and 
woman, was to be always moving declaratory 
resolutions about things in general at public 
meetings. The guests were few ; but were, as 
one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby's, all devoted 
to public objects only. Besides those I have 
mentioned, there was an extremely dirty lady, 
with her bonnet all awry, and the ticketed price 
of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected 
home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilder- 
ness, but whose church was like a fancy fair. A 
very contentious gentleman, who said it was his 
mission to be everybody's brother, but who ap- 
peared to be on terms of coolness with the whole 
of his large family, completed the party. 

A party having less in common with such an 
occasion, could hardly have been got together by 
any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the do- 
mestic mission, was the very last thing to be en- 
dured among them ; indeed. Miss Wisk informed 
us, with great indignation, before we sat down to 
breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying 
chiefly in the narrow sphere of Home was an out- 
rageous slander on the part of her Tyrant, Man. 
One other singularity was, that nobody with a 
mission — except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I 
think I have formerly said, was to be in ecstasies 
with everybody's mission — cared at all for any- 
body's mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear 
that the only one infallible course was her course 
of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevo- 
lence to them like a strait-waistcoat, as Miss 
Wisk was that the only practical thing for the 
world was the emancipation of Woman from the 
thraldom of her Tyrant, Man. Mrs. Jellyby, all 
the while, sat smiling at the limited vision that 
could see anything but Borrioboola-Gha. 

Bleak House, Chap. 30. 

REFORMS— Public— Influence of literature 
on. 

I have found it curious and interesting, look- 
ing over the sheets of this reprint, to mark what 
important social improvements have taken place 
about us, almost imperceptibly, since they were 
originally written. The license of Counsel, and 
the degree to which Juries are ingeniously be- 
wildered, are yet susceptible of moderation ; 
while an improvement in the mode of conduct- 
ing Parliamentary Elections (and even Parlia- 
ments too, perhaps) is still within the bounds 
of possibility. But legal reforms have pared 
the claws of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg ; a spirit 
of self-respect, mutual forbearance, education, 
and co-operation for such good ends, has dif- 
fused itself among their clerks ; places far apart 
are brought together, to the present convenience 
and advantage of the Public, and to the certain 
destruction, in time, of a host of petty jealous- 
ies, blindnesses, and prejudices, by which the 
Public alone have always been the sufferers ; the 
laws relating to imprisonment for debt are al- 
tered ; and the Fleet Prison is pulled down ! 

Who knows, but by the time the series reaches 
its conclusion, it may be discovered that there 
are even magistrates in town and country, who 
should be taught to shake hands every day with 



RELATIONS 



896 



BEUGION 



Common-sense and Justice ; that even Poor 
Laws may have mercy on the weak, the aged, 
and unfortunate ; that Schools, on the broad 
principles of Christianity, are the best adorn- 
ment for the length and breadth of this civil- 
ized land ; that Prison-doors should be barred 
on the outside, no less heavily and carefully 
than they are barred within ; that the universal 
diffusion of common means of decency and 
health is as much the right of the poorest of the 
poor, as it is indispensable to the safety of the 
rich, and of the State ; that a few petty boards 
and bodies — less than drops in the great ocean 
of humanity which roars around them — are not 
forever to let loose Fever and Consumption on 
God's creatures at their will, or always to keep 
their jobbing little fiddles going, for a Dance 
of Death. — Pickwick. Preface. 

REIiATIONS-Poor. 

It is a melancholy truth that even great men 
have their poor relations. Indeed, great men 
have often more than their fair share of poor 
relations ; inasmuch as very red blood of the 
superior quality, like inferior blood unlawfully 
shed, will cry aloud, and will be heard. Sir 
Leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree, are 
so many murders, in respect that they will 
" out." Among whom there are cousins who 
are so poor, that one might almost dare to think 
it would have been the happier for them never 
to have been plated links upon the Dedlock 
chain of gold, but to have been made of com- 
mon iron at first, and done base service. 

Service, however (with a few limited reserva- 
tions ; genteel, but not profitable), they may not 
do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they visit 
their richer cousins, and get into debt when they 
can, and live but shabbily when they can't, and 
find — the women no husbands, and the men no 
wives — and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit 
at feasts that are never of their own making, 
and so go through high life. The rich family 
sum has been divided by so many figures, and 
they are the something over that nobody knows 
what to do with. — Bleak House, Chap. 28. 

RELIGION AND LECTURES -In New 

Eng-land. 

The peculiar province of the Pulpit in New 
England (always excepting the Unitarian min- 
istry) would appear to be the denouncement of 
all innocent and rational amusements. The 
church, the chapel, and the lecture-room are the 
only means of excitement excepted ; and to the 
church, the chapel, and the lecture-room the 
ladies resort in crowds. 

Wherever religion is resorted to. as a strong 
drink, and as an escape from the dull, monoto- 
nous round of home, those of its ministers who 
pepper the highest will be the surest to please. 
They who strew the Eternal Path with the great- 
est amount of brimstone, and who most ruth- 
lessly tread down the flowers and leaves that 
grow by the wayside, will be voted the most 
righteous ; and they who enlarge with the great- 
est pertinacity on the difficulty of getting into 
heaven will be considered by all true believers 
certain of going there, though it would be hard 
to say by what process of reasoning this conclu- 
sion is arrived at. It is so at home, and it is so 
abroad. "With regard to the other means of ex- 
citement, thf Lecture, it has at least the merit 



of being always new. One lecture treads so 
quickly on the heels of another, that none are 
remembered ; and the course of this month may 
be safely repeated next, with its charm of novel- 
ty unbroken, and its interest unabated. 

American Notes, Chap. 3. 

RELIGION— A vent for bad-hnmor. 

" What such people miscall their religion, is 
a vent for their bad-humors and arrogance. And 
do you know I must say, sir," he continued, 
mildly laying his head on one side, " that I dorUt 
find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in 
the New Testament?" 

" I never found it either ! " said I. 

" In the meantime, sir," said Mr. Chillip, 
" they are much disliked ; and as they are very 
free in consigning everybody who dislikes them 
to perdition, we really have a good deal of per- 
dition going on in our neighborhood ! How- 
ever, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a 
continual punishment ; for they are turned in- 
ward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their 
own hearts are very bad feeding." 

David Copperjield, Chap. 59. 

RELIGION-Austerity in. 

I so abhor and from my soul detest that bad 
spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may be 
entertained, which would strip life of its health- 
ful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, 
pluck from maturity and age their pleasant or- 
naments, and make existence but a narrow path 
towards the grave ; that odious spirit which, if 
it could have had full scope and sway upon the 
earth, must have blasted and made barren the 
imaginations of the greatest men, and left them, 
in their power of raising up enduring images 
before their fellow-creatures yet unborn, no bet- 
ter than the beasts ; that in these very broad- 
brimmed hats and very sombre coats — in stifT- 
necked solemn-visaged piety, in short, no matter 
what its garb, whether it have cropped hair as 
in a Shaker village, or long nails as in a Hindoo 
temple — I recognize the worst among the ene- 
mies of Heaven and Earth, who turn the water 
at the marriage feasts of this poor world, not 
into wine, but gall. And if there must be peo- 
ple vowed to crush the harmless fancies and the 
love of innocent delights and gayeties, which 
are a part of human nature, — as much a part of 
it as any other love or hope that is our common 
portion, — let them, for me, stand openly revealed 
among the ribald and licentious : the very idiots 
know that //;<?/ are not on the Immortal road, 
and will despise them, and avoid them readily. 
American Notes, Chap. 15. 

RELIGION, INDIGESTION, AND LOVE. 

She was an indigestive single woman, who 
called her rigidity religion, and her liver love. 
Great Expectations, Chap. 25. 

RELIGION— Austere, of the Murdstones. 

The gloomy taint that was in tlie jNIurdstone 
blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which 
was austere and wrathful. I have thought since 
that its assuming that character was a necessary 
consequence of Mr. Murdstone's firmness, which 
wouldn't allow him to let anybody off from the 
utmost weight of the severest penalties he could 
find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well 
remember the tremendous visages with which 



RELIGION 



RESPECTABILITY 



we used to go to church, and the changed air of 
the place. Again the dreaded Sunday comes 
round, and I file into the old pew first, like a 
guarded captive brought to a condemned service. 
Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet gown, 
that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, 
follows close upon me ; then my mother ; then 
her husband. There is no Peggotty now, as in 
the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone 
mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all 
the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I 
see her dark eyes roll round the church when 
she says " miserable sinners," as if she were call- 
ing all the congregation names. Again, I catch 
rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timid- 
ly between the two, with one of them muttering 
at each ear, like low thunder. Again, I wonder 
with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our 
good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and 
Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in 
Heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I 
move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss 
Murdstone pokes me with her prayer-book, and 
makes my side ache. 

David Copperjieldf Chap. 4. 

RELIGION— True and false. 

Lest there should be any well-intentioned 
persons who do not perceive the difference (as 
some such could not, when Old Mortality 
was newly published) between religion and the 
cant of religion, piety and pretence of piety, 
a humble reverence for the great truths of Scrip- 
ture and an audacious and offensive obtru- 
sion of its letter and not its spirit in the com- 
monest dissensions and meanest affairs of life, 
to the extraordinary confusion of ignorant minds, 
let them understand that it is always the latter, 
and never the former, which is satirized here. 
Further, that the latter is here satirized as being, 
according to all experience, inconsistent with 
the former, impossible of union with it, and one 
of the most evil and mischievous falsehoods ex- 
istent in society — whether it establish its head- 
quarters, for the time being, in Exeter Hall, or 
Ebenezer Chapel, or both. It may appear un- 
necessary to offer a word of observation on so 
plain a head. But it is never out of season to 
protest against that coarse familiarity with sacred 
things which is busy on the lip, and idle in the 
heart ; or against the confounding of Christian- 
ity with any class of persons who, in the words 
of Swift, have just enough religion to make 
them hate, and not enough to make them love, 
one another. — Preface to Pickimck, 

REMORSE— Of Mr. Dombey. 

" Let him remember it in that room, years to 
come. The rain that falls upon the roof, the 
wind that mourns outside the door, may have 
foreknowledge in their melancholy sound. Let 
him remember it in that room, years to come ! " 

He did remember it. In the miserable night 
he thought of it ; in the dreary day, the wretch- 
ed dawn, the ghostly, memory-haunted twilight. 
He did remember it. In agony, in sorrow, in 
remorse, in despair ! " Papa ! papa ! Speak 
to me, dear papa ! " He heard the words again 
and saw the face. He saw it fall upon the 
trembling hands, and heard the one prolonged 
low cry go upward. 

Oh ! He did remember it ! The rain that 
fell upon the roof, the wind that mourned 



outside the door that night, had had foreknow- 
ledge in their melancholy sound. He knew, 
now, what he had done. He knew, now, that 
he had called down that upon his head, which 
bowed it lower than the heaviest stroke of for- 
tune. He knew, now, what it was to be reject- 
ed and deserted ; now, when every loving bios- 
som he had withered in his innocent daughter's 
heart was snowing down in ashes on him. 

Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 59. 

REPARATION — Religious, of Mrs. Glen- 
nam. 

" Reparation ! " said she. " Yes, truly ! It 
is easy for him to talk of reparation, fresh from 
journeying and junketing in foreign lands, and 
living a life of vanity and pleasure. But let 
him look at me, in prison and in bonds here. 
I endure without murmuring, because it is ap- 
pointed that I shall so make reparation for my 
sins. Reparation ! Is there none in this 
room ? Has there been none here this fifteen 
years ? " 

Thus was she always balancing her bargain 
with the Majesty of heaven, posting up the 
entries to her credit, strictly keeping her set-off, 
and claiming her due. She was only remarka- 
ble in this, for the force and emphasis with 
which she did it. Thousands upon thousands 
do it, according to their varying manner, every 
day. — Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 5. 

REPINING— Useless tears. 

" Repining is of no use, ma'am," said Ralph. 
" Of all fruitless errands, sending a tear to look 
after a day that is gone, is the most fruitless." 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10. 

RESPECT— SELF— The modesty of. 

It has always been in my obsei"vation of 
human nature, that a man who has any good 
reason to believe in himself never flourishes 
himself before the faces of other people in order 
that they may believe in him. For this reason, 
I retained my modesty in very self-respect ; and 
the more praise I got, the more I tried to deserve. 
David Copperfield^ Chap. 48. 

RESPECTABILITY-A pattern of, (Litti- 
mer.) 
There was a servant in that house, a man 
who, I understood, was usually with Steerforth, 
and had come into his service at the university, 
who was in appearance a pattern of respectabil- 
ity. I believe there never existed in his station 
a more respectable-looking man. He was taci- 
turn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, defer- 
ential, observant, always at hand when wanted, 
and never near when not wanted ; but his great 
claim to consideration was his respectability. 
He had not a pliant face ; he had rather a stiff 
neck, rather a tight smooth head, with short 
hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of 
speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering 
the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use 
it oftener than any other man ; but every pe- 
culiarity that he had he made respectable. If 
his nose had been upside-down, he would have 
made that respectable. He surrounded himself 
with an atmosphere of respectability, and 
walked secure in it. It would have been next 
to impossible to suspect him of anything 
wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable. 



RESERVE AND AFFECTATION 



RESTAURANT 



Nobody could have thought of putting him in 
a livery, he was so highly respectable. To 
have innposed any derogatory work upon him, 
would have been to inflict a wanton insult on 
the feelings of a most respectable man. And 
of this, I noticed the women-servants in the 
household were so intuitively conscious, that 
they always did such work themselves, and gen- 
erally while he read the paper by the pantry 
fire. 

Such a self-contained man I never saw. But 
in that quality, as in every other he possessed, 
he only seemed to be the more respectable. 
Even the fact that no one knew his Christian 
name, seemed to form a part of his respecta- 
bility. Nothing could be objected against his 
surname, Littimer, by which he was known. 
Peter might have been hanged, or Tom trans- 
ported ; but Littimer was perfectly respectable. 
David Copperfield^ Chap. 2i. 

RESERVE AND AFFECTATION. 

"Tottle," said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, "you 
know my way — oif-hand, open, say what I mean, 
mean what I say, hate reserve, and can't bear 
affectation. One is a bad domino, which only 
hides what good people have about 'em, without 
making the bad look better ; and the other is 
much about the same thing as pinking a white 
cotton stocking to make it look like a silk one. 
Now listen to what I'm going to say." 

Tales^ Chap. lo. 

RESENTMENT— Mr. Buflle and the Major. 

When the Major glared at Mr. Buffle with 
those meaning words my dear I literally gasped 
for a teaspoonful of salvolatile in a wineglass of 
water, and I says, " Pray let it go no further 
gentlemen I beg and beseech of you ! " But 
the Major could be got to do nothing else but 
snort long after Mr. Buffle was gone, and the 
effect it had upon my whole mass of blood when 
on the next day of Mr. Buffie's rounds the 
Major spruced himself up and went humming 
a tune up and down the street with one eye 
almost obliterated by his hat there are not ex- 
pressions in Johnson's Dictionary to state. But 
I safely put the street door on the jar and got 
behind the Major's blinds with my shawl on and 
my mind made up the moment I saw danger to 
rush out screeching till my voice failed me and 
catch the Major round the neck till my strength 
went and have all parties bound. I had not 
been behind the blinds a quarter of an hour 
when I saw Mr. Buffle approaching with his Col- 
lecting-books in his hand. The Major likewise 
saw him approaching and hummed louder and 
himself approached. They met before the Airy 
railings. The Major takes off his hat at arm's 
length and says " Mr. Buffle I believe?" Mr. 
Buffle takes off his hat at arm's length and 
says "That is my name sir." Says the Major 
*' Have you any commands for me, Mr. Buffle? " 
Says Mr. Buffle " Not any sir." Then my dear 
both of 'em bowed very low and haughty and 
parted, and whenever Mr. Buffle made his rounds 
in future him and the Major always met and 
bowed before the Airy railings, putting me much 
in mind of Hamlet and the other gentleman in 
mourning before killing one another, though I 
could have wished the other gentleman had 
done it fairer and even if less polite no poison. 
Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy, Chap. i. 



REST— Tranquillity of. 

It was dimly pleasant to him now, to lie 
there, with the window open, looking out at the 
summer sky and the trees ; and, in the evening, 
at the sunset. To watch the shadows of the 
clouds and leaves, and seem to feel a sympathy 
with shadows. It was natural that he should. 
To him, life and the world were nothing else. 
Dombey &^ Sony Chap. 6i. 

RESTATJRANT— The question of refresh- 
ment. 

To resume the consideration of the curious 
question of refreshment. I am a Briton, and, as 
such, I am aware that I never will be a slave, — 
and yet I have latent suspicion that there must 
be some slavery of wrong custom in this matter. 

I travel by railroad. I start from home at 
seven or eight in the morning, after breakfast- 
ing hurriedly. What with skimming over the 
open landscape, what with mining in the damp 
bowels of the earth, what with banging, boom- 
ing, and shrieking the scores of miles away, I 
am hungry when I arrive at the " Refreshment" 
station where I am expected. Please to observe, 
— expected. I have said I am hungry ; perhaps 
I might say, with greater point and force, that I 
am to some extent exhausted, and that I need 
— in the expressive French sense of the word — 
to be restored. What is provided for my res- 
toration ? The apartment that is to restore me 
is a wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all the 
draughts in that country-side, and to communi- 
cate a special intensity and velocity to them as 
they rotate in two hurricanes, — one about my 
wretched head, one about my wretched legs. 
The training of the young ladies behind the 
counter who are to restore me has been from 
their infancy directed to the assumption of a de- 
fiant dramatic show that I am not expected. It 
is in vain for me to represent to them, by my 
humble and conciliatory manners, that I wish to 
be liberal. It is in vain for me to represent to 
myself, for the encouragement of my sinking 
soul, that the young ladies have a pecuniary 
interest in my arrival. Neither my reason nor 
my feelings can make head against the cold, 
glazed glare of eye with which I am assured 
that I am not expected, and not wanted. The 
solitary man among the bottles would sometimes 
take pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless 
against the rights and mights of Woman. (Of 
the page I make no account, for he is a boy, 
and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.) 
Chilling fast in the deadly tornadoes to which 
my upper and lower extremities are exposed, 
and subdued by the moral disadvantage at 
which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on 
the refreshments that are to restore me. I find 
that I must either scald my throat by insanely 
ladling into it, against time and for no wager, 
brown hot water stiffened with flour ; or I must 
make myself flaky and sick with Banbury cake ; 
or I must stuff" into my delicate organization a 
currant pincushion which I know will swell into 
immeasurable dimensions when it has got there ; 
or I must extort from an iron-bouml quarry, 
with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable 
soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease 
called pork-pie. While thus forlornly occupied, 
I find that the depressing banquet on the table 
is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory 
character, so like the banquet at the meanest 



BESTATJRANT 



898 



BETRIBXITION 



and shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin 
to think I must have " brought down " to supper 
the old lady unknown, blue with cold, who is 
setting her teeth on edge with a cool orange at 
my elbow ; that the pastry-cook who has com- 
pounded for the company on the lowest terms 
per head is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his 
contract with the stale stock from his window ; 
that, for some unexplained reason, the family 
giving the party have become my mortal foes, 
and have given it on purpose to affront me. 
Or I fancy that I am " breaking up " again at 
the evening conversazione at school, charged 
two and sixpence in the half-year's bill ; or 
breaking down again at that celebrated evening 
party given at Mrs. Bogles's boarding-house 
when I was a boarder there, on which occasion 
Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution by a branch 
of the legal profession who got in as the harp, 
and was removed (with the keys and subscribed 
capital) to a place of durance, half an hour prior 
to the commencement of the festivities. 

***** 

He beheld nothing to eat but butter in vari- 
ous forms, slightly charged with jam, and lan- 
guidly frizzling over tepid water. Two ancient 
turtle-shells, on which was inscribed the legend, 
"Soups," decorated a glass partition within, 
enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly 
mockery of a marriage-breakfast, spread on a 
rickety table, warned the terrified traveller. An 
oblong box of stale and broken pastry at re- 
duced prices, mounted on a stool, ornamented 
the doorway ; and two high chairs, that looked 
as if they were performing on stilts, embellished 
the counter. Over the whole a young lady pre- 
sided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she surveyed 
the street announced a deep-seated grievance 
against society, and an implacable determina- 
tion to be avenged. From a beetle-haunted 
kitchen below this institution, fumes arose, sug- 
gestive of a class of soup which Mr. Grazing- 
lands knew, from painful experience, enfeebles 
the mind, distends the stomach, forces itself into 
the complexion, and tries to ooze out at the 
eyes. As he decided against entering, and 
turned away, Mrs. Grazingiands, becoming per- 
ceptibly weaker, repeated, " I am rather faiat, 
Alexander, but don't mind me." Urged to 
new efforts by these words of resignation, Mr. 
Grazingiands looked in at a cold and floury 
baker's shop, where utilitarian buns, unrelieved 
by a currant, consorted with hard biscuits, a 
stone filter of cold water, a hard pale clock, and 
a hard little old woman, with flaxen hair, of an 
undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if she had 
been fed upon seeds. 

Uiuommercial Traveller, Chap, 6. 

RESTATJRANT-A French. 

" On my experience south of Paris," said Our 
Missis, in a deep tone, " I will not expatiate. 
Too loathsome were the task i But fancy this. 
Fancy a guard coming round, with the train at 
full speed, to inquire how many for dinner. 
Fancy his telegraphing fonvard the number of 
diners. Fancy every one expected, and the ta- 
ble elegantly laid for the complete party. Fan- 
cy a charming dinner, in a charming room, and 
the head-cook, concerned for the honor of every 
dish, superintending in his clean white jacket 
and cap. Fancy the Beast travelling six hun- 
dred miles on end, very fast, and with great 



punctuality, yet being taught to expect all this 
to be done for it ! " 

A spirited chorus of " The Beast ! " 

I noticed that Sniff was agin a rubbing his 
stomach with a soothing hand, and that he had 
drored up one leg. But agin I didn't take par- 
ticular notice, looking on myself as called upon 
to stimilate public feeling. It being a lark be- 
sides. 

" Putting everything together," said Our Mis- 
sis, " French Refreshmenting comes to this, and 
O, it comes to a nice total ! First : eatable 
things to eat, and drinkable things to drink." 

A groan from the young ladies, kep' up by me. 

" Second : convenience, and even elegance." 

Another groan from the young ladies, kep' up 
by me. 

" Third : moderate charges." 

This time a groan from me, kep' up by the 
young ladies. 

" Fourth : — and here," says Our Missis, " I 
claim your angriest sympathy — attention, com- 
mon civnlity, nay, even politeness ! " 

Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad 
all together. 

" And I cannot in conclusion," says Our Missis, 
with her spitefullest sneer, " give you a com- 
pleter pictur of that despicable nation (after 
what I have related), than assuring you that they 
wouldn't bear our constitutional ways and noble 
independence at Mugby Junction for a single 
month, and that they would turn us to the right 
about and put another system in our places, as 
soon as look at us ; perhaps sooner, for I do not 
believe they have the good taste to care to look 
at us twice." — Boy at Mugby. 

RESTAURANT-A. 

I dined at what Herbert and I used to call a 
Geographical chop-house — where there were 
maps of the world in porter-pot rims on every 
half-yard of the tablecloths, and charts of gravy 
on every one of the knives — to this day there is 
scarcely a single chop-house within the Lord 
Mayor's dominions which is not Geographical — 
and wore out the time in dozing over crumbs, 
staring at gas, and baking in a hot blast of 
dinners. — Great Expectations^ Chap. 47. 

RETRIBTJTION. 

" It is a long time," repeated his wife ; " and 
when is it not a long time ? Vengeance and 
retribution require a long time : it is the rule." 

" It does not take a long time to strike a man 
with Lightning," said Defarge. 

" How long," demanded madame, composedly, 
" does it take to make and store the lightning? 
Tell me?" 

Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if 
there were something in that, too. 

" It does not take a long time," said madarae, 
" for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh, 
well ! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the 
earthquake ? " 

'• A long time, I suppose," said Defarge. 

" But when it is ready, it takes place, and 
grinds to pieces everj'thing before it. In the 
mean time, it is always preparing, though it is 
not seen or heard. That is your consolation. 
Keep it." 

She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it 
throttled a foe. 

" I tell thee," said madame, extending hei 



RETICENCE 



899 



BEVOLUTION 



right hand, for emphasis, " that although it is a 
long time on the road, it is on the road and com- 
ing. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. 
I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around 
and consider the lives of all the world that we 
know, consider the faces of all the world that we 
know, consider the rage and discontent to 
which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more 
and more of certainty every hour. Can such 
things last ? Bah ! I mock you." 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. i6. 

RETICENCE-Of Iffir. CMvery. 

He locked himself up as carefully as he locked 
up the Marshalsea debtors. Even his custom 
of bolting his meals may have been a part of an 
uniform whole ; but there is no question, that, 
as to all other purposes, he kept his mouth as he 
kept the Marshalsea door. He never opened it 
without occasion. When it was necessary to let 
anything out, he opened it a little way, held it 
open just as long as sufficed for the purpose, 
and locked it again. Even as he would be spar- 
ing of his trouble at the Marshalsea door, and 
would keep a visitor who wanted to go out, 
waiting for a few moments if he saw another 
visitor coming down the yard, so that one turn 
of the key should suffice for both, similarly he 
would often reserve a remark if he perceived 
another on its way to his lips, and would deliver 
himself of the two together. As to any key to 
his inner knowledge being to be found in his 
face, the Marshalsea key was as legible an index 
to the individual characters and histories upon 
which it was turned. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 25. 

RETICENCE-Of Mrs. General. 

" My goodness me. Amy," returned Fanny, 
" is she the sort of woman to say anything ? 
Isn't it perfectly plain and clear that she has 
nothing to do, at present, but to hold herself up- 
right, keep her aggravating gloves on, and go 
sweeping about? Say anything! If she had 
the ace of trumps in her hand, at whist, she 
wouldn't say anything, child. It would come 
out when she played it." 

Little Dorrit, Book LI., Chap. 7. 

REVOLUTION— Before the French. 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of 
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age 
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it 
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season 
of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was 
the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, 
we had everything before us, we had nothing 
before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, 
we were all going direct the other way — in short, 
the period was so far like the present period, 
that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on 
its being received, for good or for evil, in the 
superlative degree of comparison only. 

There were a king with a large jaw and a 
queen with a plain face, on the throne of Eng- 
gland ; there were a king with a large jaw and a 
queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. 
In both countries it was clearer than crystal to 
the lords of the State preserves of loaves and 
fishes, that things in general were settled for 
ever. 

It was the year of Our Lord one thousand 
seven hundred and seventy-five. 



France, less favored on the whole as to mat- 
ters spiritual than her sister of the shield and 
trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down- 
hill, making paper money and spending it. Un- 
der the guidance of her Christian pastors, she 
entertained herself, besides, with such humane 
achievements as sentencing a youth to have his 
hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, 
and his body burned alive, because he had not 
kneeled down in the rain to do honor to a dirty 
procession of monks which passed within his 
view at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. 
It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of 
France and Norway, there were growing trees, 
when that sufferer was put to death, already 
marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down 
and be sawn into boards, to make a certain 
movable framework with a sack and a knife in 
it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that 
in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the 
heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were shel- 
tered from the weather that very day, rude 
carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed 
about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which 
the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be 
his tumbrils of the Revolution. But, that 
Woodman and that Farmer, though they work 
unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard 
them as they went about with muffled tread : 
the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any sus- 
picion that they were awake, was to be atheis- 
tical and traitorous. 

In England, there was scarcely an amount of 
order and protection to justify much national 
boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, 
and highway robberies, took place in the capi- 
tal itself every night ; families were publicly 
cautioned not to go out of town without re- 
moving their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses 
for security ; the highwapnan in the dark was 
a City tradesman in the light, and, being 
recognized and challenged by his fellow-trades- 
man whom he stopped in his character of " the 
Captain," gallantly shot him through the head 
and rode away ; the mail was waylaid by seven 
robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and 
then got shot dead himself by the other four, 
" in consequence of the failure of his ammuni- 
tion; " after which the mail was robbed in 
peace ; that magnificent potentate, the Lord 
Mayor of London, was made to stand and de- 
liver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, 
who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of 
all his retinue ; prisoners in London gaols 
fought battles with their turnkeys, and the ma- 
jesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among 
them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball ; 
thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the 
necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms ; 
musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for 
contraband goods, and the mob fired on the 
musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the 
mob, and nobody thought any of these occur- 
rences much out of the common way. In 
the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy 
and ever worse than useless, was in constant 
requisition ; now, stringing up long rows of 
miscellaneous criminals ; now, hanging a house- 
breaker on Saturday who had been taken on 
Tuesday ; now, burning people in the hand at 
Newgate by the dozen, and now burning 
pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall ; 
to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murder 



REVOLUTION 



400 



BEVOIiTJTION 



er, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who 
had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence. 

All these things, and a thousand like them, 
came to pass in and close upon the dear old year 
one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. 
Environed by them, while the Woodman and 
the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of 
the large jaws, and those other two of the 
plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough 
and carried their divine rights with a high 
hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven 
hundred and seventy-five conduct their Great- 
nesses, and myriads of small creatures — the 
creatures of this chronicle among the rest — 
along the roads that lay before them. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. r. 

REVOLTTTION"— Scenes in the French. 

" Patriots ! " said Defarge, in a determined 
voice, " are we ready ? " 

Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her 
girdle ; the drum was beating in the streets, as if 
it and a drummer had flown together by magic ; 
and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, 
and flinging her arras about her head like all 
the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house 
to house, rousing the women. 

The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded 
anger with which they looked from windows, 
caught up what arms they had, and came pour- 
ing down into the streets ; but the women were 
a sight to chill the boldest. From such house- 
hold occupations as their bare poverty yielded, 
from their children, from their aged and their 
sick, crouching on the bare ground famished and 
naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging 
one another, and themselves, to madness, with 
the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon 
taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my 
mother ! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daugh- 
ter ! Then, a score of others ran into the midst 
of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, 
and screaming, Foulon alive ! Foulon, who 
told the starving people they might eat grass ! 
Foulon, who told my old father that he might eat 
grass, when I had no bread to give him ! Foulon, 
who told my baby it might suck grass, when these 
breasts were dry with want ! O mother of God, 
this Foulon ! O Heaven, our suff"ering ! Hear 
me, my dead baby and my withered father ; I 
swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge 
you on Foulon ! Husbands, and brothers, and 
young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give 
us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of 
Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon. 
Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the 
ground, that grass may grow from him ! With 
these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into 
blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tear- 
ing at their own friends until they dropped into. 
a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the 
men belonging to them from being trampled 
under foot. 

Nevertheless, not a moment was lost ; not a 
moment ! This Foulon was at the Hotel de 
Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint 
Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and 
wrongs ! Armed men and women flocked out 
of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last 
dregs after them with such a force of suction, 
that within a quarter of an hour there was not 
a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but 
a few old crones and the wailing children. 



No. They were all by that time choking 
the Hall of examination where this old man, 
ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the 
adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, 
husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques 
Three, were in the first press, and at no great 
distance from him in the Hall. 

" See ! " cried madame, pointing with her 
knife. " See the old villain bound with ropes. 
That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon 
his back. Ha, ha I That was well done. Let 
him eat it, now ! " Madame put her knife 
under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a 
play. 

The people immediately behind Madame De- 
farge, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to 
those behind them, and those again explaining 
to others, and those to others, the neighboring 
streets resounded with the clapping of hands. 
Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, 
and the winnowing of many bushels of words, 
Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of im- 
patience were taken up, with marvellous quick- 
ness, at a distance : the more readily, because 
certain men who had by some wonderful exer- 
cise of agility climbed up the external archi- 
tecture to look in from the windows, knew 
Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph 
between her and the crowd outside the build- 
ing. 

At length, the sun rose so high that it struck 
a kindly ray, as of hope or protection, directly 
down upon the old prisoner's head. The favor 
was too much to bear ; in an instant the barrier 
of dust and chaff" that had stood surprisingly 
long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had 
got him ! 

It was known directly, to the furthest confines 
of the crowd. Defarge had sprung over a rail- 
ing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch 
in a deadly embrace — Madame Defarge had but 
followed and turned her hand in one of the 
ropes with which he was tied — The Vengeance 
and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, 
and the men at the windows had not yet swooped 
into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high 
perches — when the cry seemed to go up, all over 
the city, " Bring him out ! Bring him to the 
lamp ! " 

Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps 
of the building ; now, on his knees ; now, on his 
feet ; now, on his back ; dragged, and struck at 
and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw 
that were thrust into his face by hundreds of 
hands ; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet al- 
ways entreating and beseeching for mercy ; now 
full of vehement agony of action, with a small 
clear space about him as the people drew one 
another back that they might see ; now, a log 
of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs ; 
he was hauled to the nearest street corner, where 
one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame 
Defarge let him go — as a cat might have done 
to a mouse — and silently and composedly looked 
at him while they made ready, and while he be- 
sought her: the women passionately screeching 
at him all the time, and the men sternly calling 
out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. 
Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and 
they caught him shrieking ; twice, he went 
aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him 
shrieking ; then, the rope was merciful and held 
him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with 



REVOIiUTION 



401 



RICH MAN 



grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine 
to dance at the sight of. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 22. 

REVOLUTION— The mobs of the French. 

In the howling universe of passion and con- 
tention that seemed to encompass this grim old 
oflicer, conspicuous in his gray coat and red 
decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, 
and that was a woman's. " See, there is my hus- 
band ! " she cried, pointing him out. " See De- 
farge ! " She stood immovable close to the grim 
old officer, and remained immovable close to 
him ; remained immovable close to him through 
the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him 
along ; remained immovable close to him when 
he was got near his destination, and began to be 
struck at from behind ; remained immovable 
close to him when the long-gathering rain of stabs 
and blows fell heavy ; was so close to him when 
he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly ani- 
mated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with 
her cruel knife — long ready — hewed off his 
head. 

The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was 
to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men 
for lamps to show what he could be and do. 
Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of 
tyranny and domination by the iron hand was 
down — down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville, 
where the governor's body lay — down on the sole 
of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had 
trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. 
" Lower the lamp yonder ! " cried Saint Antoine, 
after glaring round for a new means of death ; 
" here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard ! " 
The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea 
rushed on. 

The sea of black and threatening waters, and 
of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, 
whose depths were yet unfathomed, and whose 
forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea 
of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of ven- 
geance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suf- 
fering until the touch of pity could make no 
mark on them. 

But, in the ocean of faces, where every fierce 
and furious expression was in vivid life, there 
were two groups of faces — each seven in number 
— so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never 
did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks 
with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly re- 
leased by the storm that had burst their tomb, 
were carried high overhead ; all scared, all lost, 
all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day 
were come, and those who rejoiced around them 
were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, 
carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping 
eyelids and half seen eyes awaited the Last Day. 
tnpassive faces, yet with a suspended — not an 
abolished — expression on them ; faces, rather, in 
a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped 
lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the 
bloodless lips, " Thou didst it !" 

Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on 
pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the 
eight strong towers, some discovered letters and 
other memorials of prisoners of old time — long 
dead of broken hearts — such, and such like, the 
loudly-echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort 
through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thou- 
sand seven hundred and eighty-nine. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 21. 



REVOLUTION— The knitting: women of 
the French. 

In the evening, at which season of all others, 
Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and 
sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came 
to the corners of vile streets and courts for a 
breath of air, Madame Defarge, with her work 
in her hand, was accustomed to pass from place 
to place and from group to group ; a Mission- 
ary — there- were many like her — such as the 
world will do well never to breed again. All 
the women knitted. They knitted worthless 
things ; but the mechanical work was a mechani- 
cal substitute for eating and drinking ; the hands 
moved for the jaws and the digestive appara- 
tus ; if the bony fingers had been still, the 
stomachs would have been more famine-pinched. 

But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and 
the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on 
from group to group, all three went quicker and 
fiercer among every little knot of women that 
she had spoken with, and left behind. 

Her husband smoked at his door, looking 
after her with admiration. " A great woman," 
said he, " a strong woman, a grand woman, a 
frightfully grand woman ! " 

Darkness closed around, and then came the 
ringing of church bells and the distant beating 
of the military drums in the Palace Court-Yard, 
as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness 
encompassed them. Another darkness was 
closing in as surely, when the church bells, 
then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple 
over France, should be melted into thundering 
cannon ; when the military drums should be 
beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all 
potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Free- 
dom and Life. So much was closing in about 
the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they 
their very selves were closing in around a struc- 
ture yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, 
knitting, counting dropping heads. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap, i6. 

RHEUMATISM vs. TOMBATISM. 

" How are you, Durdles ? " 

" I've got a touch of the Tombatism on me, 
Mr. Jasper, but that I must expect." 

" You mean the Rheumatism," says Sapsea, 
in a sharp tone. (He is nettled by having his 
composition so mechanically received.) 

" No, I don't. I mean, Mr. Sapsea, the Tomb- 
atism. It's another sort from Rheumatism. 
Mr. Jasper knows what Durdles means. You 
get among them Tombs afore it's well light on 
a winter morning, and keep on, as the Catechism 
says, a walking in the same all the days of your 
life, andj)/^« '11 know what Durdles means." 

" It is a bitter cold place," Mr. Jasper assents, 
with an antipathetic shiver. 

" And if it's bitter cold for you, up in the 
chancel, with a lot of live breath smoking out 
about you, what the bitterness is to Durdles, 
down in the crypt among the earthy damps 
there, and the dead breath of the old 'uns," re- 
turns that individual, " Durdles leaves you to 
judge." — Edwin Drood, Chap. 4. 

RICH MAN— His importance. 

The famous name of Mcrdle became, every 
day, more famous in the land. Nobody knew 
that the Merdle of such high renown had ever 
done any good to any one, stlive or dead, or to 



RICH MAN 



402 



BIDE 



any earthly thing ; nobody knew that he had any 
capacity or utterance of any sort in him, which 
had ever thrown, for any creature, the feeblest 
farthing-candle ray of light on any path of duty 
or diversion, pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or 
fancy, among the multiplicity of paths in the 
labyrinth trodden by the sons of Adam ; nobody 
had the smallest reason for supposing the clay 
of which this object of worship was made, to 
be other than the commonest clay, with as clog- 
ged a wick smouldering inside of it as ever kept 
an image of humanity from tumbling to pieces. 
All people knew (or thought they knew) that he 
had made himself immensely rich ; and for that 
reason alone, prostrated themselves before him, 
more degradedly and less excusably than the 
darkest savage creeps out of his hole in the 
ground to propitiate, in some log or reptile, the 
Deity of his benighted soul. 

Nay, the high priest of this worship had the 
man before them as a protest against their mean- 
ness. The multitude worshipped on trust — 
though always distinctly knowing why — but the 
officiators at the altar had the man habitually in 
their view. They sat at his feasts, and he sat 
at theirs. There was a spectre always attendant 
on him, saying to these high priests, " Are such 
the signs you trust, and love to honor ; this head, 
these eyes, this mode of speech, the tone and 
manner of this man? You are the levers of the 
Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of men. 
When half-a-dozen of you fall out by the ears, 
it seems that mother earth can give birth to no 
other rulers. Does your qualification lie in the 
superior knowledge of men, which accepts, 
courts, and puffs this man ? Or, if you are 
competent to judge aright the signs I never fail 
to show you when he appears among you, is 
your superior honesty your qualification ? " Two 
rather ugly questions these, always going about 
town witli Mr. Merdle ; and there was a tacit 
agreement that they must be stifled. 

Little Dorrlt, Book II., Chap. 12. 

RICH MAN— The world's tribute to the. 

Commotion in the office of the hotel. Mer- 
dle ! The landlord, though a gentleman of a 
haughty spirit, who had just driven a pair of 
thorough-bred horses into town, turned out to 
show him up-stairs. The clerks and servants 
cut him off" by back-passages, and were found 
accidentally hovering in doorways and angles, 
that they might look upon him. Merdle ! O 
ye sun, moon, and stars, the great man ! The 
rich man, who had in a manner revised the New 
Testament, and already entered into the king- 
dom of Heaven. The man who could have 
any one he chose to dine with him, and who 
had made the money ! As he went up the 
stairs, people were already posted on the lower 
stairs, that his shadow might fall upon them 
when he came down. So were the sick brought 
out and laid in the track of the Apostle — who had 
not got into the good society, and had not made 
the money. — Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16. 

RICH MAN- His fall. 

But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pres- 
sure began to wane, and appalling whispers to 
circulate east, west, north, and south. At first 
they were faint, and went no further than a doubt 
whether Mr. Merdle's wealth would be found to 
be as vast as had been supposed ; whether there 



might not be a temporary difficulty in "realizing* 
it ; whether there might not even be a temporary 
suspension (say a month or so) on the part of 
the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became 
louder, which they did from that time every 
minute, they became more threatening. He 
had sprung from nothing, by no natural growth 
or process that any one could account for ; he 
had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow ; he 
had been a down-looking man, and no one had 
ever been able to catch his eye ; he had been 
taken up by all sorts of people, in quite an un- 
accountable manner ; he had never had any 
money of his own ; his ventures had been ut- 
terly reckless, and his expenditure had been 
most enormous. In steady progression, as the 
day declined, the talk rose in sound and pur- 
pose. He had left a letter at the Baths ad- 
dressed to his physician, and his physician had 
got the letter, and the letter would be produced 
at the Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall 
like a thunderbolt upon the multitude he had 
deluded. Numbers of men in every profession 
and trade would be blighted by his insolvency : 
old people who had been in easy circumstances 
all their lives would have no place of repent- 
ance for their trust in him but the workhouse ; 
legions of women and children would have their 
whole future desolated by the hand of this 
mighty scoundrel. Every partaker of his mag- 
nificent feasts would be seen to have been a 
sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes ; 
every servile worshipper of riches who had 
helped to set him on his pedestal, would have 
done better to worship the Devil point-blank. 
So, the talk, lashed louder and higher by con- 
firmation on confirmation, and by edition after 
edition of the evening papers, swelled into such 
a roar when night came, as might have brought 
one to believe that a solitary watcher on the 
galleiy above the Dome of Saint Paul's would 
have perceived the night air to be laden with a 
heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled 
with eveiy form of execration. 

For, by that time it was known that the late 
Mr. Merdle's complaint had been, simply. For- 
gery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of 
such wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great 
men's feasts, the roc's egg of great ladies' assem 
blies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller 
of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain- 
driver with a Minister for Lordships of the Cir- 
cumlocution Office, the recipient of more ac- 
knowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, 
at most, than had been bestowed in England 
upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon 
all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, 
with all their works to testify for them, during 
two centuries at least — he, the shining wonder, 
the new constellation to be followed by the 
wise men bringing gifts, until it stopped over 
certain caiTion at the bottom of a bath and dis- 
appeared — was simply the greatest Forger and 
the greatest Thief that ever cheated the gallows. 
Little Dorrit, Book 11, Chap. 25. 

RICH AND POOR. 

" Detestation of the high is the involuntary 
homage of the low." — Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 9. 

RIDE— Tom Pinch's moming-. 

What better time for driving, riding, walking, 
moving through the air by any means, than -a 



RIDE 



403 



RIVER 



fresh, frosty morning, when hope runs cheerily 
through the veins with the brisk blood, and 
tingles in the frame from head to foot ! This 
was the glad commencement of a bracing day 
in early winter, such as may put the languid 
summer season (speaking of it when it can't be 
had) to the blush, and shame the spring for 
being sometimes cold by halves. The sheep- 
bells rang as clearly in the vigorous air, as if 
they felt its wholesome influence like living 
creatures ; the trees, in lieu of leaves or blos- 
soms, shed upon the ground a frosty rime that 
sparkled as it fell, and might have been the dust 
of diamonds. So it was, to Tom. From cot- 
tage chimneys, smoke went streaming up high, 
high, as if the earth had lost its grossness, being 
so fair, and must not be oppressed by heavy 
vapor. The crust of ice on the else rippling 
brook, was so transparent and so thin in tex- 
ture, that the lively water might, of its own 
free will, have stopped — in Tom's glad mind 
it had — to look upon the lovely morning. 
And lest the sun should break this charm too 
eagerly, there moved between him and the 
ground a mist like that which waits upon the 
moon on summer nights — the very same to Tom 
— and wooed him to dissolve it gently. 

Tom Pinch went on ; not fast, but with a 
sense of rapid motion, which did just as well ; 
and as he went, all kinds of things occurred to 
keep him happy. Thus when he came within 
sight of the turnpike, and was — Oh a long way 
off ! — he saw the tollman's wife, who had that 
moment checked a wagon, run back into the 
little house again like mad, to say (she knew) 
that Mr. Pinch was coming up. And she was 
right, for when he drew within hail of the gate, 
forth rushed the tollman's children, shrieking 
in tiny chorus, " Mr. Pinch ! " to Tom's intense 
delight. The very tollman, though an ugly 
chap in general, and one whom folks were 
rather shy of handling, came out himself to 
take the toll, and gave him rough good-morn- 
ing ; and that with all this, and a glimpse of 
the family breakfast on the little round table 
before the fire, the crust Tom Pinch hadbi-ought 
away with him acquired as rich a flavor as 
though it had been cut from a fairy loaf. 

But there was more than this. It was not 
only the married people and the children who 
gave Tom Pinch a welcome as he passed. No, 
no. Sparkling eyes and snowy breasts came 
hurriedly to many an upper casement as he clat- 
tered by, and gave him back his greeting : not 
stinted either, but sevenfold, good measure. 
They were all merry. They all laughed. And 
some of the wickedest among them even kissed 
their hands as Tom looked back. For who 
minded poor Mr. Pinch? There was no harm 
in him. 

And now the morning grew so fair, and all 
things were so wide awake and gay, that the sun 
seeming to say — Tom had no doubt he said — 
" I can't stand it any longer : I must have a 
look," streamed out in radiant majesty. The 
mist, too shy and gentle for such lusty company, 
fled off, quite scared, before it ; and as it swept 
away, the hills and mounds and distant pasture 
lands, teeming with placid sheep and noisy 
crows, came out as bright as though they were 
unrolled bran new for the occasion. In com- 
pliment to which discovery, the brook stood 
still no longer, but ran briskly off to bear 



the tidings to the water-mill, three miles a- 
way. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap, 5. 

RIVER AND FERRY-BOAT-Their moral. 

Within view was the peaceful river and the 
ferry-boat, to moralize to all the inmates, say- 
ing : Young or old, passionate or tranquil, chaf- 
ing or content, you, thus runs the current al- 
ways. Let the heart swell into what discord it 
will, thus plays the rippling water on the prow 
of the ferry-boat ever the same tune. Year after 
year, so much allowance for the drifting of the 
boat, so many miles an hour the flowing of the 
stream, here the rushes, there the lilies, nothing 
uncertain or unquiet, upon this road that stead- 
ily runs away ; while you, upon your flowing 
road of time, are so capricious and distracted. 
Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 16. 

RIVER— At eveningr. 

A late, dull, autumn night was closing in upon 
the river Saone. The stream, like a sullied look- 
ing-glass in a gloomy place, reflected the clouds 
heavily ; and the low banks leaned over here 
and there, as if they were half curious, and half 
afraid, to see their darkening pictures in the 
water. The flat expanse of country about Cha- 
lons lay a long heavy streak, occasionally made 
a little ragged by a row of poplar trees, against 
the wrathful sunset. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. ii. 

RIVER SCENE-On the Thames. 

It was flood-tide when Daniel Quilp sat him- 
self down in the wherry to cross to the opposite 
shore. A fleet of barges were coming lazily on, 
some sideways, some head first, some stern first ; 
all in a wrong-headed, dogged, obstinate way, 
bumping up against the larger craft, running 
under the bows of steamboats, getting into every 
kind of nook and corner where they had no 
business, and being crunched on all sides like 
so many walnut-shells ; while each, with its pair 
of long sweeps struggling and splashing in the 
water, looked like some lumbering fish in pain. 
In some of the vessels at anchor, all hands 
were busily engaged in coiling ropes, spreading 
out sails to dry, taking in or discharging their 
cargoes ; in others, no life was visible but two 
or three tany boys, and perhaps a barking dog 
running to and fro upon the deck, or scrambling 
up to look over the side and bark the louder 
for the view. Coming slowly on through the 
forests of masts, was a great steamship, beating 
the water in short impatient strokes with her 
heavy paddles, as though she wanted room to 
breathe, and advancing in her huge bulk like a 
sea-monster among the minnows of the Thames. 
On either hand, were long black tiers of colliers ; 
between them, vessels slowly working out of 
harbor with sails glistening in the sun, and 
creaking noise on board, re-echoed from a hun- 
dred quarters. The water and all upon it was 
in active motion, dancing and buoyant and bub- 
bling up ; while the old gray Tower and piles 
of building on the shore, with many a church- 
spire shooting up between, looked coldly on, 
and seemed to disdain their chafing neighbor. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 5, 

RIVER— A portal of eternity. 

To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Win- 
ter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts 



RIVER 



404 



RIVER SCENERY 



of many who had sought a refuge there, before 
her. Where scattered lights upon the banks 
gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as torches that 
were burning there, to show the way to Death. 
Where no abode of living people cast its shadow 
on the deep, impenetrable, melancholy shade. 

To the River ! To that portal of Eternity, 
her desperate footsteps tended with the swift- 
ness of its rapid waters running to the sea. 

Chimes, ^th Quarter. 

RIVER— A midnig-ht funeral. 

I should like to know where Inspector Field 
was born. In RatclifF Highway, I would have 
answered with confidence, but for his being 
equally at home wherever we go. He does not 
trouble his head as I do, about the river at 
night. He does not care for its creeping, black 
and silent, on our right there, rushing through 
sluice gates, lapping at piles and posts and 
iron rings, hiding strange things in its mud, run- 
ning away with suicides and accidentally drown- 
ed bodies faster than midnight funeral should, 
and acquiring such various experience between 
its cradle and its grave. It has no mystery for 
him. — On Duty with Inspector Field. Reprinted 
Pieces. 

RIVER— Its foreknowledge of the sea. 

Its river winding down from the mist on the ho- 
rizon, as though that were its source, and already 
heaving with a restless knowledge of its approach 
towards the sea. — Edwin Drood^ Chap. 12. 

RIVER THIEF. 

In these times of ours, though concerning 
the exact year there is no need to be precise, 
a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, 
with two figures in it floated on the Thames, 
between Southwark Bridge, which is of iron, 
and London Bridge, which is of stone, as an 
autumn evening was closing in. 

The figures in this boat were those of a strong 
man with ragged, grizzled hair, and a sun- 
browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or 
twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognizable 
as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a 
pair of sculls very easily ; the man, with the 
rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands 
loose in his waistband, kept an eager look-out. 
He had no net, hook, or line, and he could 
not be a fisherman ; his boat had no cushion for 
a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance 
beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope, 
and he could not be a waterman ; his boat was 
too crazy and too small to take in cargo for 
deliveiy, and he could not be a lighterman or 
river-carrier ; there M-as no clue to what he 
looked for, but he looked for something, with a 
most intent and searching gaze. The tide, 
which had turned an hour before, was running 
down, and his eyes watched every little race 
and e4dy in its broad sweep, as the boat made 
slight headway against, or drove stern foremost 
before it. according as he directed his daughter 
by a movement of his head. She watched his 
face as earnestly as he watched the river. But 
in the intensity of her look there was a touch 
of dread or horror. 

Allied to the bottom of the river rather 
than the surface, by reason of the slime and 
ooze with which it was covered, and its sod- 
den state, this boat and the two figures in it 



obviously were doing something that they 
often did, and were seeking what they often 
sought. Half savage as the man showed, with 
no covering on his matted head, with his brown 
arms bare to between the elbow and the shoul- 
der, viith the loose knot of a looser ker- 
chief lying low on his bare breast in a wilder- 
ness of beard and whisker, with such dress as 
he wore seeming to be made out of the mud 
that begrimed his boat, still there was busi- 
ness-like usage in his steady gaze. So with 
every lithe action of the girl, with every turn 
of her wrist, perhaps most of all with her 
look of dread or horror ; they were things of 
usage. — Our Mutual Friend^ Book /., Chap. i. 

RIVER SCENERY-The Ohio. 

A fine broad river always, but in some parts 
much wider than in others ; and then there is 
usually a green island covered with trees, divid- 
ing it into two streams. Occasionally w^e stop for 
a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe 
for passengers, at some small town or village (I 
ought to say city ; every place is a city here) ; 
but the banks are for the most part deep soli- 
tudes overgrown with trees, which hereabouts 
are already in leaf and very green. For miles 
and miles and miles, these solitudes are unbro- 
ken by any sign of human life or trace of human 
footstep ; nor is anything seen to move about 
them but the blue-jay, whose color is so bright 
and yet so delicate that it looks like a flying 
flower. At lengthened intervals a log-cabin, 
with its little space of cleared land about it, 
nestles under a rising ground, and sends its 
thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. 
It stands in the corner of the poor field of 
wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps, 
like earthy butchers' blocks. Sometimes the 
ground is only just now cleared ; the felled 
trees lying yet upon the soil, and the log-house 
only this morning begun. As we pass this clear- 
ing, the settler leans upon his axe or hammer, 
and looks wistfully at the people from the world. 
The children creep out of the temporary hut, 
which is like a gypsy tent upon the ground, and 
clap their hands and shout. The dog only 
glances round at us, and then looks up into his 
master's face again, as if he were rendered un- 
easy by any suspension of the common business, 
and had nothing more to do with pleasurers. 
And still there is the same eternal foreground. 
***** 

Through such a scene as this the unwieldly 
machine takes its hoarse, sullen way ; venting 
at every revolution of the paddles a loud, high- 
pressure blast ; enough, one would think, to 
waken up the host of Indians who lie buried in 
a great mound yonder ; so old that mighty 
oaks and other forest trees have struck their 
roots into its earth ; and so high that it is a hill, 
even among the hills that nature planted round 
it. The very river, as though it shared one's 
feelings of compassion for the extinct tribes who 
lived so pleasantly here, in their blessed igno- 
rance of white existence, hundreds of years ago, 
steals out of its way to ripple near this mound ; 
and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles 
more brightly than in the Big Grave Creek. 

***** 

The night is dark, and we proceed within the 
shadow of the wooded bank, which makes it 
darker. After gliding past the sombre maze of 



RIVER 



405 



RIVER 



boughs for a long time, we come upon an open 
space where the tall trees are burning. The 
shape of every branch and twig is expressed in 
a deep red glow ; and, as the light wind stirs 
and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. It 
is such a sight as we i-ead of in legends of en- 
chanted forests ; saving that it is sad to see these 
noble works wasting away so awfully, alone ; 
and to think how many years must come and 
go before the magic that created them will rear 
their like upon this ground again. But the 
time will come ; and when, in their changed 
ashes, the growth of centuries unborn has struck 
its roots, the restless men of distant ages will 
repair to these again unpeopled solitudes ; and 
their fellows, in cities far away, that slumber 
now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read, 
in language strange to any ears in being now, 
but very old to them, of primeval forests where 
the axe was never heard, and where the jungled 
ground was never trodden by a human foot. 

Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and 
thoughts, and when the morning shines again, 
it gilds the house-tops of a lively city, before 
whose broad paved wharf the boat is moored, 
with other boats, and flags, and moving wheels, 
and hum of men around it ; as though there 
were not a solitary or silent rood of ground 
within the compass of a thousand miles. 

American Notes, Chap. ii. 

RIVER— Mississippi— On the. 

On they toiled through great solitudes, where 
the trees upon the banks grew thick and close ; 
and floated in the stream ; and held up shrivelled 
arms from out the river's depths ; and slid down 
from the margin of the land, half growing, half 
decaying, in the miry water. On through the 
weary day and melancholy night ; beneath the 
burning sun, and in the mist and vapor of the 
evening ; on, until return appeared impossible, 
and restoration to their home a miserable 
dream. 

They had now but few people on board, and 
these few were as flat, as dull, and stagnant, as 
the vegetation that oppressed their eyes. No 
sound of cheerfulness or hope was heard ; no 
pleasant talk beguiled the tardy time ; no little 
group made common cause against the dull de- 
pression of the scene. But that, at certain 
periods, they swallowed food together from a 
common trough, it might have been old Charon's 
boat, conveying melancholy shades to judg- 
ment. 

As they proceeded further on their track, and 
came more and more towards their journey's 
end, the monotonous desolation of the scene in- 
creased to that degree, that for any redeeming 
feature it presented to their eyes, they might 
have entered, in the body, on the grim domains 
of Giant Despair. A flat morass, bestrewn with 
fallen timber ; a marsh, on which the good growth 
of the earth seemed to have been wrecked and 
cast away, that from its decomposing ashes vile 
and ugly things might rise ; where the very trees 
took the aspect of huge weeds, begotten of the 
slime from which they sprung, by the hot sun 
that burnt them up ; where fatal maladies, seek- 
iiKg whom they might infect, came forth at night, 
in misty shapes, and creeping out upon the 
water, hunted them like spectres until day ; 
where even the blessed sun, shining down on 



festering elements of corruption and disease, be- 
came a horror; this was the realm of Hope 
through which they moved. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 23. 

RIVER— A dreary neighborlaood "by the. 

The neighborhood was a dreary one at that 
time ; as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night, 
as any about London. There were neither 
wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of 
road near the great blank Prison. A sluggish 
ditch deposited its mud by the prison walls. 
Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all 
the marshy land in the vicinity. In one part, 
carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and 
never finished, rotted away. In another, the 
ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters 
of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, 
paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, 
and I know not what strange objects, accumu- 
lated by some speculator, and groveUing in the 
dust, underneath which — having sunk into the 
soil of their own weight in wet weather — they 
had the appearance of vainly trying to hide 
themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery 
Works upon the river side, arose by night to 
disturb everything except the heavy and un- 
broken smoke that poured out of their chim- 
neys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among 
old wooden piles, with a sickly substance cling- 
ing to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of 
last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned 
men fluttering above high- water mark, led down 
through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. 
There was a story that one of the pits dug for 
the dead in the time of the Great Plague was 
hereabout ; and a blighting influence seemed to 
have proceeded from it over the whole place. 
Or else it looked as if it had gradually decom- 
posed into that nightmare condition, out of the 
overflowings of the polluted stream. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 47. 

RIVER— (A water party). 

But the party arrives, and Dando, relieved 
from his state of uncertainty, starts up into ac- 
tivity. They approach in full aquatic costume, 
with round blue jackets, striped shirts, and caps 
of all sizes and patterns, from the velvet skull- 
cap of French manufacture, to the easy head- 
dress familiar to the students of the old spelling- 
books, as having, on the authority of the portrait, 
formed part of the costume of the Reverend Mr. 
Dilworth. 

This is the most amusing time to observe a 
regular Sunday water-party. There has evi- 
dently been up to this period no inconsiderable 
degree of boasting on everybody's part relative 
to his knowledge of navigation ; the sight of 
the water rapidly cools their courage, and the 
air of self-denial with which each of them in- 
sists on somebody else's taking an oar, is per- 
fectly delightful. At length, after a great deal 
of changing and fidgeting, consequent upon the 
election of a stroke-oar, the inability of one 
gentleman to pull on this side, of another to 
pull on that, and of a third to pull at all, the 
boat's crew are seated. " Shove her off ! " cries 
the coxswain, who looks as easy and comfort- 
able as if he were steering in the Bay of Biscay. 
The order is obeyed ; the boat is immediately 
turned completely round, and proceeds towards 
Westminster Bridge, amidst such a splashing 



RIVEB SPORTS 



406 



ROME 



and struggling as never was seen before, except 
when the Royal George went clown. " IJack 
wa'alor, sir," shouts Datido, " liack wa'ater, you 
sir, aft;" upon which everybody thinking ho 
n\u.sl be the individual rrfcMifd to, tiicy :dl bnck 
water, and back ct)njcs the boat, stern lirst, to 
the snot whence it started. " Back water, you 
sir, art ; pull round, you sir, for'ad, can't you ? " 
shouts I)ando, in a frenzy of excitement. " I'ull 
round, Tom, can't you?" re-echoes one of the 
l)arly. "Tom an't for'ad," replies another. 
" Yes, he is," erics a third ; and the unfortunate 
young man, at the imminent risk of breaking a 
lilood-vessel, pulls and jjuHs, until the head of 
the boat fairlv lies in the {lirection of Vauxhall 
Uridgc. " That's right — now pull all on you !" 
shoids Dando again, adding, in an undertone, 
to somebody by him, " Hlowed if hever I see 
such a set of muffs ! " and away jogs the boat in 
a zigzag direction, every one of the six oars 
dipping into the water at a different lime ; and 
the yard is once more clear, until the arrival of 
the next party. — Seems, Chap. lo. 

RIVER SPORTS-A rowing matoh. 

A well contested rowing-match on the 
''"hames, is a very lively and interesting scene. 
I'he water is studded with boats of all sorts, 
kinds, and descri[)tions ; places in the coal- 
barges at the different wharfs are let to crowds 
of spectators ; beer and tobacco flow freely 
about ; me.n, women, and cliildren wait for the 
start in breathless exi)ectation ; cutters of six 
and eight oars glide gently up and down, 
waiting lo accompany their /;v'/<?_;>^.v during the 
race ; bands of music add lo the animalion, if 
not to the harnumy of the scene ; groups of 
watermen are assend)led at the dilTerent stairs, 
discussing the merits of the respective candi- 
dates ; and the prize wherry, which is rowed 
slowly about by a pair of .sculls, is an object 
of general interest. 

Two o'clock strikes, and everybody looks 
anxiously in the direction of the bridge through 
which the candidates for the prize will <;ome — 
half-past two, and the general attention which 
has been jireserved so long begins lo llag, when 
suddeidy a gun is heard, and the noise of dis- 
tant hurra'ing along each l)ank of the river — 
every head is bent forward — the ncuse draws 
nearer and nearer — the boats which have been 
waiting at the bridge start briskly up the river, 
and a well-nianned galley shoots through the 
arch, the sitters cheering on the boats behind 
them, which are not yet visible. 

" Here they are," is the general cry — and 
through darts the first boat, the men in her 
strippeil lo the skin, and exerting every muscle 
to preserve the advantage they have gaineil — 
four other boats follow close astern ; there are 
not two boats' length between them — the shout- 
ing is tremendous and the interest intense, 
"(io on, Pink" — "Give it her. Red" — " SuUi- 
win for ever " — " Bravo ! George" — "Now, 
Tom, now — now — now — why don't your partner 
stretch out ? " — " Two i)ots to ajjinl on Yellow," 
etc., etc. Every little public-house lires its gun, 
and hoists its flag ; and the men who win the 
heat, come in amidst a splashing, and shouting, 
and banging, and confusion, which no one can 
imagine who has not witnessed it, and of which 
any description would convey a very faint iilca. 
Scenes, Chap. lo. 



RIVER-SPORTS-{Water Excursions). 

"Are you fond of the water?" is a question 
very frecpiently asked, in hot summer weather, 
by amphibious-looking young men. "Very," is 
the general reply. " An't you ? " — " Hardly ever 
off it," is the response, accompanied by .sundry 
adjectives, expressive of the speaker's heartfelt 
admiration of that element. Now, with all re- 
spect for the opinion of society in general, and 
culler clubs in jiarticular, we humbly suggest 
that some of the most ])ainful reminiscences in 
liie mind of every individual who has occasion- 
ally disported himself on the 'J'hamcs, must be 
connected with his aquatic recreations. "Who 
ever heard of a successful water-jiarty ? — or, to 
put the (juestion in a still more intelligible foim, 
who ever saw one ? We have been on water- 
excursions out of nun;l)er, but we solemnly de- 
clare thai we cannot call to mind one single 
occasion of the kind, which was not marked by 
more miseries than any one would supjiose 
could reasonably be crowded into the space of 
some eight or nine hours. Something has al- 
ways gone wrong. Either the cork of the salad- 
dressing has come out, or the most anxiously 
expected member of the party has not come out, 
or the most disagreeable man in company would 
come out, or a child or two have fallen into the 
water, or the gentleman who untlertook lo steer 
has endangered everybody's life all the way, or 
the gentlemen who volunteered to row nave 
been "out of practice," and performed very 
alarming evolutions, putting their oars down 
into the water and not being able to get them 
up again, or taking lerrilic pulls without put- 
ling ihem in at all ; in either ease, pitching 
over on the backs of their heacls with startling 
violence, and exhibiting the soles of their 
punq)s to the "sillers" in the boat, in a very 
luimilialing manner. — Scenes, Chap. lo. 

ROME— Its past and present. 

lUit whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, 
or columns : ancient temples, theatres, houses, 
porticoes, or forums : it is strange to see how 
every fr.igment, whenever it is possible, has 
been blended into some modern structuie, and 
mntle to serve some modern purpo.se — a wall, a 
dwelling-place, a granary, a stable — some use 
for which it never was designed, and associated 
with which it cannot otherwise than lamely as- 
sort. It is stranger slill, lo see how many ruins 
of the old mythology, how many fragments of 
obsolete legend and observance, liave been in- 
corporated into the worship of Christian altars 
here ; and how, in numberless respects, the false 
faith and the true are fused into a monstrous 
union. 

* # * * « 

What a bright noon it was, as we rode away 
The Tiber was no longer yellow, but blue. 
There was a blush on the old bridges, that 
made them fresh and hale again. The Pan- 
theon, with its majestic front, all seamed and 
furrowed like an old face, had summer light 
upon its battered walls. Every squaliil and 
desolate hut in the Eternal City (bear witness 
every grim old palace, to the iillh and misery of 
the plebeian neighbor that elbows it, as certain 
as Time has laid its grin on its patrician head !) 
was fresh and new with stune ray of the .sun. 
The very jnison in the crowded street, a whirl 
of carri.iges and people, had some slray sense 



HOME 



407 



BOMB 



of the day, dropping through its chinks and 

crevices; and dismal prisoners who could not 

wind their faces round the barricading of the 

blocked-up windows, stretched out tlieir 

hands, and clinging to the rusty bars, turned 

titent towards the overflowing street ; as if it 

were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in that 

way. 

* )|c « « m 

By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined 
Kome, after all this firing and booming, to take 
our leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it l)y 
moonlight l)efore (I never could gel through a 
day without going back to it), but its tremen- 
dous solitude that night is past all telling. The 
ghostly pillars in the Forum ; the Triumphal 
Arches of Old Em])crors ; those enormous mass- 
es of ruin which were once their palaces ; the 
grass-grown mounds that mark the graves of 
ruined tcmi)les ; the stones of the Via Sacra, 
smooth with the tread of feet in ancient Rome: 
even these were dimmed, in their transcendent 
melancholy, by the dark ghost of its bloody 
holidays, erect and grim ; haunting the old 
scene; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fight- 
ing Princes, but not laid ; wringing wild hands 
of weed, and grass, and bramble; and lament- 
ing to the night in every gap and broken arch — 
the shadow of its awful self, immovable ! 

Pictures from Italy. 

BOME-Its relics. 

Such are the sj)ols and ])atches in my dream 
of churches, that remain apart,- and keep their 
separate identity. I have a fainter recollection, 
sometimes, of the relics ; of the fragments of the 
pillar of the Temple that was rent in twain ; of 
the portion of the table that was spread for the 
Last Supper ; of the well at which the woman 
of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour ; of two 
columns from the house of Pontius Pilate ; of 
the stone to which the Sacred hands were bound, 
when the scourging was ])erformed ; of the grid- 
iron of St. Lawrence, and the stone below it, 
marked with the frying of his fat and blood ; 
these set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as 
an old story or a fable might, and stop them for 
an instant, as they flit ])efore me. The rest is a 
vast wilderness of consecrated buildings of all 
shapes and fancies, blending one with another ; 
of battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up 
from the ground, and forced, like giant captives, 
to support the roofs of Christian churches ; of 
pictures, bad, and wonderfijl, and impious, and 
ridiculous ; of kneeling people, curling incense, 
tinkling bells, and sometimes (but not often) of a 
swelling organ ; of Madonne, with their breasts 
stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle 
like a modern fan ; of actual skeletons of dead 
saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks, 
and velvets, trimmed with g(jld : their withered 
crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or 
with chaj)l(;ts of crushed (lowers ; sometimes, of 
people gathered round the pulpit, and a monk 
within it stretching out the crucifix, and preach- 
ing fiercely: the sun just streaming down 
through some high window on the sail-cloth 
stretched above him and across the church, to 
keep his high-pitched voice from being lost 
among the echoes of the r(K>f. Then my tired 
memory comes out upon a flight of steps, where 
knots of people are asleep, or basking in the 
light ; and jitrolls away among the rags, and 



smells, and palaces, and hovels, of an old Italian 
street. — Pictures from Italy, 

ROME— The CollBeum. 

We said to the coachman, " Go to the Coli- 
seum." In a quarter of an hour or so, he stop- 
ped at the gate, and we went in. 

It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, 
to say — so suggestive and distinct is it at this 
hour — that, for a moment — actually in passing 
in— they who will, may have the whole great 
pile before them, as it used to be, with 
thousands of eager faces staring down into the 
arena, and such a whirl f)f strife, and blood, 
and dust, going on there, as no language can 
describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its 
utter desolation, strike upon the stranger the 
next moment, like a softened sorrow ; and 
never in his life, jjcrhaps, will he be so moved 
and overcome by any sight, not immediately 
connected with his own afl"eclions and afflic- 
tions. 

To see it crumbling there, an inch a year ; 
its walls and arches overgrown with green ; its 
corridors open to the day ; the long grass 
growing in its porches ; young trees otyester- 
day, sj)riiiging up on its nagged parapets, and 
bearing fruit — chance ])roduce of the seeds 
dropped tliere by the birds who build their 
nests within its chinks and crannies — to sec its 
Pit of Fight filled up with eartli, and the 
peaceful Cross planted in the centre ; to climb 
into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, 
ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal arches 
of Constanline, Septimus .Severus, and Titus ; 
the Roman l''orum ; the Palace of the ('.csars ; 
the tenn)les of theohl religion, fallen down and 
gone — is to see the gliost of old Rome, 
wicked, wonderful, old city, haunting the very 
ground on which its peojjle trod. It is the most 
impressive, the most stalely, the most solemn, 
grand, majestic, mournful sight, conceivable, 
iest prime, 
L'um, lull an 
with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as 
it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin, 
(ioi) be thanked — a ruin ! 

As it tops the other ruins : standing there, a 
mountain among graves : so do its ancient influ- 
ences outlive all other remnants of the old my- 
thology and old butchery of Rome, in the na- 
ture of the fierce and cruel Ronian people. 
The Italian face changes as the visitor aj)- 
proaches the city ; its beauty becomes devilish ; 
and there is scarcely (;ne countenance in a 
huuflred, among the common j)eople in the 
streets, that would not be at home and happy 
in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow. 

Pictures from Italy. > 

ROME-St. Peter's. 

The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, on 
that second visit, was exactly what it was at 
first, and what it remains after many visits. It 
is not religiously impressive or affecting. It is 
an immense edifice, with no one point for the 
mind to rest upon ; and it tires itself with 
wandering round and round. The very pur- 
pose of the place is not cx|)rcssed in anything 
you see there, unhrss you examine its details — 
and all examinaliim of details is incompatible 
with the place itself It might be a Pantheon, 
or a Senate House, or a great architectural 



Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight 
of the gigantic Coliseum, lull and running over 



bo]!ce: 



408 



SAILOR 



trophy, having no other object than an archi- 
tectural triumph. — Pictures front Italy. 

ROME— Its ruins. 

Here was Rome indeed at last ; and such a 
Rome as no one can imagine in its full and 
awful grandeur ! We wandered out upon the 
Appian Way, and then went on, through miles 
of ruined tombs and broken walls, with here 
and there a desolate and uninhabited house ; 
past the Circus of Romulus, where the course 
of the chariots, the stations of the judges, com- 
petitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly to 
be seen as in old time : past the tomb of Ce- 
cilia Metella : past all inclosure, hedge, or 
stake, wall or fence : away upon the open 
Campagna, where, on that side of Rome, nothing 
is to be beheld but Ruin. Except where the dis- 
tant Apennines bound the view upon the left, 
the whole wide prospect is one field of ruin. 
Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque 
and beautiful clusters of arches ; broken tem- 
ples ; broken tombs. A desert of decay, som- 
bre and desolate beyond all expression ; and 
with a history in every stone that strews the 
ground. — Pictures from Italy. 

ROUGE— Miss Mowcher on. 

*'/ do something in that way myself — perhaps 
a good deal — perhaps a little — sharp's the word, 
my dear boy — never mind ! " 

" In what way do you mean ? In the rouge 
way?" said Steerforth. 

" Put this and that together, my tender pu- 
pil," returned the wary Movvcher, touching her 
nose, *' work it by the rule of Secrets in all 
trades, and the product will give you the de- 
sired result. I say / do a little in that way my- 
self. One Dowager, she calls it lip-salve. 
Another, she calls it gloves. Another, she calls 
it tucker-edging. Another, she calls it a fan. 
/ call it whatever they call it. I supply it for 
'em, but we keep up the trick so, to one anoth- 
er, and make believe with such a face, that they'd 
as soon think of laying it on before a whole 
drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait 
upon 'em, they'll say to me sometimes — with it 
on — thick, and no mistake — ' How am I look- 
ing, Mowcher? Am I pale?' Ha! ha! ha! 
ha ! Isn't that refreshing, my young friend ! " 
David Copperfieldy Chap. 22. 

RUMOR- Popular. 

Popular rumor, unlike the rolling stone of 
the proverb, is one which gathers a deal of 
moss in its wanderings up and down. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 48. 

RUINS— Tourists amoni: (Mrs. General). 

Mrs. General took life easily — as easily, that 
is, as she could take anything — when the Ro- 
man establishment remained in their sole occu- 
pation ; and Little Dorrit would often ride out 
in a hired carriage that was left them, and alight 
alone and wander among the ruins of old Rome. 
The ruins of the vast old Amphitheatre, of the 
old temples, of the old commemorative Arches, 
of the old trodden highways, of the old tombs, 
besides being what they were, to her were ruins 
of the old Marshalsea — ruins of her own old 
life — ruins of the faces and forms that of old 
peopled it — ruins of its loves, hopes, cares, and 
joys. Two ruined spheres of action and suffer- 



ing were before the solitary girl often sitting on 
some broken fragment ; and in the lonely places, 
under the blue sky, she saw them both together. 
Up, then, would come Mrs. General ; taking 
all the color out of everything, as Nature and 
Art had taken it out of herself ; writing Prunes 
and Prism, in Mr. Eustace's text, wherever she 
could lay a hand ; looking everywhere for Mr. 
Eustace and company, and seeing nothing else ; 
scratching up the dryest little bones of antiquity, 
and bolting them whole without any human vis- 
itings — like a Ghoul in gloves. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15. 



s 

SAILOR—" Poor Mercantile Jack." 

Is the sweet little cherub, who sits smiling 
aloft, and keeps watch on the life of poor Jack, 
commissioned to take charge of Mercantile 
Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy? If 
not, who is? What is the cherub about, and 
what are we all about, when poor Mercantile 
Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out 
by pennyweights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or 
the bark Bowie-knife, — when he looks his last 
at that infernal craft, with the first officer's iron 
boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying 
body towed overboard in the ship's wake, while 
the cruel wounds in it do " the multitudinous 
seas incarnadine ? " 

Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, 
aboard the brig Beelzebub or the bark Bowie- 
knife, the first officer did half the damage to cot- 
ton that he does to men, there would presently 
arise from both sides of the Atlantic so vocifer- 
ous an invocation of the sweet little cherub who 
sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the 
markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub 
would, with a winged sword, have that gallant 
officer's organ of destructiveness out of his head, 
in the space of a flash of lightning? 

If it be unreasonable, then am I the most 
unreasonable of men, for I believe it with all 
my soul. 

This was my thought as I walked the dock 
quays at Liverpool, keeping watch on poor 
Mercantile Jack. Alas for me ! I have long 
out-grown the state of sweet little cherub ; but 
there I was, and there Mercantile Jack was, 
and very busy he was, and very cold he was ; the 
snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, 
and the northeast winds snipping off the tops 
of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling 
them into hailstones to pelt him with. Mercan • 
tile Jack was hard at it in the hard weather, — aj 
he mostly is, in all weathers, poor Jack, He 
was girded to ships' masts and funnels of 
steameis, like a forester to a great oak, scraping 
and painting ; he was lying out on yards, furl- 
ing sails that tried to beat him off ; he was dim- 
ly discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, 
reefing and splicing ; he was faintly audible 
down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo ; 
he was winding round and round at capstans' 
melodious, monotonous, and drunk ; he was of 
a diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Anti- 
podes ; he was washing decks barefoot, with the 
breast of his red shirt open to the blast, though 



I 

•ugh 1\ 



SAILOHS 



409 



SAILORS' DANCE-HOUSE 



it was sharper than the knife in his leathern 
girdle ; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes 
and hair ; he was standing by at the shoot of 
the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks 
in trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fish- 
mongers poured down into the ice-house ; he was 
coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit in a 
tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the 
very last moment of his shore-going existence. 
As though his senses, when released from the 
uproar of the elements, were under obligation 
to be confused by other turmoil, there was a 
rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a clash- 
ing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and 
casks and timber, an incessant deafening disturb- 
ance on the quays, that was the very madness 
of sound. And as, in the midst of it, he stood 
swaying about, with his hair blown all manner 
of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his 
plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was 
shrill in the wind, and every little steamer com- 
ing and going across the Mersey was sharp in 
its blowing-ofif, and every buoy in the river bob- 
bed spitefully up and down, as if there were a 
general taunting chorus of " Come along. Mer- 
cantile Jack ! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, ho- 
cussed, entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out ! 
Come along ! Poor Mercantile Jack, and be 
tempest-tossed till you are drowned !" 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 5. 

SAILORS— Their characteristics. 

We have a pier — a queer old wooden pier, for- 
tunately without the slightest pretensions to ar- 
chitecture, and very picturesque in consequence. 
Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all 
over it ; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, 
sails, ballast, and rickety capstans, make a per- 
fect labyrinth of it. Forever hovering about 
this pier, with their hands in their pockets, or 
leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to 
the sea, gazing through telescopes which they 
carry about in the same profound receptacles, 
are the Boatmen of our watering-place. Look- 
ing at them, you would say that surely these 
must be the laziest boatmen in the world. They 
lounge about, in obstinate and inflexible panta- 
loons that are apparently made of wood, the 
whole season through. Whether talking to- 
gether about the shipping in the Channel, or 
gruffly unbending over mugs of beer at the 
public-house, you would consider them the 
slowest of men. The chances are a thousand 
to one that you might stay here for ten seasons, 
and never see a boatman in a hurry. A certain 
expression about his loose hands, when they are 
not in his pockets, as if he were carrying a con- 
siderable lump of iron in each, without any in- 
convenience, suggests strength, but he never 
seems to use it. He has the appearance of per- 
petually strolling — running is too inappropriate 
a word to be thought of — to seed. The only 
subject on which he seems to feel any approach 
to enthusiasm, is pitch. He pitches everything 
he can lay hold of — the pier, the palings, his 
boat, his house — when there is nothing else left 
he turns to and even pitches his hat, or his rough- 
weather clothing. Do not judge him by deceit- 
ful appearances. These are among the bravest 
and most skillful mariners that exist. Let a gale 
arise and swell into a storm, let a sea run that 
might appal the stoutest heart that ever beat, 
let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands 



throw up a rocket in the night, or let them hear 
through the angry roar the signal-guns of a 
ship in distress, and these men spring up into 
activity so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that 
the world cannot surpass it. Cavillers may ob- 
ject that they chiefly live upon the salvage of 
valuable cargoes. So they do, and God knows 
it is no great living that they get out of the 
deadly risks they run. But put that hope of 
gain aside. Let these rough fellows be asked, 
in any storm, who volunteers for the life-boat to 
save some perishing souls, as poor and empty- 
handed as themselves, whose lives the perfection 
of human reason does not rate at the value of a 
farthing each ; and that boat will be manned, 
as surely and as cheerfully, as if a thousand 
pounds were told down on the weather-beaten 
pier. For this, and for the recollection of their 
comrades whom we have known, whom the rag- 
ing sea has engulfed before their children's eyes 
in such brave efforts, whom the secret sand has 
buried, we hold the boatmen of our watering- 
place in our love and honor, and are tender of 
the fame they well deserve. 
Our English Watering Place, Reprinted Pieces, 

SAILORS' DANCE-HOTJSE— A. 

This was the landlord, in a Greek cap and a 
dress half-Greek and half-English. As master 
of the ceremonies, he called all the figures, 
and occasionally addressed himself parentheti- 
cally after this manner. When he was very 
loud, I use capitals. 

"Now den! Hoy! One. Right and left. 
(Put a steam on, gib 'um powder.) LA-dies' 
chail. BAL-loon say. Lemonade ! Two. Ad- 
warnse and go back (gib 'ell a breakdown, shake 
it out o' yerselbs, keep a movil). SwiNG-cor- 
ners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade ! (Hoy !) 
Three. Gent come for'ard with a lady and go 
back, hoppersite come for'ard and do what yer 
can. (Aeiohoy !) BAL-loon say, and leetle lem- 
onade (Dat hair nigger by 'um fireplace 'hind a' 
time, shake it out o' yerselbs, gib 'ell a break- 
down). Now den ! Hoy ! Four ! Lemonade. 
BAL-loon say, and swing. Four ladies meets 
in 'um middle, four gents goes round 'um 
ladies. Four gents passes out under 'um ladies' 
arms, swing — and lemonade till 'a moosic can't 
play no more ! (Hoy, Hoy !) " 

The male dancers were all blacks, and one 
was an unusually powerful man of six feet 
three or four. The sound of their flat feet 
on the floor was as unlike the sound of white 
feet as their faces were unlike white faces. They 
toed and heeled, shuffled, double-shuftled, dou- 
ble-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat 
the time out rarely, dancing with a great show 
of teeth, and with a childish good-humored en- 
joyment that was very prepossessing. They 
generally kept together, these poor fellows, said 
Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a dis- 
advantage singly, and liable to slights in the 
neighboring streets. But if I were Light Jack, 
I should be very slow to interfere oppressively 
with Dark Jack ; for, whenever I have had to 
do with him, I have found him a simple and a 
gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked 
liis friendly permission to leave him restoration 
of beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it 
fell out that the last words I heard him say, as 
I blundered down the worn stairs, were, " Jeb- 
blem's elth 1 Ladies drinks fust ! " 



SAIIiOB 



410 



SAIRET QAMP 



The night was nowwell on into the morning, 
but for miles and hours we explored a strange 
world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but 
everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for 
Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth 
of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, 
kept in wonderful order by the police, and in 
much better order than by the corporation. 

Uncofmnercial Traveller, Chap. 5. 

SAUiOR— Description of Sol Gills. 

A weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of 
battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy 
from long pickling in salt water, and who smelt 
like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out. 
Dombey dr" Son, Chap. 8. 



To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was 
as plain and stubborn a Welsh wig as ever was 
worn, and in which he looked like anything but 
a Rover, he was a slow, quiet-spoken, thought- 
ful old fellow, with eyes as red as if they had 
been small suns looking at you through a fog ; 
and a newly-awakened manner, such as he 
might have acquired by having stax-ed for three 
or four days successively through every optical 
instrument in his shop, and suddenly came back 
to the world again, to find it green. 

Dojtibey (Sr' Son, Chap. 4. 

SATLOR-Home of Sol Gills. 

Such extraordinary precautions were taken in 
every instance to save room, and keep the thing 
compact ; and so much practical navigation was 
fitted, and cushioned, and screwed into every 
box (whether the box was a mere slab, as some 
were, or something between a cocked hat and a 
star-fish, as others were, and those quite mild 
and modest boxes as compared with others) ; 
that the shop itself, partaking of the general in- 
fection, seemed almost to become a snug, sea- 
going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good 
sea-room, in the event of an unexpected launch, 
to work its way securely to any desert island in 
the world. 

Many minor incidents in the household life 
of the Ships' Instrument-maker, who was proud 
of his little Midshipman, assisted and bore out 
this fancy. His acquaintance lying chiefly 
among ship-chandlers and so forth, he had al- 
ways plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit on his 
table. It was familiar with dried meats and 
tongues, possessing an extraordinary, flavor of 
rope-yarn. Pickles were produced upon it, in 
great wholesale jars, with " dealer in all kinds 
of Ships' Provisions " on the label ; spirits were 
set forth in case bottles with no throats. Old 
prints of ships with alphabetical references to 
their various mysteries, hung in frames upon 
the walls ; the Tartar Frigate under weigh, 
was on the plates ; outlandish shells, seaweeds, 
and mosses, decorated the chimneypiece ; the 
little wainscotted back parlor was lighted by 
a sky-light, like a cabin. 

Dombey df Son, Chap. 4. 

SAIREY GAMP and Betsey Prig:. 

Her toilet was simple. She had merely to 
'* chuck " her bonnet and shawl upon the bed ; 
give her hair two pulls, one upon the right side 
and one upon the left, as if she were ringing a 
couple of bells ; and all was done. The tea 
was already made, Mrs. Gamp was not long over 



the salad, and they were soon at the height of 
their repast. 

The temper of both parties was improved, for 
the time being, by the enjoyments of the table. 
When the meal came to a termination (which it 
was pretty long in doing), and Mrs. Gamp having 
cleared away, produced the tea-pot from the top- 
shelf, simultaneously with a couple of wine- 
glasses, they were quite amiable. 

" Betsey," said Mrs. Gamp, filling her own 
glass, and passing the tea-pot, " I will now pro- 
poge a toast. My frequent pardner, Betsey Prig! " 

" Which, altering the name to Sairah Gamp ; 
I drink," said Mrs. Prig, " with love and tender- 
ness." 

From this moment symptoms of inflammation 
began to lurk in the nose of each lady ; and per- 
haps, notwithstanding all appearances to the 
contrary, in the temper also. 

***** 

The best among us have their failings, and it 
must be conceded of Mrs. Prig, that if there 
were a blemish in the goodness of her disposi- 
tion, it was a habit she had of not bestowing all 
its sharp and acid properties upon her patients 
(as a thoroughly amiable woman would have 
done), but of keeping a considerable remainder 
for the service of her friends. Highly pickled 
salmon, and lettuces chopped up in vinegar, may, 
as viands possessing some acidity of their own, 
have encouraged and increased this failing in 
Mrs. Prig ; and every application to the tea-pot 
certainly did ; for it was often remarked of her 
by her friends, that she was most contradictory 
when most elevated. It is certain that her coun- 
tenance became about this time derisive and de- 
fiant, and that she sat with her arms folded, and 
one eye shut up, in a somewhat offensive, be- 
cause obtrusively intelligent, manner. 

Mrs. Gamp observing this, felt it the more 
necessary that Mrs. Prig should know her place, 
and be made sensible of her exact station in so- 
ciety, as well as of her obligations to herself. 
She therefore assumed an air of greater patronage 
and importance, as she went on to answer Mrs. 
Prig a little more in detail. 

" Mr. Chuffey, Betsey," said Mrs, Gamp, "is 
weak in his mind. Excuge me if I makes remark, 
that he may neither be so weak as people thinks, 
nor people may not think he is so weak as they 
pretends, and what I knows, T knows ; and what 
you don't, you don't ; -so do not ask me, Betsey. 
But Mr. Chuffey's friends has made propojals 
for his bein' took care on, and has said to me, 
'Mrs. Gamp, will you undertake it? We 
couldn't think,* they says, ' of trusting him to 
nobody but you, for, Sairey, you are gold as has 
passed the furnage. Will you undertake it, at 
your own price, day and night, and by your own 
self ? ' ' No,' I says, ' I will not. Do not reckon 
on it. There is,' I says, ' but one creetur in the 
world as I would undertake on sech terms, and 
her name is Harris. But,' I says, 'I am ac 
quainted with a friend, whose name is Betsey 
Prig, that I can recommend, and will assist me. 
Betsey,* I says, 'is always to be trusted, under 
me, and will be guided as I could desire.' " 

Here Mrs. Prig, without any abatement of her 
offensive manner, again counterfeited abstrac- 
tion of mind, and stretched out her hand to the 
tea-pot. It was more than Mrs. Gamp could 
bear. She stopped the hand of Mrs. Prig with 
her own, and said, with great feeling : 







Home of Sol Gills. 



410 



SAIREY GAMP 



411 



SAIREY GAMP 



" No, Betsey ! Drink fair, wotever you do ! " 

Mrs. Prig, thus baffled, threw herself back in 
her chair, and closing the same eye more em- 
phatically, and folding her arms tighter, suftered 
her head to roll slowly from side to side, while 
she surveyed her friend with a contemptuous 
smile. 

Mrs. Gamp resumed : 

" Mrs. Harris, Betsey — " 

" Bother Mrs. Harris ! " said Betsey Prig. 

Mrs. Gamp looked at her with amazement, 
incredulity, and indignation ; when Mrs. Prig, 
shutting her eye still closer, and folding her 
arms still tighter, uttered these memorable and 
tremendous words ; 

" I don't believe there's no sich a person ! " 

After the utterance of which expressions, she 
leaned forward, and snapped her fingers once, 
twice, thrice ; each time nearer to the face of Mrs. 
Gamp, and then rose to put on her bonnet, as 
one who felt that there was now a gulf between 
them, which nothing could ever bridge across. 

The shock of this blow was so violent and 
sudden, that Mrs. Gamp sat staring at nothing 
with uplifted eyes, and her mouth open as if she 
were gasping for breath, until Betsey Prig had 
put on her bonnet and her shawl, and was gath- 
ering the latter about her throat. Then Mrs. 
Gamp rose — morally and physically rose — and 
denounced her. 

" What ! " said Mrs. Gamp, " you bage cree- 
tur, have I know'd Mrs. Harris five and thirty 
year, to be told at last that there ain't no sech a 
person livin' ! Have I stood her friend in all 
her troubles, great and small, for it to come at 
last to sech a end as this, which her own sweet 
picter hanging up afore you all the time, to 
shame your Bragian words ! But well you 
mayn't believe there's no sech a creetur, for she 
wouldn't demean herself to look at you, and 
often has she said, when I have made mention 
of your name, which, to my sinful sorrow, I have 
done, ' What, Sairey Gamp ! debage yourself to 
her l^ Go along with you ! " 

" I'm a goin', ma'am, ain't I ? " said Mrs. Prig, 
stopping as she said it. 

" You had better, ma'am," said Mrs. Gamp. 

"Do you know who you're talking to, 
ma'am?" inquired her visitor. 

" Aperiently," said Mrs. Gamp, surveying her 
with scorn from head to foot, " to Betsey Prig. 
Aperiently so. / know her. No one better. 
Go along with you ! " 

***** 

Mrs. Gamp had in the meantime sunk into 
her chair, from whence, turning up her over- 
flowing eyes, and clasping her hands, she de- 
livered the following lamentation : 

•' Oh, Mr. Sweedlepipes, which Mr. Westlock 
also, if my eyes do not deceive, and a friend not 
havin' the pleasure of bein' beknown, wot I 
have took from Betsey Prig this blessed night, 
no mortial creetur knows ! If she had abuged 
me, bein' in liquor, which I thought I smelt her 
wen she come, but could not so believe, not 
bein' used myself" — Mrs. Gamp, by the way, 
was pretty far gone, and the fragrance of the 
tea-pot was strong in the room — '* I could have 
bore it with a thankful art. But the words she 
spoke of Mrs. Harris, lambs could not forgive. 
No, Betsey!" said Mrs. Gamp, in a violent 
burst of feeling, " nor worms forget ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 49, 



SAIREY GAMP-And Mrs. Harris. 

" There are some happy creeturs," Mrs. 
Gamp observed, " as time runs back'ards with, 
and you are one, Mrs. Mould ; not that he need 
do nothing except use you in his most owl- 
dacious way for years to come, I'm sure ; for 
young you are and will be, I says to Mrs. Harris," 
Mrs. Gamp continued, " only t'other day ; the 
last Monday evening fortnight as ever dawned 
upon this Piljian's Projiss of a mortal wale ; I 
says to Mrs. Harris when she says to me, * Years 
and our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us 
all,' — ' Say not the words, Mrs. Harris, if you 
and me is to be continual friends, for sech is 
not the case. Mrs. Mould,' I says, making so 
free, I will confess, as to use the name" (she curt- 
seyed here), " ' is one of them that goes agen 
the obserwation straight, and never, Mrs. Harris, 
whilst I've a drop of breath to draw, will I set 
by, and not stand up, don't think it.' — ' I ast 
your pardon, ma'am,' says Mrs. Harris, ' and I 
humbly grant your grace ; for if ever a woman 
lived as would see her feller creeturs into fits to 
serve her friends, well do I know that woman's 
name is Sairey Gamp.' " 

At this point she was fain to stop for breath, 
and advantage may be taken of the circumstance 
to state, that a fearful mystery surrounded this 
lady of the name of Harris, whom no one in 
the circle of Mrs. Gamp's acquaintance had ever 
seen, neither did any human being know her 
place of residence, though Mrs. Gamp appeared 
on her own showing to be in constant com- 
munication with her. There were conflicting 
rumors on the subject ; but the prevalent opinion 
was that she was a phantom of Mrs. Gamp's 
brain — as Messrs. Doe and Roe are fictions of 
the law — created for the express purppse of 
holding visionary dialogues with her on all man- 
ner of subjects, and invariably winding up with 
a compliment to the excellence of her nature. 

" And likewise what a pleasure," said Mrs. 
Gamp, turning with a tearful smile towards the 
daughters, " to see them two young ladies as I 
know'd afore a tooth in their pretty heads was 
cut, and have many a day seen — ah, the sweet 
creeturs ! — playing at berryins down in the 
shop, and follerin' the order-book to its long 
home in the iron safe ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 25. 

SAIREY GAMP— Her observations. 

" You may say whatever you wish to say here, 
Mrs. Gamp," said that gentleman, shaking his 
head with a melancholy expression. 

" It is not much as 1 have to say, when people 
is a mourning for the dead and gone," said 
Mrs. Gamp ; " but what I have to say is to the 
pint and purpose, and no off"euce intended, must 
be so considered. I have been at a many places 
in my time, gentlemen, and I hope I knows what 
my duties is, and how the same should be per- 
formed ; in course, if I did not, it would be very 
strange, and very wrong in sich a gentleman as 
Mr. Mould, which has undertook the highest 
families in this land, and given every satisfaction, 
so to recommend me as he does. I have seen a 
deal of trouble my own self," said Mrs. Gamp, 
laying greater and greater stress upon her words, 
'* and I can feel for them as has their feelings 
tried, but I am not a Rooshan or a Prooshan, 
and consequently cannot suffer spies to be set 
over me." 



SAIREY GAMP 



412 



SAIREY GAMP 



Before it was possible that an answer could 
be returned, Mrs. Gamp, growing redder in the 
face, went on to say : 

" It is not a easy matter, gentlemen, to live 
when you are left a widder woman ; particular 
when your feelings works upon you to that ex- 
tent that you often find yourself a going out, on 
terms which is a certain loss, and never can re- 
pay. But, in whatever way you earns your 
bread, you may have rules and regulations of 
your own, which cannot be broke through. 
Some people," said Mrs. Gamp, again entrench- 
ing herself behind her strong point, as if it were 
not assailable by human ingenuity, " may be 
Rooshans, and others may be Prooshans ; they 
are born so, and will please themselves. Them 
which is of other naturs thinks different." 

***** 

•' You have become indifferent since then, I 
suppose ? " said Mr. Pecksniff. " Use is second 
nature, Mrs. Gamp." 

"You may well say second nater, sir," re- 
turned that lady. " One's first ways is to find 
sich things a trial to the feelings, and so is one's 
lasting custom. If it wasn't for the nerve a 
little sip of liquor gives me (I never was able to 
do more than taste it), I never could go through 
with what I sometimes has to do. ' Mrs. Har- 
ris,' I says, at the very last case as ever I acted 
in, which it was but a young person, ' Mrs. Har- 
ris,' I says, ' leave the bottle on the chimney- 
piece and don't ask me to take none, but let me 
put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and 
then I will do what I'm engaged to do, accord- 
ing to the best of my ability.' ' Mrs. Gamp,' 
she says, in answer, ' if ever there was a sober 
creetur to be got at eighteen-pence a day for 
working people, and three and six for gentle- 
folks — night watching,' " said Mrs. Gamp, with 
emphasis, " * being a extra charge — you are that 
inwallable person.' ' Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 
' don't name the charge, for if I could afford to 
lay all my feller creeturs out for nothink, I would 
gladly do it, sich is the love I bears 'em. But 
what I always says to them as has the manage- 
ment of matters, Mrs. Harris ; ' " here she kept 
her eye on Mr. Pecksniff ; " ' be they gents or 
be they ladies, is, don't ask me whether I won't 
take none, or whether I will, but leave the bot- 
tle on the chimney-piece, and let me put my 
lips to it when I am so dispoged.' " 

The conclusion of this affecting narrative 
brought them to the house. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19. 

SAIREY GAMP— On drinking. 

Mrs. Gamp took the chair that was nearest 
the door, and casting up her eyes towards the 
ceiling, feigned to be wholly insensible to the 
fact of a glass of rum being in preparation, until 
it was placed in her hand by one of the young 
ladies, when she exhibited the greatest sur- 
prise. 

" A thing," she said, " as hardly ever, Mrs. 
Mould, occurs with me unless it is when I am 
indispoged, and find my half a pint of porter 
settling heavy on the chest. Mrs. Harris often 
and often says to me, ' Sairey Gamp,' she says, 
• you raly do amaze me ! ' ' Mrs. Harris,' I says 
to her, ' why so ? Give it a name, I beg.' ' Tell- 
ing the truth then, ma'am,' says Mrs. Harris, ' and 
shaming him as shall be nameless betwixt you 
and me, never did I think till I know'd you, as 



any woman could sick-nurse and monthly like- 
ways, on the little that you takes to (frink.' 
' Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, ' none on us knows 
what we can do till we tries ; and wunst, when 
me and Gamp kept ouse, I thought so too. But 
now,' I says, 'my half a pint of porter fully 
satisfies ; perwisin*, Mrs. Harris, that it is 
brought reg'lar, and draw'd mild. Whether I 
sicks or monthlies, ma'am, I hope I does my 
duty, but I am but a poor woman, and I earns 
my living hard ; therefore I do require it, which 
I makes confession, to be brought reg'lar and 
draw'd mild.' " 

The precise connection between these obser- 
vations and the glass of rum, did not appear ; 
for Mrs. Gamp proposing as a toast " The best 
of lucks to all ! " took off the dram in quite a 
scientific manner, without any further remarks. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 25. 

SAIREY GAMP— On liunian anticipations. 

" That is the Antwerp packet in the middle," 
said Ruth. 

" And I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do," 
cried Mrs. Gamp ; appearing to confound the 
prophet with the whale in this miraculous as- 
piration. 

Ruth said nothing in reply ; but as Mrs. 
Gamp, laying her chin against the cool iron of 
the rail, continued to look intently at the Ant- 
werp boat, and every now and then to give a 
little groan, she inquired whether any child of 
hers was going abroad that morning ? Or per- 
haps her husband, she said kindly. 

" Which shows," said Mrs. Gamp, casting up 
her eyes, " what a little way you've travelled into 
this wale of life, my dear young creetur ! As a 
good friend of mine has frequent made remark 
to me, which her name, my love, is Harris, Mrs. 
Harris, through the square and up the steps a 
turnin' round by the tobacker shop, ' Oh Sairey, 
Sairey, little do we know wot lays afore us ! ' 
' Mrs. Harris, ma'am,' I says, ' not much, it's 
true, but more than you suppoge. Our calcila- 
tions, ma'am,' I says, ' respectin' wot the num- 
ber of a family will be, comes most times within 
one, and oftener than you would suppoge, ex- 
act.' ' Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, in an awful 
way, ' Tell me wot is my indiwidgle number.' 
' No, Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, ' ex-cuge me, 
if you please. My own,' I says, 'has fallen out 
of three-pair backs, and had damp doorsteps 
settled on their lungs, and one was turned up 
smilin' in a bedstead, unbeknown. Therefore, 
ma'am,' I says, ' seek not to proticipate, but take 
'em as they come and as they go.' Mine," said 
Mrs. Gamp, " mine is all gone, my dear young 
chick. And as to husbands, there's a wooden 
leg gone likeways home to its account, which 
in its constancy of walkin' into wine vaults, 
and never comin' out again 'till fetched by 
force, was quite as weak as flesh, if not weak- 
er." 

When she had delivered this oration, Mrs. 
Gamp leaned her chin upon the cool iron again ; 
and looking intently at the Antwerp packet, 
shook her head and groaned. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40. 

SAIREY GAMP— On steamboats. 

She paused here, to look over the deck of the 
packet in question, and on the steps leading 
down to it, and on the gangways. Seeming to 




Sairey Gamp and Mrs. Harris. 



412 



SAIREY GAMP 



413 



SAVAGE 



have thus assured herself that the object of her 
commiseration had not yet arrived, she raised 
her eyes gradually up to the top of the escape- 
pipe, and indignantly apostrophised the vessel : 

" Oh drat you ! " said Mrs. Gamp, shaking her 
umbrella at it, "you're a nice spluttering nisy 
monster for a delicate young creetur to go and 
be a passenger by ; ain't you ! You never do no 
harm in that way, do you? With your ham- 
mering, and roaring, and hissing, and lamp-iling, 
you brute ! Them Confugion steamers," said 
Mrs. Gamp, shaking her umbrella again, "has 
done more to throw us out of our reg'lar work 
and bring ewents on at times when nobody 
counted on 'em (especially them screeching rail- 
road ones), than all the other frights that ever 
was took. I have heerd of one young man, a 
guard upon a railway, only three years opened — 
well does Mrs. Hanis know him, which indeed 
he is her own relation by her sister's marriage 
with a master sawyer — as is godfather at this 
present time to six-and-twenty bkssed little 
strangers, equally unexpected, and all on 'um 
named after the Ingeins as was the cause. 
Ugh!" said Mrs. Gamp, resuming her apos- 
trophe," one might easy know you was a man's in- 
vention, from your disregardlessness of the weak- 
ness of our naturs, so one might, you brute ! " 

It would not have been unnatural to suppose, 
from the first part of Mrs. Gamp's lamentations, 
that she was connecJ;ed with the stage-coaching 
or post-horsing trade. She had no means of 
judging of the effect of her concluding remarks 
upon her young companion ; for she interrupted 
herself at this point, and exclaimed : 

" There she identically goes ! Poor sweet 
young creetur, there she goes, like a lamb to 
the sacrifige ! If there's any illness when that 
wessel gets to sea," said Mrs. Gamp, propheti- 
cally, " it's murder, and I'm the witness for the 
persecution." — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40. 

SAIREY GAMP- Will not suffer " impo- 
gician." 
" I am but a poor woman, but I've been 
sought arter, sir, though you may not think it. 
I've been knocked up at all hours of the night, 
and warned out by a many landlords, in conse- 
quence of being mistook for Fire. I goes out 
working for my bread, 'tis true, but I maintains 
my independency, with your kind leave, and 
which I will till death. I has my feelins as a 
woman, sir, and I have been a mother likeways, 
but touch a pipkin as belongs to me, or make 
the least remarks on what I eats or drinks, and 
though you was the favoritest young for'ard 
hussy of a servant-gal as ever come into a 
house, either you leaves the place, or me. My 
earnings is not great, sir, but I will not be im- 
poged upon. Bless the babe, and save the 
mother, is my mortar, sir ; but I makes so free 
as add to that, Don't try no impogician with 
the Nuss, for she will not a beai it ! " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 40. 

SALUTATION-A hearty. 

With great heartiness, therefore, the Captain 
once again extended his enormous hand (not 
unlike an old block in color), and gave him a 
grip that left upon his smoother flesh a proof 
impression of the chinks and crevices with 
which the Captain's palm was liberally tattooed. 
Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 17. 



SALUTATION— The Conventional. 

" Mrs. Pipchin," said Mr. Dombey, " How do 
you do ? " 

" Thank you, Sir," said Mrs. Pipchin, " I am 
pretty well, considering." 

Mrs. Pipchin always used that form of 
words. It meant, considering her virtues, sac- 
rifices, and so forth. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 11. 

SANDWICH-A Mugby Station. 

" Well," said Our Missis, with dilated nos- 
trils. " Take a fresh, crisp, long, crusty, penny 
loaf made of the whitest and best flour. Cut 
it longwise through the middle. Insert a fair 
and nicely fitting slice of ham. Tie a smart 
piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole 
to bind it together. Add at one end a neat 
wrapper of clean white paper by which to hold 
it. And the universal French Refreshment sang- 
wich busts on your disgusted vision." 

Boy at Mugby. 

SANDWICHES— And entertainment. 

Between the pieces we almost all of us went 
out and refreshed. Many of us went the 
length of drinking beer at the bar of the neigh- 
boring public-house, some of us drank spirits, 
crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer 
at the refreshment bars established for us in 
the Theatre. The sandwich — as substantial as 
was consistent with portability, and as cheap 
as possible — we hailed as one of our greatest 
institutions. It forced its way among us at 
all stages of the entertainment, and we were 
always delighted to see it ; its adaptability to 
the varying moods of our nature was surprising ; 
we could never weep so comfortably as when 
our tears fell on our sandwich ; we could never 
laugh so heartily as when we choked with sand- 
wich ; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice 
so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in 
hand, to consider what would come of that res- 
olution of Wickedness in boots to sever Inno- 
cence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry 
in striped stockings. When the curtain fell for 
the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to 
help us through the rain and mire, and home 
to bed. — Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 4. 

SARCASM— Its expression. 

The thin straight lines of the setting of the 
eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the mark- 
ings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that 
looked handsomely diabolic. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 9. 

SAVAGE— The noble, a delusion. 

To come to the point at once, I beg to say 
that I have not the least belief in the Noble 
Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance, 
and an enormous superstition. His calling rum 
fire-water, and me a pale-face, wholly fail to 
reconcile me to him. I don't care what he calls 
me. I call him a savage, and I call a savage a 
something highly desirable to be civilized off 
the face of the earth. I think a mere gent 
(which I take to be the lowest form of civ liza- 
tion) better than a howling, whistling, t.uck- 
ing, stamping, jumping, tearing savage. It is 
all one to me, whether he sticks a fish-bone 
through his visage, or bits of trees through the 
lobes of his ears, or birds' feathers in his head 



SAVAGE 



414 



SAVAGE 



whether he flattens his haii- between two boards, 
or spreads his nose over the breadth of his face, 
or drags his lower lip down by great weights, 
or blackens his teeth, or knocks them out, or 
paints one cheek red and the other blue, or 
tattooes himself, or oils himself, or rubs his body 
with fat, or crimps it with knives. Yielding to 
whichsoever of these agreeable eccentricities, 
he is a savage — cruel, false, thievish, murder- 
ous ; addicted more or less to grease, entrails, 
and beastly' customs ; a wild animal with the 
questionable gift of boasting ; a conceited, tire- 
some, bloodthirsty, monotonous humbug. 

Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some 
people will talk about him, as they talk about 
the good old times ; how they will regret his 
disappearance, in the course of this world's de- 
velopment, from such and such lands — where his 
absence is a blessed relief and an indispensable 
preparation for the sowing of the very first seeds 
of any influence that can exalt humanity — how, 
even with the evidence of himself before them, 
they will either be determined to believe, or 
will suffer themselves to be persuaded into be- 
lieving, that he is something which their five 
senses tell them he is not. 

***** 

Mine are no new views of the noble savage. 
The greatest writers on natural history found 
him out long ago. Buffon knew what he was, 
and showed him why he is the sulky tyrant that 
he is to his women, and how it happens (Heav- 
en be praised !) that his race is spare in num- 
bers. For evidence of the quality of his moral 
nature, pass himself for a moment and refer to 
his " faithful dog." Has he ever improved a 
dog, or attached a dog, since his nobility first 
ran wild in woods, and was brought down (at a 
very long shot) by Pope? Or does the animal 
that is the friend of man, always degenerate in 
his low society ? 

It is not the miserable nature of the noble 
savage that is the new thing ; it is the whimper- 
ing over him with maudlin admiration, and the 
affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any 
comparison of advantage between the blemishes 
of civilization and the tenor of his swinish life. 
There may have been a change now and then 
in those diseased absurdities, but there is none 
in him. 

***** 

The noble savage sets a king to reign over 
him, to whom he submits his life and limbs 
without a murmur or question, and whose whole 
life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood ; but 
who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn 
killed by his relations and friends, the moment 
a gray hair appears on his head. All the noble 
savage's wars with his fellow-savages (and he 
takes no pleasure in anything else) are wars of 
extermination — which is the best thing I know 
of him, and the most comfortable to my mind 
when I look at him. He has no moral feelings 
of any kind, sort, or description ; and his ** mis- 
sion " may he summed up as simply diabolical. 

The ceremonies with which he faintly diver- 
sifies his life, are, of course, of a kindred 
nature. If he wants a wife he appears before 
the kennel of the gentleman whom he has select- 
ed for his father-in-law, attended by a party of 
male friends of a very strong flavor, who screech 
and whistle and stamp an offer of so many cows for 
the young lady's hand. The chosen father-in-law 



— also supported by a high-flavored party of male 
friends — screeches, whistles, and yells (being 
seated on the ground, he can't stamp) that there 
never was such a daughter in the market as his 
daughter, and that he must have six more cows. 
The son-in-law and his select circle of backers, 
screech, whistle, stamp, and yell in reply, that 
they will give three more cows. The father-in- 
law (an old deluder, over-paid at the beginning), 
accepts four, and rises to bind the bargain. The 
whole party, the young lady included, then falling 
into epileptic convulsions, and screeching, whist- 
ling, stamping, and yelling together — and no- 
body taking any notice of the young lady 
(whose charms are not to be thought of without 
a shudder) — the noble savage is considered mar- 
ried, and his friends make demoniacal leaps at 
him by way of congratulation. 

When the noble savage finds himself a little un- 
well, and mentions the circumstance to his friends, 
it is immediately perceived that he is under the 
influence of witchcraft. A learned personage, 
called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immedi- 
ately sent for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell 
out the witch. The male inhabitants of the 
kraal being seated on the ground, the learned 
doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and ad- 
ministers a dance of a most teri'ific nature, during 
the exhibition of which remedy he incessantly 
gnashes his teeth and howls : — " I am the origi- 
nal physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow, 
yow, yow. No connection with any other 
establishment. Till, till, till ! All other Um- 
targarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo, 
Boroo ! but I perceive here a genuine and real 
Umtargartie, Hoosh, Hoosh, Hoosh ! in whose 
blood I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer 
Blizzerum Boo ! will wash these bear's claws of 
mine. O yow, yow, yow ! " All this time the 
learned physician is looking out among the at- 
tentive faces for some unfortunate man who 
owes him a cow, or who has given him any small 
offence, or against whom, without offence, he 
has conceived a spite. Him he never fails to 
Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is instant- 
ly killed. In the absence of such an individual, 
the usual practice is to Nooker the quietest 
and most gentlemanly person in company. But 
the nookering is invariably followed on the spot 
by the butchering. 

***** 

When war is afoot among the noble savages 
— which is always — the chief holds a council to 
ascertain whether it is the opinion of his 
brothers and friends in general that the enemy 
shall be exterminated. On this occasion, after 
the performance of an Umsebeuza, or war-song, 
— which is exactly like all the other songs, — the 
chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends, 
arranged in single file. No particular order is 
observed during the delivery of this address, 
but every gentleman who finds himself excited 
by the subject, instead of crying " Hear, hear ! " 
as is the custom with us, darts from the rank and 
tramples out the life, or crushes the skull, or 
mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or breaks 
the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities 
on the body of an imaginary enemy. Several 
gentlemen becoming thus excited at once, and 
pounding away without the least regard to the 
orator, that illustrious person is rather in the 
position of an orator in an Irish House of Com- 
mons. But several of these scenes of savage 



SCHOIiAB 



416 



SCHOOL 



life bear a strong generic resemblance to an 
Irish election, and I think would be extremely 
well received and understood at Cork. 

***** 

To conclude as I began. My position is, that 
if we have anything to learn from the Noble 
Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a 
fable ; his happiness is a delusion ; his nobility, 
nonsense. We have no greater justification for 
being cruel to the miserable object, than for be- 
ing cruel to a William Shakespeare or an 
Isaac Newton ; but he passes away before an 
immeasurably better and higher power than 
ever ran wild in any earthly woods, and the 
world will be all the better when his place 
knows him no more. 

The Noble Savage. Reprinted Pieces. 

SCHOLAR— The new. 

Florence ran back to throw her arms round 
his neck, and hers was the last face in the door- 
way, turned towards him with a smile of en- 
couragement, the brighter for the tears through 
which it beamed. 

It made his childish bosom heave and swell 
when it was gone ; and sent the globes, the 
books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming 
round the room. But they stopped, all of a sud- 
den ; and then he heard the loud clock in the 
hall still gravely inquiring, '* how, is, my, lit, tie, 
friend ? how, is, my, lit, tie, friend ? " as it had 
done before. 

He sat, with folded hands, ,^pon his pedestal, 
silently listening. But he might have answered 
" weary, weary ! very lonely, very sad ! " And 
there, with an aching void in his young heart, 
and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, 
Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and 
the upholsterer were never coming. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. ii. 

SCHOLAR— A poor. 

" Here he is ! " said Ralph. " My nephew 
Nicholas, hot from school, with everything he 
learnt there fermenting in his head, and nothing 
fermenting in his pocket, is just the man you 
want." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 4. 

SCHOLAR— Sissy Jupe's igmorance of facts. 

M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very 
dense head for figures ; that, once possessed 
with a general idea of the globe, she took the 
smallest conceivable interest in its exact meas- 
urements ; that she was extremely slow in the 
acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident 
happened to be connected therewith ; that she 
would burst into tears on being required (by the 
mental process) immediately to name the cost 
of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at 
fourteen pence halfpenny ; that she was as low 
down, in the school, as low could be ; that after 
eight weeks of induction into the elements of 
Political Economy, she had only yesterday been 
set right by a prattler three feet high, for return- 
ing to the question, " What is the first princi- 
ple of this science ? " the absurd answer, " To 
do unto others as I would that they should do 
unto me." 

Mr. Gradgrind observed, .shaking his head, 
that all this was very bad ; that it showed the 
necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of 
knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, 
report, and tabular statements A to Z ; and 



that Jupc " must be kept to it." So Jupe was 
kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no 
wiser. — Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 9. 

SCHOLAR- A. 

A certain portion of his time was passed at 
Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as 
a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contra- 
band trade in European languages, instead of 
conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom 
House. The rest of his time he passed in 
London. — Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 10. 

SCHOOL- A holiday in. 

*' I think, boys," said the schoolmaster when 
the clock struck twelve, " that I shall give an 
extra half-holiday this afternoon." 

At this intelligence, the boys, led on and 
headed by the tall boy, raised a gi-eat shout, in 
the midst of which the master was seen to speak, 
but could not be heard. As he held up his hand, 
however, in token of his wish that they should 
be silent, they were considerate enough to leave 
off, as soon as the longest-winded among them 
were quite out of breath, 

" You must promise me first," said the school- 
master, " that you'll not be noisy, or at least, if 
you are, that you'll go away and be so — away out 
of the village, I mean. I'm sure you wouldn't 
disturb your old playmate and companion." 

There was a general murmur (and perhaps a 
very sincere one, for they were but boys) in the 
negative ; and the tall boy, perhaps as sincerely 
as any of them, called those about him to witness 
that he had only shouted in a whisper. 

" Then pray don't forget, there's my dear 
scholars," said the schoolmaster, " what I have 
asked you, and do it as a favor to me. Be as 
happy as you can, and don't be unmindful that 
you are blessed with health. Good-bye all ! " 

" Thank'ee, sir," and " good-bye, sir," were 
said a great many times in a variety of voices, 
and the boys went out very slowly and softly. 
But there was the sun shining and there were 
the birds singing, as the sun only shines and 
the birds only sing on holidays and half-holi- 
days ; there were the trees waving to all free 
boys to climb and nestle among their leafy 
branches ; the hay, entreating them to come 
and scatter it to the pure air ; the green corn, 
gently beckoning towards wood and stream , 
the smooth ground, rendered smoother still by 
blending lights and shadows, inviting to runs 
and leaps, and long walks, God knows whither. 
It was more than boy could bear, and with a 
joyous whoop the whole cluster took to their 
heels and spread themselves about, shouting 
and laughing as they went. 

" It's natural, thank Heaven !" said the poor 
schoolmaster, looking after them. " I'm very 
glad they didn't mind me !" 

It is difficult, however, to please everybody, as 
most of us would have discovered, even without 
the fable which bears that moral ; and in the 
course of the afternoon several mothers and 
aunts of pupils looked in to express their entire 
disapproval of the schoolmaster's proceeding. 
A few confined themselves to hints, such as 
politely inquiring what red-letter day or saint's 
day the almanac said it was ; a few (these were 
the profound village politicians) argued that it 
was a slight to the tiirone, and an afiVont tc 
church and state, and savored of revolutionary 



SCHOOL-DAYS 



416 



SCHOOL 



principles, to grant a half-holiday upon any 
lighter occasion than tlie birth-day of the Mon- 
arch ; but the majority expressed their displeas- 
ure on private grounds and in plain terms, 
arguing that to put the pupils on this short al- 
lowance of learning was nothing but an act of 
downright robbery and fraud ; and one old lady, 
finding that she could not inflame or irritate the 
peaceable schoolmaster by talking to him, 
bounced out of his house and talked at him 
for half-an-hour outside his own window, to 
another old lady, saying that of course he 
would deduct this half-holiday from his weekly 
charge, or of course he would naturally expect 
to have an opposition started against him ; there 
was no want of idle chaps in that neighborhood 
(here the old lady raised her voice), and some 
chaps who were too idle even to be schoolmas- 
ters, might soon find that there were other chaps 
put over their heads, and so she would have 
them take care, and look pretty sharp about 
them. But all these taunts and vexations failed 
to elicit one word from the meek schoolmaster, 
who sat with the child by his side — a little 
more dejected perhaps, but quite silent and 
uncomplaining, — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 25. 

SCHOOL-DAYS. 

Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy 
summer afternoon. A buzz and hum go up 
around me, as if the boys were so many blue- 
bottles. A cloggy sensation of the lukewarm 
fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or 
two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much 
lead. I would give the world to go to sleep. I 
sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at 
him like a young owl ; when sleep overpowers 
me for a minute, he still looms through my 
slumber, ruling those ciphering books, until he 
softly comes behind me and wakes me to 
plainer perception of him, with a red ridge 
across niy back. 

Here I am in the playground, with my eye 
still fascinated by him, though I can't see him. 
The window at a little distance from which I 
know he is having his dinner, stands for him, 
and I eye that instead. If he shows his face 
near it, mine assumes an imploring and submis- 
sive expression. If he looks out through the 
glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted) stops 
in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes 
contemplative. One day, Traddles (the most 
unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that win- 
dow accidentally with a ball. I shudder at this 
moment with the tremendous sensation of seeing 
it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded 
on to Mr. Creakle's sacred head. 

Poor Traddles ! In a tight sky-blue suit that 
made his arms and legs like German sausages, 
or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and 
most miserable of all the boys. He was always 
being caned — I think he was caned every day 
that half-year, except one holiday Monday when 
he was only ruler'd on both hands — and was 
always going to write to his uncle about it, and 
never did. After laying his head on the desk for 
a little while he would cheer up somehow, begin 
to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his 
slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first 
to wonder what comfort Traddles found in draw- 
ing skeletons ; and for some time looked upon 
him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself 
by those symbols of mortality that caning 



couldn't last for ever. But I believe he only 
did it because they were easy, and didn't want 
any features. 

He was very honorable, Traddles was, and. 
held it as a solemn duty in the boys to stand by 
one another. He suffered for this on several 
occasions ; and particularly once, M'hen Steer- 
forth laughed in church, and the Beadle thought 
it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him 
now, going away in custody, despised by the 
congregation. He never said who was the real 
offender, though he smarted for it next day, and 
was imprisoned so many hours that he came 
forth with a whole churchyardful of skeletons 
swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But 
he had his reward. Steerforth said there was 
nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all 
felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, 
I could have gone through a good deal (though 
I was much less brave than Traddles, and 
nothing like so old) to have won such a recom- 
pense. 

***** 

The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my 
recollection of the daily strife and struggle of 
our lives ; of the waning summer and the chang- 
ing season ; of the frosty mornings when we 
were rung out of bed, and the cold cold smell 
of the dark nights when we were rung into bed ; 
of the evening schoolroom, dimly lighted and 
indifferently warmed, and the morning school- 
room, which was nothing but a great shivering- 
machine ; of the alternation of boiled beef with 
roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mut- 
ton ; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog's-eared 
lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy- 
books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy 
Sundays, suet puddings, and a dirty atmosphere 
of ink surrounding all. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 7. 

SCHOOL— A jumble of a. 

The school at which young Charley Hexam 
had first learned from a book — the streets being, 
for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory 
Establishment in which very much that is never 
unlearned is learned without and before book — 
was a miserable loft in an unsavory yard. Its 
atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable ; it 
was crowded, noisy, and confusing ; half the 
pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of 
waking stupefaction ; the other half kept them 
in either condition by maintaining a monoton- 
ous droning noise, as if they wei-e performing, 
out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bag- 
pipe. The teachers, animated solely by good 
intentions, had no idea of execution, and a 
lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind 
endeavors. 

It was a school for all ages, and for both 
sexes. The latter were kept apart, and the for- 
mer were partitioned off into square assort- 
ments. But all the place was pervaded by a 
grimly ludicrous pretence that every pupil was 
childish and innocent. This pretence, much 
favored by the lady-visitors, led to the ghastli- 
est absurdities. Young women, old in the vices 
of the commonest and worst life, were expected 
to profess themselves enthralled by the good 
child's book, the Adventures of Little Mar- 
gery, who resided in the village cottage by the 
mill ; severely i-eproved and morally squashed 
the miller, when she was five and he was fifty ; 



i 






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1 



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417 



SCHOOL 



divided her porridge with singing birds ; denied 
herself a new nankeen bonnet, on the ground 
that the turnips did not wear nankeen bonnets, 
neither did the sheep who ate them ; who 
plaited straw and delivered the dreariest ora- 
tions to all comers, at all sorts of unsiasonable 
times. So, unwieldy young dredgers and hulk- 
ing mudlarks were referred to the experiences 
of Thomas Twopence, who, having resolved 
not to rob (unckr circumstances of uncommon 
atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of 
eighteenpence, presently came into supernatu- 
ral possession of three and sixpence, and lived 
a shining light ever afterwards. (Note, that 
the benefactor came to no good.) Several 
swaggering sinners had written their own biog- 
raphies in the same strain ; it always appear- 
ing from the lessons of those very boastful per- 
sons, that you were to do good, not because it 
was good, but because you were to make a 
good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pu- 
pils were taught to read (if they could learn) 
out of the New Testament ; and by dint of 
stumbling over the syllables and keeping their be- 
wildered eyes on the particular syllables coming 
round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant 
of the sublime history as if they had never 
seen or heard of it. An exceedingly and con- 
foundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in 
fact, where black spirits and gray, red spirits 
and white, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jum- 
bled, jumbled every night. And particularly 
every Sunday night. For then, an inclined 
plane of unfortunate infants would be handed 
over to the prosiest and worst of all the teach- 
ers with good intentions, whom nobody older 
would endure. Who, taking his stand on the 
floor before them as chief executioner, would 
be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as 
executioner's assistant. When and where it 
first became the conventional system that a 
weary or inattentive infant in a class must have 
its face smoothed downwards with a hot hand, 
or when and where the conventional volunteer 
boy first beheld such system in operation, and 
became inflamed with a sacred zeal to admin- 
ister it, matters not. It was the function of the 
chief executioner to hold forth, and it was the 
function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping in- 
fants, yawning infants, restless infants, whim- 
pering infants, and smooth their wretched faces ; 
sometimes with one hand, as if he were anoint- 
ing them for a whisker ; sometimes with both 
hands, applied after the fashion of blinkers. 
And so the jumble would be in action in this 
department for a mortal hour ; the exponent 
drawling on to My Dearerr Childerrenerr, let 
us say, for example, about the beautiful coming 
to the Sepulchre ; and repeating the word Sep- 
ulchre (commonly used among infants) five 
hundred times, and never once hinting what it 
meant ; the conventional boy smoothing away 
right and left, as an infallible commentary ; the 
whole hot-bed of flushed and exhausted infants 
exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough, 
fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were as- 
sembled in High Market for the purpose. 

Our Mtittuil Friend ^ Book II., Chap. i. 

SCHOOL— David Copperfleld at. 

I gazed upon the school-room into which he 
took me, as the most forlorn and desolate place 
I had ever seen. I see it now A long room, 



with three long rows of desks, and six of forms, 
and bristling all round with pegs for hats and 
slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises 
litter the dirty floor. Some silkworms' houses, 
made of the same materials, are scattered over 
the desks. Two miserable little white mice, 
left behind by their owner, are running up and 
down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and 
wire, looking in all the corners with their red 
eyes for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very 
little bigger than himself, makes a mournful 
rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, 
two inches high, or dropping from it ; but 
neither sings nor chirps. There is a strange, 
unwholesome smell upon the room, like mil- 
dewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and 
rotten books. There could not well be more 
ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless 
from its first construction, and the skies had 
rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through 
the varying seasons of the year. 

Mr. Mell having left me while he took his 
irreparable boots up-stairs, I went softly to the 
upper end of the room, observing all this as I 
crept along. Suddenly I came upon a paste- 
board placard, beautifully written, which was 
lying on the desk, and bore these words : " Take 
care of him. He bites." 

I got upon the desk immediately, apprehen- 
sive of at least a great dog underneath. But, 
though I looked all round with anxious eyes, I 
could see nothing of him. I was still engaged 
in peering about when Mr. Mell came back, 
and asked me what I did up there ? 

" I beg your pardon, sir," says I, " if you 
please, I'm looking for the dog." 

" Dog ? " says he. " What dog ? " 

"Isn't it a dog, sir?" 

" Isn't what a dog ? " 

" That's to be taken care of, sir ; that bites ! " 

" No, Copperfleld," says he, gravely, " that's 
not a dog. That's a boy. My instructions are, 
Copperfield, to put this placard on your back. 
I am sorry to make such a beginning with you, 
but I must do it." 

With that he took me down, and tied the 
placard, which was neatly constructed for the 
purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack ; and 
wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consola- 
tion of carrying it. — David Copperfield, Chap, 5. 

SCHOOL-Of Dr. Blimber. 

The Doctor's was a mighty fine house, front- 
ing the sea. Not a joyful style of house with- 
in, but quite the contrary. Sad-colored cur- 
tains, whose proportions were spare and lean, 
hid themselves despondently behind the win- 
dows. The tables and chairs were put away in 
rows, like figures in a sum ; fires were so rarely 
lighted in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt 
like wells, and a visitor represented tlie bucket ; 
the dining-room seemed the last place in the 
world where any eating or drinking was likely 
to occur ; there was no sound through all thfe 
house but the ticking of the great clock in the 
hall, which made itself audible in the very gar- 
rets ; and sometimes a dull ciying of young 
gentlemen at their lessons, like the murmurings 
of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons. 

Do m bey tSr* Son, Chap. ii. 

SCHOOL— First hours in. 

The Doctor, with his half-shut eyes, and his 



SCHOOL 



418 



SCHOOL-ROOM 



usual smile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort 
of interest that might attach to some choice lit- 
tle animal he was going to stuff. 

***** 

He leered as if he would have liked to tackle 
him with the Greek alphabet on the spot. 

Cornelia took him first to the school-room, 
which was situated at the back of the hall, and 
was approached through two baize doors, which 
deadened and muffled the young gentlemen's 
voices. Here, there were eight young gentle- 
men in various stages of mental prostration, all 
very hard at work, and very grave indeed. 
Toots, as an old hand, had a desk to himself in 
one corner ; and a magnificent man, of immense 
age, he looked, in Paul's young eyes, behind it. 

Mr. Feeder, B.A., who sat at another little 
desk, had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly 
grinding that tune to four young gentlemen. Of 
the remaining four, two, who grasped their fore- 
heads convulsively, were engaged in solving 
mathematical problems ; one, with his face like 
a dirty window, from much crying, was endea- 
voring to flounder through a hopeless number 
of lines before dinner ; and one sat looking at 
his task in stony stupefaction and despair — 
which it seemed had been his condition ever 
since breakfast-time. 

The appearance of a new boy did not create 
the sensation that might have been expected. 
Mr. Feeder, B.A. (who was in the habit of shav- 
ing his head for coolness, and had nothing but 
little bristles on it), gave him a bony hand, and 
told him he was glad to see him — which Paul 
would have been very glad to have told him, if 
he could have done so with the least sincerity. 
Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands 
with the four young gentlemen at Mr. Feeder's 
desk ; then with the two young gentlemen at 
work on the problems, who were very feverish : 
then with the young gentleman at work against 
time, who was very inky ; and lastly with the 
young gentleman in a state of stupefaction, 
who was flabby and quite cold. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 12. 

SCHOOL-The villag-e. 

A small, white-headed boy with a sunburnt 
face appeared at the door, while he was speak- 
ing, and stopping there to make a rustic bow, 
came in and took his seat upon one of the forms. 
The white-headed boy then put an open book 
astonishingly dog's-eared, upon his knees, and 
thrusting his hands into his pockets began count- 
ing the marbles with which they were filled ; 
displaying in the expression of his face a re- 
markable capacity of totally abstracting his 
mind from the spelling on which his eyes were 
fixed. Soon afterwards another white-headed 
little boy came straggling in, and after him a 
red-headed lad, and after him two more with 
white heads, and then one with a flaxen poll, 
and so on until the forms were occupied by a 
dozen boys or thereabouts, with heads of every 
color but gray, and ranging in their ages from 
four years old to fourteen years or more ; for the 
legs of the youngest were a long way from the 
floor when he sat upon the form, and the eldest 
was a heavy, good-tempered, foolish fellow, 
about half a head taller than the schoolmaster. 

At the top of the first form — the post of honor 
in the school — was the vacant place of the little 



sick scholar, and at the head of the row of pegs 
on which those who came in hats or caps were 
wont to hang them up, one was left empty. No 
boy attempted to violate the sanctity of seat or 
peg, but many a one looked from the empty 
spaces to the schoolmaster, and whispered his 
idle neighbor behind his hand. 

Then began the hum of conning over lessons 
and getting them by heart, the whispered jest 
and stealthy game, and all the noise and drawl 
of school ; and in the midst of the din sat the 
poor schoolmaster, the very image of meekness 
and simplicity, vainly attempting to fix his mind 
upon the duties of the day, and to forget his 
little friend. But the tedium of his office re- 
minded him more strongly of the willing scholar, 
and his thoughts were rambling from his pupils 
— it was plain. 

None knew this better than the idlest boys, 
who, growing bolder with impunity, waxed 
louder and more daring ; playing odd-or-even 
under the master's eye, eating apples openly and 
without rebuke, pinching each other in sport or 
malice without the least reserve, and cutting 
their autographs in the very legs of his desk. 
The puzzled dunce, who stood beside it to say 
his lesson out of book, looked no longer at the 
ceiling for forgotten words, but drew closer to 
the master's elbow and boldly cast his eye upon 
the page ; the wag of the little troop squinted 
and made grimaces (at the smallest boy, of 
course), holding no book before his face, and his 
approving audience knew no constraint in their 
delight. If the master did chance to i-ouse him- 
self and seem alive to what was going on, the 
noise subsided for a moment and no eyes met 
his but wore a studious and a deeply humble look ; 
but the instant he relapsed again, it broke out 
afresh, and ten times louder than before. 

Oh ! how some of those idle fellows longed 
to be outside, and how they looked at the open 
door and window, as if they half meditated 
rushing violently out, plunging into the woods, 
and being wild boys and savages from that time 
forth. What rebellious thoughts of the cool 
river, and some shady bathing-place beneath 
willow trees with branches dipping in the water, 
kept tempting and urging that sturdy boy, who, 
with his shirt-collar unbuttoned and flung back 
as far as it could go, sat fanning his flushed face 
with a spelling-book, wishing himself a whale, 
or a tittlebat, or a fly, or any*;hing but a boy at 
school on that hot, broiling day ! Heat ! ask 
that other boy, whose seat being nearest to the 
door gave him opportunities of gliding out into 
the garden and driving his companions to mad- 
ness by dipping his face into the bucket of the 
well and then rolling on the grass, — ask him if 
there were ever such a day as that, when even the 
bees were diving deep down into the cups of 
flowers and stopping there, as if they had made 
up their minds to retire from business and be 
manufacturers of honey no more. The day was 
made for laziness, and lying on one's back in 
green places, and staring at the sky till its bright- 
ness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep ; 
and was this a time to be poring over musty books 
in a dark room, slighted by the very sun itself? 
Monstrous ! — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 25. 

SCHOOL-ROOM—Tlie old master and sohol- 
ar. 

The child looked round the room as she took! 



I 



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419 



SCHOOL 



her seat. There were a couple of forms, notched 
and cut and inked all over ; a small deal desk, 
perched on four legs, at which no doubt the 
master, sat ; a few dog's-eared books upon a 
high shelf; and beside them a motley collection 
of peg-tops, balls, kites, fishing-lines, marbles, 
half-eaten apples, and other confiscated property 
of idle urchins. Displayed on hooks upon the wall 
in all their terrors, were the cane and ruler ; and 
near them, on a small shelf of its own, the 
dunce's cap, made of old newspapers, and deco- 
rated with glaring wafers of the largest size. 
But the great ornaments of the walls were cer- 
tain moral sentences fairly copied in good round 
text, and well-worked sums in simple addition 
and multiplication, evidently achieved by the 
same hand, which were plentifully pasted all 
round the room ; for the double purpose, as it 
seemed, of bearing testimony to the excellence 
of the school, and kindling a worthy emulation 
in the bosoms of the scholars. 

"Yes," said the old schoolmaster, observ- 
ing that her attention was caught by these lat- 
ter specimens. " That's beautiful writing, my 
dear." 

" Very, sir," replied the child modestly ; " is 
it yours ? " 

" Mine ! " he returned, taking out his specta- 
cles and putting them on, to have a better view 
of the triumphs so dear to his heart. " /couldn't 
write like that now-a-days. No. They're all 
done by one hand ; a little hand it is, not so old 
as yours, but a very clever one." 

As the schoolmaster said this, he saw that a 
small blot of ink had been thrown on one of the 
copies, so he took a penknife from his pocket, 
and going up to the wall, carefully scraped it 
out. When he had finished, he walked slowly 
backward from the writing, admiring it as one 
might contemplate a beautiful picture, but with 
something of sadness in his voice and manner 
which quite touched the child, though she was 
unacquainted with its cause. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 24. 

SCHOOL— Of Squeers (Dotheboys Hall). 

Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, 
children with the countenances of old men, de- 
formities with irons upon their limbs, boys of 
stunted growth, and others whose long, meagre 
legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, 
all crowded on the view together ; there were 
the bleared eye, the hare-lip, the crooked foot, 
and every ugliness or distortion that told of un- 
natural aversion conceived by parents for their 
offspring, or of young lives which, from the ear- 
liest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible en- 
durance of cruelty and neglect. There were 
little faces which should have been handsome, 
darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suf- 
fering ; there was childhood, with the light of 
its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its help- 
lessness alone remaining ; there were vicious- 
faced boys, brooding, with leaden eyes, like 
malefactors in a jail ; and there were young 
creatures on whom the sins of their frail parents 
had descended, weeping even for the mercenary 
nurses they had known, and lonesome even in 
their loneliness. With every kindly sympathy 
and affection blasted in its birth, with every 
young and healthy feeling flogged and starved 
down, with every revengeful passion that can 
fester in swollen hearts, eating its evil way to 



their core in silence, what an incipient Hell 
was breeding here ! 

And yet this scene, painful as it was, had its 
grotesque features, which, in a less interested ob- 
server than Nicholas, might have provoked a 
smile. Mrs. Squeers stood at one of the desks, 
presiding over an immense basin of brimstone 
and treacle, of which delicious compound she 
administered a large instalment to each boy in 
succession : using for the purpose a common 
wooden spoon, which might have been origin- 
ally manufactured for some gigantic top, and 
which widened every young gentleman's mouth 
considerably : they being all obliged, under 
heavy corporal penalties, to take in the whole 
of the bowl at a gasp. In another corner, hud- 
dled together for companionship, were the little 
boys who had arrived on the preceding night, 
three of them in very large leather breeches, 
and two in old trousers, a somewhat tighter fit 
than drawers are usually worn ; at no great dis- 
tance from these was seated the juvenile son 
and heir of Mr, Squeers — a striking likeness of 
his father — kicking, with great vigor, under the 
hands of Smike, who was fitting upon him a 
pair of new boots that bore a most suspicious 
resemblance to those which the least of the lit- 
tle boys had worn on the journey down — as the 
little boy himself seemed to think, for he was 
regarding the appropriation with a look of most 
rueful amazement. Besides these, there was a 
long row of boys waiting, with countenances of 
no pleasant anticipation, to be treacled ; and 
another file, who had just escaped from the in- 
fliction, making a variety of wry mouths indica- 
tive of anything but satisfaction. The whole 
were attired in such motley, ill-sorted, extraor- 
dinary garments, as would have been irresistibly 
ridiculous, but for the foul appearance of dirt, 
disorder, and disease, with which they were 
associated. 

" Now," said Squeers, giving the desk a great 
rap with his cane, which made half the little 
boys nearly jump out of their boots, " is that 
physicking over ? " 

" Just over," said Mrs. Squeers, choking the 
last boy in her hurry, and tapping the crown of 
his head with the wooden spoon to restore him, 
" Here, you Smike ; take away now. Look 
sharp ! " 

Smike shuffled out with the basin, and Mrs. 
Squeers having called up a little boy with a 
curly head, and wiped her hands upon it, hur- 
ried out after him into a species of wash-house, 
where there was a small fire and a large kettle, 
together with a number of little wooden bowls 
which were arranged upon a board. 

Into these bowls, Mrs. Squeers, assisted by 
the hungry servant, poured a brown composition 
which looked like diluted pincushions without 
the covers, and was called porridge. A minute 
wedge of brown bread was inserted in each 
bowl, and when they had eaten their porridge 
by means of the bread, the boys ate the bread 
itself, and had finished their breakfast ; where- 
upon Mr. Squeers said, in a solemn voice, " For 
what we have received, may the Lord make 
us truly thankful ! " — and went away to his 
own. 

Nicholas distended his stomach with a bowl 
of porridge, for much the same reason which 
induces some savages to swallow earth — lest 
they should be inconveniently hungry when 



SCHOOIi-DAYS 



420 



SCHOOIi-BOY 



1 



there is nothing to eat. Having further dispos- 
ed of a slice of bread and butter, allotted to him 
in virtue of his office, he sat himself down to 
wait for school time. 

Nicholas Nickkby, Chap. 8. 

SCHOOL-DAYS— A retrospect. 

My school-days ! The silent gliding on of 
my existence — the unseen, unfelt progress of my 
life — from childhood up to youth ! Let me 
think, as I look back upon that flowing water, 
now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whe- 
ther there are any marks along its course, by 
which I can remember how it ran. 

A moment, and I occupy my place in the Ca- 
thedral, where we all went together, every Sun- 
day morning, assembling first at school for that 
purpose. The earthy smell, the sunless air, the 
sensation of the world being shut out, the re- 
sounding of the organ through the black and 
white arched galleries and aisles, are wings that 
take me back, and hold me hovering above 
those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking 
dream. 

I am not the last boy in the school. I have 
risen, in a few months, over several heads. But 
the first boy seems to me a mighty creature, 
dwelling afar off, whose giddy height is unat- 
tainable. Agnes says, " No," but I say, " Yes," 
and tell her that she little thinks what stores of 
knowledge have been mastered by the wonder- 
ful Being, at whose place she thinks I, even I, 
weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He is not 
my private friend and public patron, as Steer- 
forth was ; but I hold him in a reverential re- 
spect. I chiefly wonder what he'll be, when he 
leaves Dr. Strong's, and what mankind will 
do to maintain any place against him. 

But who is this that breaks upon me ? This 
is Miss Shepherd, whom I love. 

Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Net- 
tingall's establishment. I adore Miss Shepherd. 
She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round 
face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettin- 
gall's young ladies come to the Cathedral too. 
I cannot look upon my book, for I must look 
upon Miss Shepherd. When the choristers 
chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the service 
I mentally insert Miss Shepherd's name : I put 
her in among the Royal Family. At home, in 
my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry 
out, " Oh, Miss Shepherd ! " in a transport of 
love. 

For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shep- 
herd's feelings, but, at length. Fate being propi- 
tious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have 
Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss 
Shepherd's glove, and feel a thrill go up the 
right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair. 
I say nothing tender to Miss Shepherd, but we 
understand each other. Miss Shepherd and my- 
self live but to be united. 

Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve 
Brazil nuts for a present, I wonder ? They are 
not expressive of affection, they are difficult to 
pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they 
are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they 
are oily when cracked ; yet I feel that they are 
appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy bis- 
cuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd ; and 
oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shep- 
herd in the cloak room. Ecstasy ! What are 
my agony and indignation next day, when I hear 



a flying rumor that the Misses Nettingall have 
stood Miss Shepherd in the stocks for turning in 
her toes ! 

Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme 
and vision of my life, how do I ever come to 
break with her? I can't conceive. And yet a 
coolness grows between Miss Shepherd and my- 
self. Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd hav- 
ing said she wished I wouldn't stare so, and 
having avowed a preference for Master Jone>^ — 
for Jones ! a boy of no merit whatever ! The 
gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. 
At last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingall's 
establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd 
makes a face as she goes by, and laughs to her 
companion. All is over. The devotion of a 
life — it seems a life, it is all the same — is at an 
end : Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning 
service, and the Royal Family know her no 
more. — David Copperfield, Chap. 1 8. 

SCHOOL— Influence of cruelty in. 

In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, 
whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, 
there is not likely to be much learned. I believe 
our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set as any 
schoolboys in existence ; they were too much 
troubled and knocked about to learn : they 
could no more do that to advantage, than any 
one can do anything to advantage, in a life of 
constant misfortune, torment, and worry. 

David Copperfield, Chap. ^. 

SCHOOL-BOY-Death of the. 

He was a very young boy ; quite a little child. 
His hair still hung in curls about his face, and 
his eyes were very bright ; but their light was 
of Heaven, not earth. The schoolmaster took 
a seat beside him, and stooping over the pillow, 
whispered his name. The boy sprung up, 
stroked his face with his hand, and threw his 
wasted arms round his neck, crying out that he 
was his dear kind friend. 

" I hope I always was. I meant to be, God 
knows," said the poor schoolmaster. 

"Who is that?" said the boy, seeing Nell. 
" I am afraid to kiss her, lest I should make her 
ill. Ask her to shake hands with me." 

The sobbing child came closer up, and took 
the little languid hand in hers. Releasing his 
again after a time, the sick boy laid him gently 
down. 

" You remember the garden, Harry," whis- 
pered the schoolmaster, anxious to rouse him, 
for a dullness seemed gathering upon the child, 
" and how pleasant it used to be in the evening 
time? You must make haste to visit it again, 
for I think the very flowers have missed you, 
and are less gay than they used to be. You 
will come soon, my dear, very soon now, — won't 
you?" 

The boy smiled faintly — so very, very faintly 
— and put his hand upon his friend's gray head. 
He moved his lips too, but no voice came from 
them ; no, not a sound. 

In the silence that ensued, the hum of dis- 
tant voices borne upon the evening air came 
floating through the open window. " What's 
that ? " said the sick child, opening his eyes. 

" The boys at play upon the green." 

He took a handkerchief from his pillow, and 
tried to wave it above his head. But the feeble 
arm dropped powerless down. 



I 



SCHOOL-BOYS 



421 



SCH00L-2KASTEB 



" Shall I do it ? " said the schoolmaster. 

" Please wave it at the window," was the 
faint reply. " Tie it to the lattice. Some of 
them may see it there. Perhaps they'll think 
of me, and look this way." 

He raised his head, and glanced from the 
fluttering signal to his idle bat, that lay with 
slate and book and other boyish property upon a 
table in the room. And then he laid him 
softly down once more, and asked if the little 
girl were there, for he could not see her. 

She stepped forward, and pressed the passive 
hand that lay upon the coverlet. The two old 
friends and companions — for such they were, 
though they were man and child — held each other 
in a long embrace, and then the little scholar 
turned his face towards the wall, and fell asleep. 

The poor schoolmaster sat in the same place, 
holding the small cold hand in his, and chafing 
it. It was but the hand of a dead child. He 
felt that ; and yet he chafed it still, and could 
not lay it down. — 0/d Curiosity Shop, Chap. 25. 

SCHOOL-BOYS— Squeers on the diet of. 

" He had as good grazing, that boy had, as 
there is about us." 

Ralph looked as if he did not quite under- 
stand the observation. 

" Grazing," said Squeers, raising his voice, 
under the impression that as Ralph failed to 
comprehend him, he must be deaf. " When 
a boy gets weak and ill and don't relish his 
meals, we give him a change of diet — turn him 
out, for an hour or so every day, into a neigh- 
bor's turnip-field, or sometimes, if it's a delicate 
case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots al- 
ternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. 
There an't better land in the county than this 
perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and 
catches cold and indigestion, and what not, 
and then his friends bring a lawsuit against 
me ! Now, you'd hardly suppose," added 
Squeers, moving in his chair with the impatience 
of an ill-used man, "that people's ingratitude 
would carry them quite as far as that ; would 
you ? " — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 34. 

SCHOOL-BOOKS-The. 

They comprised a little English, and a deal 
of Latin — names of things, declensions of arti- 
cles and substantives, exercises thereon, and 
preliminary rules — a trifle of orthography, a 
glance at ancient history, a wink or two at 
modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights 
and measures, and a little general information. 
When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he 
found he had no idea of number one ; frag- 
ments whereof afterwards obtruded themselves 
into number three, which slided into number 
four, which grafted itself on to number two. 
So that whether twenty Romuluses made a 
Remus, or hie hsec hoc was troy weight, or a 
verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or 
three times four was Taurus, a bull, were open 
questions with him. — Dombey (5r» Son, Chap. 12. 

SCHOOL-Vaoation. 

Oh, Saturdays ! Oh, happy Saturdays, when 
Florence always came at noon, and never 
would, in any weather, stay away, though Mrs. 
Pipchin snarled, and growled, and worried her 
bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at 
least two little Christians among all the Jews, 



and did the holy Sabbath work of strengthen- 
ing and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love. 
Dombey &^ Son, Chap. 12. 

When the Midsummer vacation approached, 
no indecent manifestations of joy were exhibit- 
ed by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen as- 
sembled at Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent 
expression as " breaking up," would have been 
quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. 
The young gentlemen oozed away, semi-annu- 
ally, to their own homes ; but they never broke 
up. They would have scorned the action. 

Dombey &* Son, Chap. 3. 

SCHOOIi-MASTER— liove as a teacher. 

There is no school in which a pupil gets on 
so fast, as that in which Kit became a scholar 
when he gave Barbara the kiss. He saw what 
Barbara meant now — he had his lesson by 
heart all at once — she was the book — there it 
was before him, as plain as print. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 69. 

SCHOOL-MASTEEr-The old. 

He is an old man now. Of the many who 
once crowded round him in all the hollow 
friendship of boon companionship, some have 
died, some have fallen like himself, some have 
prospered — all have forgotten him. Time and 
misfortune have mercifully been permitted to 
impair his memory, and use has habituated him 
to his present condition. Meek, uncomplain- 
ing, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, 
he has been allowed to hold his situation long 
beyond the usual period ; and he will no doubt 
continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him 
incapable, or death releases him. As the grey- 
headed old man feebly paces up and down the 
sunny side of the little court-yard between 
school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for 
the most intimate of his former friends to 
recognize their once gay and happy associate, 
in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. 

Sketches ( Scenes), Chap. i. 

SCHOOL-MASTER-The kind. 

Some of the higher scholars boarded in the 
Doctor's house, and through them I learned, at 
second-hand, some particulars of the Doctor's 
history. As, how he had not yet been married 
twelve months to the beautiful young lady I 
had seen in the study, whom he had married 
for love ; for she had not a sixpence, and had a 
world of poor relations (so our fellows said) 
ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and 
home. Also, how the Doctor's cogitating man- 
ner was attibutable to his being always engaged 
in looking out for Greek roots ; which, in my 
innocence and ignorance, I supposed to be a 
botanical furor on the Doctor's part, especially 
as he always looked at the ground when he 
walked about, until I understood that they were 
roots of words, with a view to a new Dictionary 
which he had in contemplation. Adams, our 
head-boy, who had a turn for mathematics, had 
made a calculation, I was informed, of the time 
this Dictionary would take in completing, on the 
Doctor's plan, and at the Doctor's rate of going. 
He considered that it might be done in one thou- 
sand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting 
from the Doctor's last, or sixty-second birthday. 

But the Doctor himself was the idol of the 



SCHOOL-MASTER 



SCHOOL-MASTEB 



whole school : and it must have been a badly- 
composed school if he had been anything else, 
for he was the kindest of men ; with a simple 
faith in him that might have touched the stone 
hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he 
walked up and down that part of the court-yard 
which was at the side of the house, with the 
stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with 
their heads cocked slyly, as if they knew how 
much more knowing they were in worldly affairs 
than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get 
near enough to his creaking shoes to attract his 
attention to one sentence of a tale of distress, 
that vagabond was made for the next two days. 
It was so notorious in the house, that the masters 
and head-boys took pains to cut these marauders 
off at angles, and to get out of windows, and 
turn them out of the court-yard, before they 
could make the Doctor aware of their presence ; 
which was sometimes happily effected within a 
few yards of him, without his knowing anything 
of the matter, as he jogged to and fro. Outside 
of his own domain, and unprotected, he was a 
very sheep for the shearers. He would have 
taken his gaiters off his legs, to give away. In 
fact, there was a story current among us (I have 
no idea, and never had, on what authority, but 
I have believed it for so many years that I feel 
quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one 
winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters 
on a beggar-woman, who occasioned some scan- 
dal in the neighborhood by exhibiting a fine in- 
fant from door to door, wrapped in those gar- 
ments, which were universally recognised, being 
as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral. 
The legend added that the only person who did 
not identify them was the Doctor himself, who, 
when they were shortly afterwards displayed at 
the door of a little second-hand shop of no very 
good repute, where such things were taken in 
exchange for gin, was more than once observed 
to handle them approvingly, as if admiring 
some curious novelty in the pattern, and con- 
sidering them an improvement on his own. 

David Copper field y Chap. it. 

SCHOOL-MASTEH — Bradley Headstone, 
the. 
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat 
and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and de- 
cent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of 
pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in 
his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his 
neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man 
of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any 
other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness 
in his manner of wearing this, as if there were 
a want of adaptation between him and it, re- 
calling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. 
He had acquired mechanically a great store of 
teacher's knowledge. He could do mental 
arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechan- 
ically, blow various wind instruments mechan- 
ically, even play the great church organ mechan- 
ically. From his early childhood up, his mind 
had been a place of mechanical stowage. The 
arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that 
it might be always ready to meet the demands 
of retail dealers — history here, geography there, 
astronomy to the right, political economy to the 
left — natural history, the physical sciences, fig- 
ures, music, the lower mathematics, and what 
not, all in their several places — this care had 



imparted to his countenance a look of care ; 
while the habit of questioning and being ques- 
tioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a 
manner that would be better described as one 
of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled 
trouble in the face. It was the face belonging 
to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect, that 
had toiled hard to get what it had won, and 
that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He 
always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should 
be missing from his mental warehouse, and tak- 
ing stock to assure himself. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book JI., Chap. i. 

SCHOOL-MASTER-Creakle, the. 

Half the establishment was writhing and cry- 
ing, before the day's work began ; and how 
much of it had writhed and cried before the 
day's work was over, I am really afraid to recol- 
lect, lest I should seem to exaggerate. 

I should think there never can have been a 
man who enjoyed his profession more than Mr. 
Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at the 
boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving 
appetite, I am confident that he couldn't resist 
a chubby boy, especially ; that there was a fasci- 
nation in such a subject, which made him rest- 
less in his mind, until he had scored and marked 
him for the day. I was chubby myself, and 
ought to know. I am sure when I think of the 
fellow now, my blood rises against him with the 
disinterested indignation I should feel if I could 
have known all about him without having ever 
been in his power ; but it rises hotly, because I 
know him to have been an incapable brute, who 
had no more right to be possessed of the great 
trust he held, than to be Lord High Admiral, or 
Commander-in-chief — in either of which capa- 
cities, it is probable, that he would have done 
infinitely less mischief. 

Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless 
Idol, how abject we were to him ! What a 
launch in life I think it now, on looking back, 
to be so mean and servile to a man of such 
parts and pretensions ! 

Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye ■ 
— humbly watching his eye, as he rules a cipher- ^ 
ing book for another victim whose hands have 
just been flattened by that identical ruler, and 
who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pock- 
et-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don't 
watch his eye in idleness, but because I am mor- 
bidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know 
what he will do next, and whether it will be my 
turn to suffer, or somebody else's. A lane of A 
small boys beyond me, with the same interest in M 
his eye, watch it too. I think he knows it, 
though he pretends he don't. He makes dread- 
ful mouths as he rules the ciphering book ; and 
now he throws his eyes sideways down our lane, 
and we all droop over our books and tremble. 
A moment afterwards we are again eyeing him. 
An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect 
exercise, approaches at his command. The cul- 
prit falters excuses, and professes a determina- 
tion to do better to-morrow. Mr. Creakle cuts 
a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it 
— miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our vis- 
ages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking 
into our boots. — David Copperfield, Chap. 7. 

SCHOOL-MASTER— Mr. M'Choakumchild. 

Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best man- 



>; 

r^'^^" 












*#\- 



A 



-4=^. 









1i:^^.?^:^^^^^Qfl^ I'i I 




eP^ 















Doctor Blimber's Young Gentlemen, 



423 



SCHOOIi-MASTEB 



423 



SCHOOL OF PACTS 



ner. He and some one hundred and forty other 
schoolmasters had been lately turned at the 
same time, in the same factory, on the same prin- 
ciples, like so many pianoforte legs. He had 
been put through an immense variety of paces, 
and had answered volumes of head-breaking 
questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and 
prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and 
general cosmography, the sciences of compound 
proportion, algebra, land-surveying and level- 
ling, vocal music, and drawing from models, 
were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. 
He had worked his stony way into Her Majes- 
ty's most Honorable Privy Council's Schedule 
B, and had taken the bloom off the higher 
branches of mathematics and physical science, 
French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew 
all about all the Water Sheds of all the world 
(whatever they are), and all the histories of all 
the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers 
and mountains, and all the productions, man- 
ners, and customs of all the countries, and all 
their boundaries and bearings on the two-and- 
thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather over- 
done, M'Choakumchild. If he had only learned 
a little less, how infinitely better he might have 
taught much more ! 

He went to work in this preparatory lesson, 
not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves : look- 
ing into all the vessels ranged before him, one 
after another, to see what they contained. Say, 
good M'Choakumchild ! when, from thy boil- 
ing store, thou shalt fill each jar brim-full by- 
and-bye, dost thou think that thou wilt always 
kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within — 
or sometimes only maim him and distort him ? 
Hard Times y Book /., Chap, 2. 

SCHOOL-MASTER. 

The only branches of education with which he 
showed the least acquaintance, were, ruling and 
corporally punishing. He was always ruling 
ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, 
or smiting the palms of offenders with the same 
diabolical instrument, or viciously drawing a 
pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large 
hands, and caning the wearer with the other. 
We have no doubt whatever that this occupation 
was the principal solace of his existence. 

H( 4: He * 4( 

Our remembrance of Our School, presents 
the Latin master as a colorless, doubled-up, 
near-sighted man with a crutch, who was always 
cold, and always putting onions into his ears 
for deafness, and always disclosing ends of flan- 
nel under all his garments, and almost always 
applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some 
part of his face with a screwing action round 
and round. He was a very good scholar, and 
took great pains where he saw intelligence and 
a desire to learn ; otherwise, perhaps not. Our 
memory presents him (unless teased into a pas- 
sion) with as little energy as color — as having 
been worried and tormented into monotonous 
feebleness — as having had the best part of his 
life ground out of him in a Mill of boys. 

Our School. Reprinted Pieces, 

SCHOOIi— Master and mistress. 

Here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs ; 
and here is Mrs. Blimber, with her sky-blue 
cap ; and here is Cornelia, with her sandy little 
row of curls, and her bright spectacles, still 



working like a sexton in the graves of langua- 
ges. — Dombey &* Son, Chap. 41. 

As to Mr. Feeder, B.A., Dr. Blimber's assist- 
ant, he was a kind of human barrel-organ, with 
a little list of tunes at which he was continually 
working over and over again, without any vari- 
ation. He might have been fitted up with a 
change of barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his 
destiny had been favorable ; but it had not been ; 
and he had only one, with which, in a monoto- 
nous round, it was his occupation to bewilder 
the young ideas of Dr. Blimber's young gentle- 
men. 

But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the 
Doctor's hothouse, all the time ; and the Doc- 
tor's glory and reputation were great, when he 
took his wintry growth home to his relations 
and friends. — Dombey ^ Son^ Chap. 11. 



Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and grace- 
ful maid, did no soft violence to the gravity of 
the house. There was no light nonsense about 
Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and 
crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and 
sandy with working in the graves of deceased 
languages. None of your live languages for Miss 
Blimber. They must be dead — stone dead — 
and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul. 

***** 

She said, at evening parties, that if she could 
have known Cicero, she thought she could have 
died contented. It was the steady joy of her 
life to see the Doctor's young gentlemen go out 
walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in 
the largest possible shirt-collars, and the stiff- 
est possible cravats. It was so classical, she 
said. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. ii. 



A learned enthusiasm is very contagious. 
***** 

Paul looked upon the young lady with con- 
sternation, as a kind of learned Guy Faux, or 
artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw, 
Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 12. 

SCHOOL-MISTRESS— Miss Peecher in love. 

Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom 
was Miss Peecher ; cheny-cheeked and tuneful 
of voice. A little pincushion, a little house- 
wife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set 
of tables and weights and measures, and a little 
woman, all in one. She could write a little es- 
say on any subject, exactly a slate long, begin- 
ning at the left-hand top of one side and ending 
at the right-hand bottom of the other, and the 
essay should be strictly according to rule. If 
Mr. Bradley Headstone had addressed a writ- 
ten proposal of marriage to her, she would 
probably have replied in a complete little essay 
on the theme, exactly a slate long, but would 
certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him. 
The decent hair-guard that went round his neck 
and took care of his decent silver watch was an 
object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher 
have gone round his neck and taken care of 
him. Of him, insensible. Because he did not 
love Miss Peecher. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. i. 

SCHOOL OF FACTS. 

" Tell me some of your mistakes." 

** I am almost ashamed," said Sissy, with 



SCENERY 



424 



SCENERr 



reluctance. "But to-day, for instance, Mr. 
M'Choakumchild was explaining to us about 
Natural Prosperity." 

" National, I think it must have been," ob- 
served Louisa. 

"Yes, it was. But isn't it the same?" she 
timidly asked. 

" You had better say National, as he said so," 
returned Louisa, with her dry reserve. 

*' National Prosperity. And he said, Now, 
this schoolroom is a Nation, And in this na- 
tion, there are fifty millions of money. Isn't 
this a prosperous nation ? Girl number twenty, 
isn't this a prosperous nation, and a'n't you in a 

thriving state." 

* * * * * 

" Then Mr. M'Choakumchild said he would 
try me once more. And he said. Here are the 
stutterincjs — " 

" Statistics," said Louisa. 

" Yes, Miss Louisa — they always remind me 
of stutterings, and that's another of my mistakes 
— of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr. 
M'Choakumchild said) that in a given time a 
hundred thousand persons went to sea on long 
voyages, and only five hundred of them were 
drowned or burnt to death. What is the 
percentage? And I said, Miss" — here Sissy 
fairly sobbed as confessing with extreme con- 
trition to her greatest error — " I said it was 
nothing." 

" Nothing, Sissy?" 

" Nothing, Miss — to the relations and friends 
of the people who were killed. I shall never 
learn," said Sissy. " And the worst of all is, 
that although my poor father wished me so 
much to learn, and although I am so anxious to 
learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I 
don't like it." — //ard Times, Book /., Chap. g. 

SCENERY— A Western swamp. 

On we go, all night, and by-and-bye the day 
begins to break, and presently the first cheerful 
rays of the warm sun come slanting on us 
brightly. It sheds its light upon a miserable 
waste of sodden grass, and dull trees, and 
squalid huts, whose aspect is forlorn and griev- 
ous in the last degree, — a very desert in the 
wood, whose growth of green is dank and nox- 
ious, like that upon the top of standing water ; 
where poisonous fungus grows in the rare foot- 
print on the oozy ground, and sprouts like 
witches' coral from the crevices in the cabin 
wall and floor. It is a hideous thing to lie up- 
on the very threshold of a city. But it was pur- 
chased years ago, and, as the owner cannot be 
discovered, the State has been unable to reclaim 
it. So there it remains, in the midst of culti- 
vation and improvement, like ground accursed, 
and made obscene and rank by some great 
crime. — American Notes, Chap. 14. 

SCENERY— Country. 

Ic was, by this time, within an hour of noon, 
and although a dense vapor still enveloped the 
city they had left, as if the very breath of its 
busy people hung over their schemes of gain 
and profit, and found greater attraction there 
than in the quiet region above, in the open 
country it was clear and fair. Occasionally, in 
some low spots they came upon patches of mist 
which the sun had not yet driven from their 
strongholds ; but these were soon passed, and, 



as they labored up the hills beyond, it was pleas- 
ant to look down, and see how the sluggish mass 
rolled heavily off, before the cheering influence of 
day. A broad, fine, honest sun lighted up the green 
pastures and dimpled water with the semblance 
of summer, while it left the travellers all the in- 
vigorating freshness of that early time of year. 
The ground seemed elastic under their feet ; the 
sheep-bells were music to their ears ; and exhil- 
arated by exercise, and stimulated by hope, 
they pushed onward with the strength of 
lions. 

The day wore on, and all these bright colors 
subsided, and assumed a quieter tint, like young 
hopes, softened down by time, or youthful fea- 
tures by degrees resolving into the calm and 
serenity of age. But they were scarcely less 
beautiful in their slow decline, than they had 
been in their prime ; for nature gives to every 
time and season some beauties of its own ; and 
from morning to night, as from the cradle to 
the grave, is but a succession of changes so gen- 
tle and easy, that we can scarcely mark their 
progress. 

* * * ♦ « 

Here, there shot up, almost perpendicularly, 
into the sky, a height so steep as to be hardly 
accessible to any but the sheep and goats that 
fed upon its sides ; and there, stood a mound of 
green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, 
and merging so gently into the level ground 
that you could scarce define its limits. Hills 
swelling above each other ; and undulations, 
shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, grace- 
ful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by 
side, bounded the view in each direction ; while 
frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose 
from the ground a flight of crows, cawing and 
wheeling round the nearest hills, as if uncertain 
of their course, suddenly poised themselves up- 
on the wing and skimmed down the long vista 
of some opening valley, with the speed of light 
itself. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22. 

SCENERY— From Rochester brldgre. 

On the left of the spectator lay the ruined 
wall, broken in many places, and in some, over- 
hanging the narrow beach below in rude and 
heavy masses. Huge knots of sea-weed hung 
upon the jagged and pointed stones, trembling 
in every breath of wind ; and the green ivy 
clung mournfully round the dark and ruined 
battlements. Behind it rose the ancient castle, 
its towers roofless, and its massive walls crum- 
bling away, but telling as proudly of its own 
might and strength, as when, seven hundred 
years ago, it rang with the clash of arms, or 
resounded with the noise of feasting and revel- 
ry. On either side, the banks of the Medway, 
covered with corn-fields and pastures, with here 
and there a wind-mill, or a distant church, 
stretched away as far as the eye could see ; pre- 
senting a rich and varied landscape, rendered 
more beautiful by the changing shadows which 
passed swiftly across it, as the thin and half- 
formed clouds skimmed away in the light of 
the morning sun. The river, reflecting the 
clear blue of the sky, glistened and sparkled as 
it flowed noiselessly on ; and the oars of the 
fishermen dipped into the water with a clear 
and liquid sound, as the heavy but picturesque 
boats glided slowly down the stream. 

Pickwick, Chap. 5. 



I 



SCENERY 



426 



SCENERY 



SCENERY— Landscape. 

Oh, the solemn woods over which the light 
and shadow travelled swiftly, as if Heavenly 
wings were sweeping on benignant errands 
through the summer air ; the smooth green 
slopes, the glittering water, the garden whei-e 
the flowers were so symmetrically arranged in 
clusters of the richest colors, how beautiful they 
looked ! The house, with gable, and chimney, 
and tower, and turret, and dark doorway, and 
broad terrace-walk, twining among the balus- 
trades of which, and lying heaped upon the 
vases, there was one great flush of roses, seem- 
ed scarcely real in its light solidity, and in the 
serene and peaceful hush that rested on all 
around it. To Ada and to me, that, above all, 
appeared the pervading influence. On every- 
thing, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, wa- 
ter, old oaks, fern, moss, woods again, and 
far away across the openings in the prospect, to 
the distance lying wide before us with a pur- 
ple bloom upon it, there seemed to be such 
undisturbed repose. — Bleak House, Chap. i8. 

SCENERY— Of an American prairie. 

Looking toward the setting sun, there l.iy, 
stretched out before my view, a vast expanse of 
level ground ; unbroken, save by one thin line 
of trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch 
upon the great blank, until it met the glowing 
sky, wherein it seemed to dip, mingling with its 
rich colors, and mellowing in its distant blue. 
There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, 
if such a simile be admissible, with the day 
going down upon it ; a few birds wheeling here 
and there, and solitude and silence reigning 
paramount around. But the grass was not yet 
high ; there were bare, black patches on the 
ground ; and the few wild-flowers that the eye 
could see were poor and scanty. Great as the 
picture was, its very flatness and extent, which 
left nothing to the imagination, tamed it down 
and cramped its interest. I felt little of that 
sense of freedom and exhilaration which a Scot- 
tish heath inspires, or even our English downs 
awaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive 
in its barren monotony. I felt that, in travers- 
ing the Prairies, I could never abandon myself 
to the scene, forgetful of all else, as I should do 
instinctively, were the heather under my feet, or 
an iron-bound coast beyond •, but should often 
glance towards the distant and frequently receding 
line of the horizon, and wish it gained and past. It 
is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely 
one, I think (at all events, as I saw it), to remem- 
ber with much pleasure, or to covet the looking 
on again, in after-life. 

American Notes, Chap. 13. 

SCENERY-On the Mississippi. 

If the coming up this river, slowly making 
head against the stream, be an irksome journey, 
the shooting down it with the turbid current is 
almost worse ; for then the boat, proceeding at 
the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, has 
to force its passage through a labyrinth of float- 
ing logs, wliich, in the dark, it is often impossi- 
ble to see beforehand or avoid. All that night 
the bell was never silent for five minutes at a 
time ; and after every ring the vessel reeled 
again, sometimes beneath a single blow, some- 
times beneath a dozen dealt in quick succession, 
the lightest of which seemed more than enough 



to beat in her frail keel as though it had been 
pie-crust. Looking down upon the filthy river 
after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters, 
as these black masses rolled upon the surface, 
or came starting up again, head-first, when the 
boat, in ploughing her way among a shoal oi 
such obstructions, drove a few among them, for 
the moment, underwater. Sometimes the engine 
stopped during a long interval, and then before 
her, and behind, and gathering close about her 
on all sides, were so many of these ill-favored 
obstacles, that she was fairly hemmed in, — the 
centre of a floating island, — and was constrained 
to pause until they parted somewhere, as dark 
clouds will do before the wind, and opened by 
degrees a channel out. 

American Notes, Chap. 14. 

SCENERY— On the Mississippi. Cairo. 

Nor was the scenery, as we approached the 
junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, at 
all inspiriting in its influence. The trees were 
stunted in their growth ; the banks were low 
and flat ; the settlements and log-cabins fewer 
in number ; their inhabitants more wan and 
wretched than any we had encountered yet. 
No songs of birds were in the air, no pleasant 
scents, no moving lights and shadows from swift 
passing clouds. Hour after hour the changeless 
glare of the hot unwinking sky shone upon the 
same monotonous objects. Hour after hour the 
river rolled along as wearily and slowly as the 
time itself. 

At length, upon the morning of the third day, 
we arrived at a spot so much more desolate than 
any we had yet beheld, that the forlornest places 
we had passed were, in comparison with it, full 
of interest. At the junction of the two rivers, 
on ground so flat, and low, and marshy, that at 
certain seasons of the year it is inundated to 
the house-tops, lies a breeding-place for fever, 
ague, and death ; vaunted in England as a mine 
of Golden Hope, and speculated in, on the faith 
of monstrous representations, to many people's 
ruin. A dismal swamp, on which the half-built 
houses rot away ; cleared here and there for the 
space of a few yards ; and teeming, then, with 
rank, unwholesome vegetation, in whose bale- 
ful shade the wretched wanderers who are 
tempted hither droop, and die, and lay their 
bones ; the hateful Mississippi circling and 
eddying before it, and turning oft' upon its south- 
ern course, a slimy monster, hideous to behold ; 
a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a grave 
uncheered by any gleam of promise ; a place 
without one single quality, in earth or air or 
water, to commend it ; such is this dismal 
Cairo. 

But what words shall describe the Mississippi, 
the great father of rivers, who (praise be to 
Heaven !) has no young children like him ! An 
enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles 
wide, running liquid mud, six miles an hour ; 
its strong and frothy current choked and ob- 
structed everywhere by huge logs and whole 
forest trees ; now twining tiiemselves together 
in great rafts, from the interstices of which a 
sedgy, lazy foam works up, to float upon the 
water's top ; now rolling past, like monstrous 
bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted 
hair; now glancing singly by, like giant leeches; 
and now writhing round and round in the vor- 
tex of some small whirlpool, like wounded 



SCENERY AND WEATHER 



SCIENCE 



snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the 
marshes swarming with frogs, the wretched 
cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollow- 
cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mos- 
quitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice 
of the boat, mud and slime on everything ; 
nothing pleasant in its aspect but the harmless 
lightning which flickers every night upon the 
dark horizon. — American Notes, Chap. I2. 

SCENERY AND WEATHER. 

Every day had been so bright and blue, that 
to ramble in the woods, and to see the light 
striking down among the transparent leaves, 
and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of 
the shadows of the trees, while the birds poured 
out their songs, and the air was drowsy with 
the hum of insects, had been most delightful. 
We had one favorite spot, deep in moss and 
last year's leaves, where there were some felled 
trees from which the bark was all stripped off. 
Seated among these, we looked through a green 
vista supported by thousands of natural columns, 
the whitened stems of trees, upon a distant 
prospect made so radiant by its contrast with 
the shade in which we sat, and made so precious 
by the arched perspective through which we saw 
it, that it was like a glimpse of the better land. 
Upon the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, 
Ada, and I, until we heard thunder muttering in 
the distance, and felt the large rain-drops rattle 
through the leaves. 

The lattice-windows were all thrown open, 
and we sat, just within the doorway, watching 
the storm. It was grand to see how the wind 
awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain 
before it like a cloud of smoke ; and to hear 
the solemn thunder, and to see the lightning ; 
and while thinking with awe of the tremen- 
dous powers by which our little lives are en- 
compassed, to consider how beneficent they 
are, and how upon the smallest flower and leaf 
there was already a freshness poured from all 
this seeming rage, which seemed to make crea- 
tion new again. — Bleak House, Chap. i8. 

SCIENCE— The mistakes of. 

"That 'ere blessed lantern 'ull be the death 
on us all," exclaimed Sam, peevishly. " Take 
care wot you're a doin' on, sir ; you're a sendin* 
a blaze o' light right into the back parlor win- 
der." 

" Dear me ! " said Mr. Pickwick, turning 
hastily aside, " I didn't mean to do that." 

" Now it's in the next house, sir," remon- 
strated Sam. 

" Bless my heart ! " exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, 
turning round again. 

" Now it's in the stable, and they'll think 
the place is a-fire," said Sam. " Shut it up, 
sir, can't you ? " 

" It's the most extraordinary lantern I ever 
met with in all my life I " exclaimed Mr. Pick- 
wick, greatly bewildered by the eff"ects he had 
so unintentionally produced. " I never saw 
such a powerful reflector." 

" It'll be vun too powerful for us, if you keep 
blazin' avay in that manner, sir," replied Sam, 
as Mr. Pickwick, after various unsuccessful 
efforts, managed to close the slide. 

* * « 4: * 

While these things were going on in the 



open air, an elderly gentleman of scientific 
attainments was seated in his library, two or 
three houses off, writing a philosophical treatise, 
and ever and anon moistening his clay and his 
labors with a glass of claret from a venerable- 
looking bottle which stood by his side. In the 
agonies of composition, the elderly gentleman 
looked sometimes at the carpet, sometimes 
at the ceiling, and sometimes at the wall ; and 
when neither carpet, ceiling, nor wall afforded 
the requisite degree of inspiration, he looked 
out of the window. 

In one of these pauses of invention, the scien- 
tific gentleman was gazing abstractedly on the 
thick darkness outside, when he was very much 
surprised by observing a most brilliant light 
glide through the air, at a short distance above 
the ground, and almost instantaneously vanish. 
After a short time the phenomenon was repeat- 
ed, not once or twice, but several times : at 
last the scientific gentleman, laying down his 
pen, began to consider to what natural causes 
these appearances were to be assigned. 

They were not meteors ; they were too low. 
They were not glow-worms ; they were too high. 
They were not will-o'-the-wisps ; they were not 
fire-flies ; they were not fire-works. What 
could they be ? Some extraordinary and won- 
derful phenomenon of nature, which no philoso- 
pher had ever seen before ; something which 
it had been reserved for him alone to discover, 
and which he should immortalize his name by 
chronicling for the benefit of posterity. Full of 
this idea, the scientific gentleman seized his pen 
again, and committed to paper sundry notes of 
these unparalleled appearances, with the date, 
day, hour, minute, and precise second at which 
they were visible : all of which were to form 
the data of a voluminous treatise of great re- 
search and deep learning, which should aston- 
ish all the atmospherical sages that ever drew 
breath in any part of the civilized globe. 

He threw himself back in his easy-chair, wrap- 
ped in contemplations of his future greatness. 
The mysterious light appeared more brilliantly 
than before : dancing, to all appearance, up and 
down the lane, crossing from side to side, and 
moving in an orbit as eccentric as comets them- 
selves. 

The scientific gentleman was a bachelor. He 
had no wife to call in and astonish, so he rang 
the bell for his servant. 

" Pruffle," said the scientific gentleman, " there 
is something very extraordinary in the air to- 
night. Did you see that ? " said the scientific 
gentleman, pointing out of the window, as the 
light again became visible. 

" Yes, I did, sir." 

" What do you think of it, Pruffle ? " 

"Think of it, sir?" 

" Yes. You have been bred up in this country. 
What should you say was the cause of those 
lights, now ? " 

The scientific gentleman smilingly anticipated 
Pruffle's reply that he could assign no cause for 
them at all. Pruffle meditated. 

" I should say it was thieves, sir," said Pruffle 
at length. 

"You're a fool, and may go down stairs," 
said the scientific gentleman. 

" Thank you, sir," said Pruffle. And dovm 
he went. 

But the scientific gentleman could not rest 



SCIENCE 



427 



SEA 



under the idea of the ingenious treatise he had 
projected being lost to the world, which must 
inevitably be the case if the speculation of the 
ingenious Mr. Pruffle were not stifled in its birth. 
He put on his hat and walked quickly down the 
garden, determined to investigate the matter to 
the very bottom. 

Now, shortly before the scientific gentleman 
walked out into the garden, Mr. Pickwick had 
run down the lane as fast as he could, to convey 
a false alarm that somebody was coming that 
way ; occasionally drawing back the slide of the 
dark lantern to keep himself from the ditch. 
The alarm was no sooner given than Mr. Winkle 
scrambled back over the wall, and Arabella ran 
into the house ; the garden-gate was shut, and 
the three adventurers were making the best of 
their way down the lane, when they were 
startled by the scientific gentleman unlocking 
his garden gate. 

" Hold hard," whispered Sam, who was, of 
course, the first of the party. " Show a light for 
just vun second, sir." 

Mr. Pickwick did as he was desired, and Sam, 
seeing a man's head peeping out very cautiously 
within half-a-yard of his own, gave it a gentle 
tap with his clenched fist, which knocked it, 
with a hollow sound, against the gate. Having 
performed this feat with great suddenness and 
dexterity, Mr. Weller caught Mr. Pickwick up 
on his back, and followed Mr. Winkle down the 
lane at a pace which, considering the burden he 
carried, was perfectly astonishing. 

" Have you got your vind back agin, sir," in- 
quired Sam, when they had reached the end. 

" Quite. Quite, now," replied Mr. Pickwick. 

" Then come along, sir," said Sam, setting his 
master on his feet again. " Come betveen us, 
sir. Not half a mile to run. Think you're 
vinnin a cup, sir. Now for it." 

Thus encouraged, Mr. Pickwick made the 
very best use of his legs. It may be confidently 
stated that a pair of black gaiters never got over 
the ground in better style than did those of Mr. 
Pickwick on this memorable occasion. 

The coach was waiting, the horses were fresh, 
the roads were good, and the driver was willing. 
The whole party arrived in safety at the Bush 
before Mr. Pickwick had recovered his breath. 

'* In vith you at once, sir," said Sam, as he 
helped his master out. " Don't stop a second in 
the street, arter that 'ere exercise. Beg your 
pardon, sir," continued Sam, touching his hat 
as Mr. Winkle descended. " Hope there warn't 
a priory 'tachment, sir." 

Mr. Winkle grasped his humble friend by the 
hand, and whispered in his ear, " It's all right, 
Sam ; quite right." Upon which Mr. Weller 
struck three distinct blows upon his nose in 
token of intelligence, smiled, winked, and pro- 
ceeded to put the steps up, with a countenance 
expressive of lively satisfaction. 

As to the scientific gentleman, he demon- 
strated, in a masterly treatise, that these won- 
derful lights were the effect of electricity ; and 
clearly proved the same by detailing how a flash 
of fire danced before his eyes when he put his 
head out of the gate, and how he received a 
shock which stunned him for a quarter of an 
hour afterwards ; which demonstration delighted 
all the Scientific Associations beyond measure, 
and caused him to be considered a light of sci- 
ence ever afterwards. — Pickzuick, Chap. 39. 



SCOUNDRELS— Nigrht-birds of prey. 

Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and 
sallow face upon the neighborhood of Leicester 
Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out 
of bed. Many of them are not early risers at 
the brightest of times, being birds of night who 
roost when the sun is high, and are wide awake 
and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Be- 
hind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story 
and garret, skulking more or less under false 
names, false hair, false titles, false jewelry, and 
false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their 
first sleep. Gentlemen of the green baize road, 
who could discourse, from personal experience, 
of foreign galleys and home treadmills ; spies 
of strong governments that eternally quake with 
weakness and miserable fear, broken traitors, 
cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers, 
and false witnesses ; some not unmarked by the 
branding-iron, beneath their dirty braid ; all 
with more cruelty in them than was in Nero, 
and more crime than is in Newgate. For, how- 
soever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock- 
frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a 
more designing, callous, and intolerable devil 
when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front, calls 
himself a gentleman, backs a card or color, 
plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a 
little about bills and promissory notes, than in 
any other form he wears. 

Bleak Hous£, Chap. 26. 

SEA— Storm at. 

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find 
sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of 
the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, 
and the awful noise, confounded me. As the 
high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their 
highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if 
the least would engulf the town. As the reced- 
ing wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it 
seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, 
as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. 
When some white-headed billows thundered 
on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they 
reached the land, every fragment of the late 
whole seemed possessed by the full might of its 
wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composi- 
tion of another monster. Undulating hills were 
changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a 
solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through 
them) were lifted up to hills ; masses of water 
shivered and shook the beach with a booming 
sound ; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as 
soon as made, to change its shape and place, 
and beat another shape and place away ; the 
ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and 
buildings, rose and fell ; the clouds flew fast 
and thick ; I seemed to see a rending and up- 
heaving of all nature. 

David Copperfield, C/iap. 55. 

SEA— An excursion party at. 

The throbbing motion of the engine was but 
too perceptible. There was a large, substantial, 
cold boiled leg of mutton, at the bottom of the 
table, shaking like blanc-mange ; a previously 
hearty sirloin of beef looked as if it had been 
suddenly seized with the palsy ; and some 
tongues, which were placed on dishes rather too 
large for them, went through the most surpris- 
ing evolutions ; darting from side to side, and 
from end to end, like a fly in an inverted wine- 



SEA 



SEA AND LOVE 



glass. Then, the sweets shook and trembled, 
till it was quite impossible to help them, and 
people gave up the attempt in despair ; and the 
pigeon-pies looked as if the birds, whose legs 
were stuck outside, were trying to get them in. 
The table vibrated and started like a feverish 
pulse, and the very legs were convulsed — every- 
thing was shaking and jarring. The beams 
in the roof of the cabin seemed as if they 
were put there for the sole purpose of giving 
people headaches, and several elderly gentle- 
men became ill-tempered in consequence. As 
fast as the steward put the fire-irons up, they 
would fall down again ; and the more the ladies 
and gentlemen tried to sit comfortably on their 
seats, the more the seats seemed to slide away 
from the ladies and gentlemen. Several omi- 
nous demands were made for small glasses of 
brandy ; the countenances of the company 
gradually undei-went most extraordinary changes; 
one gentleman was observed suddenly to rush 
from table without the slightest ostensible 
reason, and dart up the steps with incredible 
swiftness ; thereby greatly damaging both him- 
self and the steward, who happened to be com- 
ing down at the same moment. 

The cloth was removed ; the dessert was laid 
on the table , and the glasses were filled. The 
motion of the boat increased ; several members 
of the party began to feel rather vague and 
misty, and looked as if they had only just got 
up. The young gentleman with the spectacles, 
who had been in a fluctuating state for some 
time — at one moment bright, and at another 
dismal, like a revolving light on the sea-coast — 
rashly announced his wish to propose a toast. 
After several ineffectual attempts to preserve 
his perpendicular, the young gentleman, having 
managed to hook himself to the centre leg of 
the table with his left hand, proceeded. 

Tales, Chap. 7. 

SEA— Impartiality of the. 

The sea has no appreciation of great men, but 
knocks them about like the small fry. It is 
habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose coun- 
tenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage- 
cheese, and in whose aristocratic system it effects 
a dismal revolution. It is the Radical of Nature. 
Bleak House, Chap. 12. 

SEA— Mark Tapley*s opinion of the. 

For the first objects Mr. Tapley recognized 
when he opened his eyes were his own heels — 
looking down to him, as he afterwards observed, 
from a nearly perpendicular elevation. 

"Well," said Mark, getting himself into a 
sitting posture, after various ineffectual strug- 
gles with the rolling of the ship. " This is 
the first time as ever I stood on my head all 
night." 

" You shouldn't go to sleep upon the ground 
with your head to leeward, then," growled a 
man in one of the berths. 

" With my head to wliere?" asked Mark. 

The man repeated his previous sentiment. 

" No, I won't another time," said Mark, 
" when I know whereabouts on the map that 
country is. In the meanwhile I can give you a 
better piece of advice. Don't you nor any other 
friend of mine never go to sleep with his head 
in a ship, any more." 

The man gave a grunt of discontented ac- 



quiescence, turned over in his berth, and drew 
his blanket over his head. 

" — For," said Mr. Tapley, pursuing the theme 
by way of soliloquy, in a low tone of voice ; 
" the sea is as nonsensical a thing as any going. 
It never knows what to do with itself. It hasn't 
got no employment for its mind, and is always 
in a state of vacancy. Like them Polar bears 
in the wild-beast-shows as is constantly a nod- 
ding their heads from side to side, it never can 
be quiet. Which is entirely owing to its un- 
common stupidity." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, CJiap. 15. 

SEA-»»On thebar." 

Early in the morning I was on the deck of 
the steam-packet, and we were aiming at the 
bar in the usually intolerable manner, and the 
bar was aiming at us in the usually intolerable 
manner, and the bar got by far the best of it, 
and we got by far the worst, — all in the usual 
intolerable manner. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 7. 

SEA-The. 

A taunting roar comes from the sea, and the 
far-out rollers mount upon one another, to look 
at the entrapped impostors, and to join in imp- 
ish and exultant gambols. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 10. 

SEA— Breakers. 

The grim row of breakers enjoying themselves 
fanatically on an instrument of torture called 
" the Bar." — Reprinted Pieces. 

SEA-The voice of the waves. 

Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, 
and sat listening. 

Florence asked him what he thought he 
heard. 

" I want to know what it says," he answered, 
looking steadily in her face. " The sea, Floy, 
what is it that it keeps on saying ? " 

She told him that it was only the noise of the 
rolling waves. 

" Yes, yes," he said. " But I know that they 
are always saying something. Always the same 
thing. What place is over there ? " He rose up, 
looking eagerly at the horizon. 

She told him that there was another country 
opposite, but he said he didn't mean that : he 
meant farther away — farther away ! 

Very often afterwards, in the midst of their 
talk, he would break off, to try to understand 
what it was that the waves were always saying ; 
and would rise up in his couch to look towards 
that invisible region, far away. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 8. 

SEA AND liOVE. 

" As I hear the sea," says Florence, " and sit 
watching it, it brings so many days into my 
mind. It makes me think so much — " 
" Of Paul, my love. I know it does." 
Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the 
waves are always whispering to Florence, in 
their ceaseless murmuring, of love — of love, eter- 
nal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines 
of this world, or by the end of time, but ranging 
still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the in- 
visible country far away ! 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 57. 



429 



SEA-SICKITESS 



SEA— Its associations. 

All is going on as it was wont. The waves 
are hoarse with repetition of their mystery ; the 
dust lies piled upon the shore ; the sea-birds 
soar and hover ; the winds and clouds go forth 
upon their trackless flight ; the white arms 
beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible coun- 
try far away. 

With a tender, melancholy pleasure, Florence 
fiiuls herself again on the old ground so sadly 
trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the 
quiet place where he and she have many and 
many a time conversed together, with the water 
welling up about his couch. And now, as she 
sits pensive there, she hears in the wild low 
murmur of the sea, his little story told again, his 
very words repeated ; and finds that all her life, 
and hopes, and griefs, since — in the solitary 
house, and in the pageant it has changed to — 
have a portion in the burden of the marvellous 
song. — Dombey dr* Son^ Chap. 4 1. 

SEA— In a storm. 

" Aye," said the Captain, reverentially ; " it's a 
almighty element. There's wonders in the deep, 
my pretty. Think on it when the winds is roar- 
ing, and the waves is rowling. Think on it 
when the stormy nights is so pitch dark," said 
the Captain, solemnly holding up his hook, " as 
you can't see your hand afore you, excepting 
when the wiwid lightning reweals the same ; 
and when you drive, drive, drive through the 
storm and dark, as if you was a driving, head 
on, to the world without end, evermore, amen, 
and when found making a note of. Them's the 
times, my beauty, when a man may say to his 
messmate (previously a overhauling of the wol- 
ume), ' A stiff nor-wester's blowing. Bill ; hark, 
don't you hear it roar now ! Lord help 'em, 
how I pitys all unhappy folks ashore now I ' " 
Which quotation, as particularly applicable to 
the terrors of the ocean, the Captain delivered 
in a most impressive manner, concluding with a 
sonorous " Stand by ! " 

Dombey <5r» Son^ Chap. 49. 

SEA-CAPTAIN-His face. 

What have we here ? The captain's boat ! 
and yonder the captain himself. Now, by all 
our hopes and wishes, the very man he ought to 
be ! A well-made, tight-built, dapper little fel- 
low, with a ruddy face, which is a letter of invi- 
tation to shake him by both hands at once, and 
with a clear, blue honest eye, that it does one 
good to see one's sparkling image in. 

American Notes ^ Chap. I. 

SE APORT-(Dover) . 

The little, narrow, crooked town of Dover hid 
itself away from the beach, and ran its head into 
the chalk-cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach 
was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumb- 
ling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, 
and what it liked was destruction. It thundered 
at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and 
brought the coast down, madly. The air among 
the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavor 
that one might have supposed sick fish went up 
to be dipped in it, as sicK people went down to 
be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done 
in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by 
night, and looking seaward : particularly at those 
times when the tide made, and was near flood. 



Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever 
sometimes unaccountably realized large fortunes, 
and it was remarkable that nobody in the neigh- 
borhood could endure a lamplighter. 

Tale of Two Cities^ Chap. 4. 

SEA— Scenery. 

Sitting, on a bright September morning, among 
my books and papers, at my open window on 
the cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I have the 
sky and ocean framed before me like a beautiful 
picture. A beautiful picture, but with such 
movement in it, such changes of light upon the 
sails of ships and wake of steamboats, such 
dazzling gleams of silver far out at sea, such 
fresh touches on the crisp wave-tops as they 
break and roll towards me — a picture with such 
music in the billowy rush upon the shingle, the 
blowing of the morning wind through the corn- 
sheaves, where the farmers' wagons are busy, the 
singing of the larks, and the distant voices of 
children at play — such charms of sight and 
sound as all the Galleries on earth can but poorly 
suggest. — Out of Town. Reprinted Pieces. 

SEA-SHORE- At the. 

Never had I seen a year going out, or going 
on, under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hun- 
dred and fifty-nine had but another day to live, 
and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore 
that morning. 

So settled and orderly was everything sea- 
ward, in the bright light of the sun and under 
the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it 
was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years 
past or to come, than it was that very day. The 
Tug steamer lying a little off the shore, the 
Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat 
alongside the Lighter, the regularly turning wind- 
lass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at 
work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and 
down with the breathing of the sea, — all seemed 
as much a part of the nature of the place as the 
tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had 
been for some two hours and a half; there was 
a slight obstruction in the sea within a few 
yards of my feet, as if the stump of a tree, with 
earth enough about it to keep it from lying hori- 
zontally on the water, had slipped a little from 
the land : and as I stood upon the beach, and 
observed it dimpling the light swell that was 
coming in, I cast a stone over it. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 2. 

SEA-SICKNESS-The misery of. 

I say nothing of what may be called the do- 
mestic noises of the ship, such as the breaking 
of glass and crockery, the tumbling down of 
stewards, the gambols overhead of loose casks 
and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very 
remarkable and far from exhilarating sounds 
raised in their various state-rooms by the seventy 
passengers who were too ill to get up to break- 
fast — I say nothing of them, for, although I lay 
listening to this concert for three or four days, 
I don't think I heard it for more than a quarter 
of a minute, at the expiration of which term I 
lay down again excessively sea-sick. 

Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary 
acceptation of the term ; I wish I had been ; 
but in a form which I have never seen or heard 
described, though I have no doubt it is very 
common. I lay there all the day long quite 



SEA-SICENESS 



430 



SEA-SIDE 



coolly and contentedly, with no sense of weari- 
ness, with no desire to get up, or get better, or 
take the air, with no curiosity, or care, or regret 
of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can 
remember in this universal indifference having 
a kind of lazy joy — of fiendish delight, if any- 
thing so lethargic can be dignified with the title 
' — in the fact of my wife being too ill to talk to 
me. If I may be allowed to illustrate my state 
of mind by such an example, I should say that 
I was exactly in the condition of the elder Mr. 
Willet after the incursion of the rioters into his 
bar at Chigwell. Nothing would have surprised 
me. If, in the momentary illumination of any 
ray of intelligence that may have come upon 
me in the way of thoughts of Home, a goblin 
postman with a scarlet coat and bell had come 
into that little kennel before me, broad awake 
in broad day, and, apologizing for being damp 
through walking in the sea, had handed 
me a letter directed to myself in familiar char- 
acters, I am certain I should not have felt one 
atom of astonishment ; I should have been per- 
fectly satisfied. If Neptune himself had walk- 
ed in with a toasted shark on his trident, I 
should have looked upon the event as one of the 
very commonest every-day occurrences. 

Once — once — I found myself on deck. I 
don't know how I got there, or what possessed 
me to go there, but there I was ; and completely 
dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair 
of boots such as no weak man in his senses 
could ever have got into. I found myself stand- 
ing, when a gleam of consciousness came upon 
me, holding on to something. I don't know 
what. I think it was the boatswain ; or it may 
have been the pump ; or possibly the cow. I 
can't say how long I had been there — whether 
a day or a minute. I recollect trying to think 
about something (about anything in the whole 
wide world, I was not particular), without the 
smallest effect. I could not even make out 
which was the sea and which the sky ; for the 
horizon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly 
about in all directions. Even in that incapable 
state, however, I recognized the lazy gentleman 
standing before me, nautically clad in a suit of 
shaggy blue, with an oilskin hat. But I was too 
imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to sepa- 
rate him from his dress, and tried to call him, I 
remember, Pilot. After another interval of total 
unconsciousness, I found he had gone, and re- 
cognized another figure in its place. It seemed 
to wave and fluctuate beforfe me as though I saw 
it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass ; but I 
knew it for the captain ; and such was the cheer- 
ful influence of his face, that I tried to smile ; 
yes, even then I tried to smile. I saw by his 
gestures that he addressed me ; but it was a long 
time before I could make out that he remon- 
strated against my standing up to my knees in 
water — as I was ; of course I don't know why. 
I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only 
point to my boots — or wherever I supposed my 
boots to be — and say, in a plaintive voice, *' Cork 
soles ;" at the same time endeavoring, I am told, 
to sit down in the pool. Finding that I was 
quite insensible, and for the time a maniac, he 
humanely conducted me below. 

There I remained until I got better ; suffer- 
ing, whenever I was recommended to eat any- 
thing, an amount of anguish only second to that 
which is said to be endured by the apparently 



drowned in the process of restoration to life. 
One gentleman on board had a letter of intro- 
duction to me from a mutual friend in London. 
He sent it below with his card, on the morning 
of the head-wind ; and I was long troubled with 
the idea that he might be up and well, and a 
hundred times a day expecting me to call upon 
him in the saloon. I imagined him one of those 
cast-iron images — I will not call them men — 
who ask, with red faces and lusty voices, what 
sea-sickness means, and whether it really is 
as bad as it is represented to be. This was 
very torturing indeed ; and I don't think I ever 
felt such perfect gratification and gratitude of 
heart as I did when I heard from the ship's doc- 
tor that he had been obliged to put a large mus- 
tard poultice on this very gentleman's stomach. 
I date my recoveiy from the receipt of that in- 
telligence. — American Notes^ Chap. 2. 

sea-sickn:ess. 

" I beg your pardon, sir," said the steward, 
running up to Mr. Percy Noakes, " I beg your 
pardon, sir, but the gentleman as just went on 
deck — him with the green spectacles — is uncom- 
mon bad, to be sure ; and the young man as 
played the wiolin says, that unless he has some 
brandy he can't answer for the consequences. 
He says he has a wife and two children, whose 
wery subsistence depends on his breaking a wes- 
sel, and he expects to do so every moment. The 
flageolet's been wery ill, but he's better, only 
he's in a dreadful prusperation." 

***** 

Mr. Hardy was observed, some hours after- 
wards, in an attitude which induced his friends 
to suppose that he was busily engaged in con- 
templating the beauties of the deep ; they only 
regretted that his taste for the picturesque 
should lead him to remain so long in a position 
very injurious at all times, but especially so to 
an individual laboring under a tendency of 
blood to the head. — Tales, Chap. 7. 

SEA-SIDE— Scenes at the. 

As we walked by the softly lapping sea, all 
the notabilities of Namelesston, who are forever 
going up and down with the changelessness of 
the tides, passed to and fro in procession. Pret- 
ty girls on horseback, and with detested riding- 
masters ; pretty girls on foot ; mature ladies in 
hats, — spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring 
at the opposite or weaker sex. The Stock Ex- 
change was strongly represented, Jerusalem 
was strongly represented, the bores of the pro- 
sier London clubs were strongly represented. 
Fortune-hunters of all denominations were 
there, from hirsute insolvency in a curricle to 
closely buttoned-up swindlery in doubtful 
boots, on the sharp lookout for any likely young 
gentleman disposed to play a game at billiards 
round the corner. Masters of languages, their 
lessons finished for the day, were going to their 
homes out of sight of the sea ; mistresses of 
accomplishments, carrying small portfolios, 
likewise tripped homeward ; pairs of scholastic 
pupils, two and two, went languidly along the 
beach, surveying the face of the waters as if 
waiting for some Ark to come end take them 
off. Spectres of the George the Fourth days 
flitted unsteadily among the crowd, bearing the 
outward semblance of ancient dandies, of every 
one of whom it might be said, not that he had 



SEA-SIDE 



431 



SEA-SIDE 



one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he 
was steeped in grave to the summit of his high 
shirt-collar, and had nothing real about him 
but his bones. Alone stationary in the midst 
of all the movements, the Namelesston boat- 
men leaned against the railings and yawned, 
and looked out to sea, or looked at the moored 
fishing-boats and at nothing. Such is the un- 
changing manner of life with this nursery of 
our hardy seamen, and very dry nurses they 
are, and always wanting something to drink. 

A Little Dinner in an Hour. New Uncom- 
mercial Samples. 



The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach, 
and village, lie as still before us as if they 
were sitting for the picture. It is dead low- 
water. A ripple plays among the ripening 
corn upon the cliff, as if it were faintly trying 
from recollection to imitate the sea ; and the 
world of butterflies hovering over the crop of 
radish-seed are as restless in their little way as 
the gulls are in their larger manner when 
the wind blows. But the ocean lies winking 
in the sunlight like a drowsy lion — its glassy 
waters scarcely curve upon the shore — the fish- 
ing-boats in the tiny harbor are all stranded 
in the mud — our two colliers (our watering- 
place has a maritime trade employing that 
amount of shipping) have not an inch of water 
within a quarter of a mile of them, and turn, ex- 
hausted, on their sides, like faint fish of an 
antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains, 
ropes and rings, undermost parts of posts, and 
piles, and confused timber defences against 
the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter 
of tangled sea-weed and fallen cliff, which 
looks as if a family of giants had been making 
tea here for ages, and had observed an untidy 
custom of throwing their tea-leaves on the shore. 
Our English Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces. 



There are some small out-of-the-way landing- 
places on the Thames and the Medway, where 
I do much of my summer idling. Running 
water is favorable to day-dreams, and a strong 
tidal river is the best of running water for mine. 
I like to watch the great ships standing out to 
sea or coming home richly laden, the active lit- 
tle steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to 
and from the sea horizon, the fleet of barges 
that seem to have plucked their brown and rus- 
set sails from the ripe trees in the landscape, 
the heavy old colliers, light in ballast, flounder- 
ing down before the tide, the light screw barks 
and schooners imperiously holding a straight 
course while the others patiently tack and go 
about, the yachts, with their tiny hulls and great 
white sheets of canvas, the little sailing-boats 
bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure 
or business, and — as it is the nature of little 
people to do — making a prodigious fuss about 
their small affairs. Watching these objects, I 
still am under no obligation to think about 
them, or even so much as to see them, unless it 
perfectly suits my humor. As little am I obliged 
to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the ripple 
at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the 
humming steamship paddles farther away yet. 
These, with the creaking little jetty on which I 
sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and loM'- 
water marks in the mud, and the broken cause- 
way, and the broken bank, and the broken 



stakes and piles, leaning forward as if they were 
vain of their personal appearance and looking 
for their reflection in the water, will melt into 
any train of fancy. Equally adaptable to any 
purpose or to none are the pasturing sheep and 
kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and 
dip around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) 
going home from the rich harvest-fields, the 
heron that has been out a-fishing, and looks as 
melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn't 
agreed with him. Everything within the range 
of the senses will, by the aid of the running 
water, lend itself to everything beyond that 
range, and work into a drowsy whole, not un- 
like a kind of tune, but for which there is no 
exact definition. 

Uncomjnercial Traveller, Chap. 24. 



Again among the tiers of shipping, in and 
out, avoiding rusty chain-cables, frayed hempen 
hawsers, and bobbing buoys, sinking for the 
moment floating bi'oken baskets, scattering float- 
ing chips of wood and shaving, cleaving floating 
scum of coal, in and out, under the figure-head 
of the John of Sunderland making a speech to 
the winds (as is done by many Johns), and the 
Betsy of Yarmouth with a firm formality of 
bosom and her knobby eyes starting two inches 
out of her head ; in and out, hammers going in 
ship-builders' yards, saws going at timber, clash- 
ing engines going at things unknown, pumps 
going in leaky ships, capstans going, ships go- 
ing out to sea, and unintelligible sea-creatures 
roaring curses over the bulwarks at respondent 
lightermen ; in and out — out at last upon the 
clearer river, where the ships' boys might take 
their fenders in, no longer fishing in troubled 
waters with them over the side, and where the 
festooned sails might fly out to the wind. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 54. 

SEA-SIDE— Children at the. 

So many children are brought down to our 
watering-place that, when they are not out of 
doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it is 
wonderful where they are put ; the whole vil- 
lage seeming much too small to hold them un- 
der cover. In the afternoons, you see no end 
of salt and sandy little boots drying on upper 
window-sills. At bathing-time in the morning, 
the little bay re-echoes with every shrill variety 
of shriek and splash — after which, if the weather 
be at all fresh, the sands team with small blue- 
mottled legs. The sands are the children's 
great resort. They cluster there like ants ; so 
busy burying their particular friends, and mak- 
ing castles with infinite labor which the next tide 
overthrows, that it is curious to consider how 
their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows 
the realities of their after lives. 

It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease of 
approach that there seems to be between the 
children and the boatmen. They mutually 
make acquaintance, and take individual likings, 
without any help. You will come upon one of 
those slow heavy fellows sitting down patiently 
mending a little ship for a mite of a boy. whom 
he could crush to death by throwing his lightest 
pair of trowsers on him. You will be sensible 
of the oddest contrast between the smooth little 
creature, and the rough man who seems to be 
carved out of hard-grained wood — between the 
delicate hand, expectantly held out, and the im- 



SEA-SIDE 



432 



SEA-VOYAGE 



mense thumb and finger that can hardly feel 
the rigging of thread they mend — between the 
small voice and the gruff growl — and yet there 
is a natural propriety in the companionship, 
always to be noted in confidence between 
a child and a person who has any merit of 
reality and genuineness, which is admirably 
pleasant. 
Our English Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces. 

SEA-SIDE-The. 

We have a fine sea, wholesome for all peo- 
ple ; profitable for the body, profitable for the 
mind. The poet's words are sometimes on its 
awful lips ; 

And the stately ships go on 

To their haven under the hill ; 
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 

And the sound of a voice that ie still. 

Break, break, break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O sea 1 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 

Will never come back to me 1 

Yet it is not always so, for the speech of the 
sea is various, and wants not abundant resource 
of cheerfulness, hope, and lusty encouragement. 
And since I have been idling at the window 
here, the tide has risen. The boats are dancing 
on the bubbling water ; the colliers are afloat 
again ; the white-bordered waves rush in ; the 
children 

Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
When he comes back ; 

the radiant sails are gliding past the shore, and 
shining on the far horizon ; all the sea is spark- 
ling, heaving, swelling up with life and beauty, 
this bright morning. 
Our English Watering Place. Reprinted Pieces. 

SEA-SIDE VIEWS— The approach to 
Calais. 

When I first made acquaintance with Calais, 
it was as a maundering young wretch in a 
clammy perspiration and dripping saline parti- 
cles, who was conscious of no extremities but 
the one great extremity, sea-sickness, — who was 
a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache 
somewhere in its stomach — who had been put 
into a horrible swing in Dover Harbor, and had 
tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, 
or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times have 
changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and 
rational. I know where it is beforehand, I keep a 
lookout for it, I recognize its landmarks when 
I see any of them, I am acquainted with its 
ways and I know — and I can bear — its worst 
behavior. 

Malignant Calais ! Low-lying alligator, evad- 
ing the eyesight and discouraging hope ! Dodg- 
ing flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, 
now anywhere, now everywhere, now no- 
where ! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frank- 
ly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be 
stout of heart and stomach ; sneaking Calais, 
prone behind its bar, invites emetically to de- 
spair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal 
itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of 
falling off", has Calais, which is more hopeless 
than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the 
bowsprit, and you think you are there — roll, 
roar, wash !— Calais has retired miles inland, 



and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a 
last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to 
be especially commended to the infernal gods. 
Thrice accursed be that garrison town, when it 
dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a 
league or two to the right, with the packet 
shivering and spluttering and staring about for 
it ! — Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 17. 

SEA-SIDE VIEWS— Landing- at Calais. 

The passengers were landing from the packet 
on the pier at Calais. A low-lying place and a 
low-spirited place Calais was, with the tide ebb- 
ing out toward low-water mark. There had 
been no more water on the bar than had sufficed 
to float the packet in ; and now the bar itself, 
with a shallow break of sea over it, looked like 
a lazy marine monster just risen to the surface, 
whose form was distinctly shown as it lay asleep. 
The meagre lighthouse, all in white, haunting 
the seaboard, as if it were the ghost of an edi- 
fice that had once had color and rotundity, 
dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting 
by the waves. The long rows of gaunt black 
piles, slimy and wet and weather-worn, with 
funeral garlands of sea-weed twisted about them 
by the late tide, might have represented an un- 
sightly marine cemetery. Every wave-dashed, 
storm-beaten object, was so low and so little, 
under the broad gray sky, in the noise of the 
wind and sea, and before the curling lines cf 
surf making at it ferociously, that the wonder 
was there was any Calais left, and that its 
low gates and low wall and low roofs and low 
ditches and low sand-hills and low ramparts and 
flat streets, had not yielded long ago to the un- 
dermining and besieging sea, like the fortifica- 
tions children make on the sea-shore. 

After slipping among oozy piles and planks, 
stumbling up wet steps and encountering many 
salt difficulties, the passengers entered on their 
comfortless peregrination along the pier ; where 
all the French vagabonds and English outlaws in 
the town (half the population) attended to pre- 
vent their recovery from bewilderment. After 
being minutely inspected by all the English, 
and claimed, and reclaimed, and counter-claimed 
as prizes by all the French, in a hand-to-hand 
scuffle, three-quarters of a mile long, they were 
at last free to enter the streets, and to make off" 
in their various directions, hotly pursued. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 20. 

SEA- VOYAGE -The end of a. 

It was mid-day, and high water in the English 
port for which the Screw was bound, when, 
borne in gallantly upon the fullness of the tide, 
she let go her anchor in the river. 

Bright as the scene was ; fresh, and full of 
motion ; airy, free, and sparkling ; it was noth- 
ing to the life and exultation in the breasts of 
the two travellers, at sight of the old churches, 
roofs, and darkened chimney-stacks of Home. 
The distant roar, that swelled up hoarsely from 
the busy streets, was music in their ears ; the 
lines of people gazing from the wharves, were 
friends held dear ; the canopy of smoke that 
overhung the town, was brighter and more beau- 
tiful to them, than if the richest silks of Persia 
had been waving in the air. And though the 
water, going on its glistening track, turned ever 
and again aside, to dance and sparkle round 
great ships, and heave them up, and leaped from 



SECBETS 



433 



SELFISHNESS 



off the blades of oars, a shower of diving dia- 
monds ; and wantoned with the idle boats, and 
swiftly passed, in many a sportive chase, through 
obdurate old iron rings, set deep into the stone- 
work of the quays ; not even it was half so 
buoyant, and so restless, as their fluttering 
hearts, wh^n yearning to set foot, once more, on 
native ground. 

A year had passed, since those same spires 
and roofs had faaed from their eyes. It seemed, 
to them, a dozen years. Some trifling changes, 
here and there, they called to mind ; and won- 
dered that they were so few and slight. In 
health and fortune, prospect and resource, they 
came back poorer men than they had gone 
away. But it was home. And though home is 
a name, a word, it is a strong one ; stronger 
than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, 
in strongest conjuration. 

***** 

Even the street was made a fairy street, by 
being half-hidden in an atmosphere of steak and 
strong, stout, stand-up English beer. For, on 
the window-glass hung such a mist, that Mr. 
Tapley was obliged to rise and wipe it with his 
handkerchief, before the passengers appeared 
like common mortals. And even then, a spiral 
little cloud went curling up from their two 
glasses of hot grog, which nearly hid them 
from each other. — Martin Chttzzlewit, Chap 35. 

SECRETS. 

" Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, 
often double their value in course of time," an- 
swered the matron, still preserving the resolute 
indifference she had assumed. "As to lying dead, 
there are those who will lie dead for twelve thou- 
sand years to come, or twelve million, for any- 
thing you or I know, who will tell strange tales 
at last ! "—Oliver Twist, Chap. 38. 

SECRETS— Depositories of. 

As he went along, upon a dreary night, the 
dim streets by which he went seemed all de- 
positories of oppressive secrets. The deserted 
counting-houses, with their secrets of books and 
papers locked up in chests and safes ; the bank- 
ing houses, with their secrets of strong rooms 
and wells, the keys of which were in a very few 
secret pockets and a very few secret breasts ; the 
secrets of all the dispersed grinders in the vast 
mill, among whom there were doubtless plun- 
derers, forgers, and trust-betrayers of many sorts, 
whom the light of any day that dawned might 
reveal ; he could have fancied that these things, 
in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the air. The 
shadow thickening and thickening as he ap- 
proached its source, he thought of the secrets 
of the lonely church-vaults, where the people 
who had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers 
were in their turn similarly hoarded, not yet at 
rest from doing harm ; and then of the secrets 
of the river, as it rolled its turbid tide between 
two frowning wildernesses of secrets, extend- 
ing, thick and dense, for many miles, and ward- 
ing off the free air and the free country, swept 
by winds and wings of birds. 

The shadow still darkening as he drew near 
the house, the melancholy room which his father 
had once occupied, haunted by the appealing 
face he had himself seen fade away with him 
when there was no other watcher by the bed, arose 
before his mind. Its close air was secret. The 



gloom, and must, and dust of the whole tene- 
ment, were secret. At the heart of it his mother 
presided, inflexible of face, indomitable of will, 
firmly holding all the secrets of her own and his 
father's life, and austerely opposing herself, 
front to front, to the great final secret of all 
Yxit.,— Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 10. 

SECRETS— Of humanity. 

A wonderful fact to retiect upon, that every 
human creature is constituted to be that pro- 
found secret and mystery to every other. A 
solemn consideration, when I enter a great 
city by night, that every one of those darkly 
clustered houses encloses its own secret : that 
every room in every one of them encloses its 
own secret ; that every beating heart in the hun- 
dreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some 
of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest 
it 1 Something of the awfulness even of Death 
itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn 
the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and 
vainly hope in time to read it all. No more 
can I look into the depths of this unfathomable 
water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced 
into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure 
and other things submerged. It was appointed 
that the book should shut with a spring, forever 
and forever, when I had read but a page. It 
was appointed that the water should be locked 
in an eternal frost, when the light was playing 
on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the 
shore. My friend is dead, my neighbor is dead, 
my love, the darling of my soul, is dead ; it is 
the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation 
of the secret that was always in that individu- 
ality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's 
end. In any of the burial-places of this city 
through which I pass, is there a sleeper more 
inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their 
innermost personality, to me, or than I am to 
them?— 7a/<f of Two Cities, Chap. 3. 

SECRET— The possessor of a (Snagsby). 

To know that he is always keeping a secret 
from her ; that he has, under all circumstances, 
to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth, 
which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out 
of his head ; gives Mr. Snagsby, in her dentisti- 
cal presence, much of the air of a dog, who has 
a reservation from his master, and will look 
anywhere rather than meet his eye. 

Bleak House, Chap. 25. . 

SELF-DECEIT. 

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing 
to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences 
did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. 
That I should innocently take a bad half-crown 
of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable 
enough ; but that I should knowingly reckon 
the spurious coin of my own make, as good 
money ! An obliging stranger, under pretence 
of compactly folding up my bank-notes for se- 
curity's sake, abstracts the notes and gives me 
nutshells ; but what is his sleight of hand to 
mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and 
pass them on myself as notes I 

Great Expectations, Chap. 28. 

SELFISHNESS. 

" There is a kind of selfishness," said Mar- 
tin ; " I have learned it in my own e.\perienct 



SELFISHNESS 



434 



SHAKSPEARE 



of my own breast : which is constantly upon 
the watch for selfishness in others ; and hold- 
ing others at a distance by suspicions and dis- 
trusts, wonders why they don't approach, and 
don't confide, and calls that selfishness in them." 
Martin Chuzzlezedt, Chap. 52. 



" But is it really possible to please the 
world ? " says some doubting reader. It is, in- 
deed. Nay, it is not only very possible, but 
very easy. The ways are crooked, and some- 
times foul and low. What then ? A man need 
but crawl upon his hands and knees, know 
when to close his eyes and when his ears, when 
to stoop and when to stand upright ; and if by 
the world is meant that atom of it in which he 
moves himself, he shall please it, never fear. 
Sketches of Couples. 

SELFISHNESS— In love. 

Is selfishness a necessary ingredient in the 
composition of that passion called love, or does 
it deserve all the fine things which poets, in the 
exercise of their undoubted vocation, have said 
of it ? There are, no doubt, authenticated in- 
stances of gentlemen having given up ladies 
and ladies having given up gentlemen to meri- 
torious rivals, under circumstances of great high- 
mindedness ; but it is quite established that the 
majority of such ladies and gentlemen have not 
made a virtue of necessity, and nobly resigned 
what was beyond their reach ; as a private sol- 
dier might register a vow never to accept the 
order of the Garter, or a poor curate of great 
piety and learning, but of no family — save a very 
large family of children — might renounce a bish- 
opric. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 43. 

SENTINEL-Sam WeUer as a. 

" O wery well," said the boots ; " that's a 
mere matter of taste — ev'ry one to his liking. 
Hows'ever, all I've got to say is this here : You 
sit quietly down in that chair, and I'll sit hop- 
persite you here, and if you keep quiet and don't 
stir, I won't damage you ; but if youmove hand 
or foot till half-past twelve o'clock, I shall alter 
the expression of your countenance so complete- 
ly, that the next time you look in the glass you'll 
ask vether you're gone out of town, and ven 
you're likely to come back again. So sit down." 
Tales, Chap. 8. 

SEPARATIONS-In life. 

Breakings up are capital things in our school- 
days, but in after life they are painful enough. 
Death, self-interest, and fortune's changes, are 
every day breaking up many a happy group, and 
scattering them far and wide ; and the boys and 
girls never come back again. 

Pickwick, Chap. 30. 

SERVANT— The miseries of housekeeping-. 

He was taken to Bow Street, as well as I re- 
member, on the completion of his fifteenth jour- 
ney ; when four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand 
fife which he couldn't play, were found upon his 
person. 

The surprise and its consequences would have 
been much less disagreeable to me if he had not 
been penitent. But he was very penitent in- 
deed, and in a peculiar way — not in the lump, 
but by instalments. For example : the day after 
that on which I was obliged to appear against 



n- 

1 



him, he made certain revelations touching a 
hamper in the cellar, which we believed to be 
full of wine, but which had nothing in it except 
bottles and corks. We supposed he had now 
eased his mind, and told the worst he knew of 
the cook ; but, a day or two afterwards, his con- 
science sustained a new twinge, and he disclosec 
how she had a little girl, who, early every mom-i 
ing, took away our bread ; and also how he him-j 
self had been suborned to maintain the milk- 
man in coals. In two or three days more, 
was informed by the authorities of his having 
led to the discovery of sirloins of beef among 
the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A 
little while afterwards, he broke out in an 
entirely new direction, and confessed to a know- 
ledge of burglarious intentions as to our prem- 
ises, on the part of the pot-boy, who was imme-— 
diately taken up, I got to be so ashamed on 
being such a victim, that I would have givenM 
him any money to hold his tongue, or would 
have offered a round bribe for his being per- 
mitted to run away. It was an aggravating cir- 
cumstance in the case that he had no idea of 
this, but conceived that he was making me 
amends in every new discovery: not to say, 
heaping obligations on my head. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 48. 

SHADOWS— Evening. 

It had grown darker as they talked, and the 
wind was sawing and the sawdust was whirling 
outside paler windows. The underlying church- 
yard was already settling into deep dim shade, 
and the shade was creeping up to the house-tops 
among which they sat. " As if," said Eugene, 
" as if the churchyard ghosts were rising." 

Our Mutual Fnend, Book I., Chap. 12. 

SHAKERS— American. 

They are governed by a woman, and her rule 
is understood to be absolute, though she has the 
assistance of a council of elders. She lives, it 
is said, in strict seclusion in certain rooms above 
the chapel, and is never shown to profane eyes. 
If she at all resemble the lady who presided 
over the store, it is a great charity to keep her 
as close as possible, and I cannot too strongly 
express my perfect concurrence in this benevo 
lent proceeding, — American Notes, Chap. 15. 

SHAKSPEARE-Mr. Wolfs idea of. 

" ' Shakspeare's an infernal humbug, Pip ! 
What's the good of Shakspeare, Pip ? I never 
read him. What the devil is it all about, Pip ? 
There's a lot of feet in Shakspeare's verse, but 
there ain't any legs worth mentioning in Shaks- 
peare's plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desde- 
mona. Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of 'em, 
whatever their names are, might as well have no 
legs at all, for anything the audience know about 
it, Pip. Why, in that respect they're all Miss 
Biffins to the audience, Pip, I'll tell you what 
it is. What the people call dramatic poetry is 
a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre 
to be lectured ? No, Pip. If I want that, I'd 
go to church. What's the legitimate object of the 
drama, Pip ? Human nature. What are legs ? 
Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg 
pieces, Pip, and I'll stand by you, my buck ! ' 
And I am proud to say," added Pip, " that he 
did stand by me, handsomely." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 28^ 



SHEBRT-COBBLEB 



435 



SHIP 



SHEBBY-COBBIiEB— An American. 

" I wish you would pull off my boots for me," 
said Martin, dropping into one of the chairs. 
*' I am quite knocked up. Dead beat, Mark." 

" You won't say that to-morrow morning, 
sir," returned Mr. Tapley ; " nor even to- 
night, sir, when you've made a trial of this." 
"With which he produced a very large tumbler, 
piled up to the brim with little blocks of clear 
transparent ice, through which one or two 
thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of 
delicious appearance, appealed from the still 
depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator. 

" What do you call this ? " said Martin. 

But Mr. Tapley made no answer: merely 
plunging a reed into the mixture — which caus- 
ed a pleasant commotion among the pieces of 
ice — and signifying, by an expressive gesture, 
that it was to be pumped up through that agency 
by the enraptured drinker. 

Martin took the glass with an astonished 
look ; applied his lips to the reed ; and cast up 
his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more 
until the goblet was drained to the last drop. 

" There, sir," said Mark, taking it from him 
with a triumphant face ; " If ever you should 
happen to be dead beat again, when I ain't in 
the way, all you've got to do is, to ask the near- 
est man to go and fetch a cobbler." 

" To go and fetch a cobbler? " repeated Mar- 
tin. 

" This wonderful invention, sir," said Mark, 
tenderly patting the empty glass, " is called a 
cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it 
long ; cobbler, when you name it short. 
Now, you're equal to having your boots taken 
off, and are, in every particular worth men- 
tioning, another man." 

Mat tin Chuzzlewit^ Chap. 17. 

SHIP— A hymn on board. 

There was a Sunday, when an officer of the 
ship read the service. It was quiet and im- 
pressive, until we fell upon the dangerous and 
perfectly unnecessary experiment of striking 
up a hymn. After it was given out, we all 
rose, but everybody left it to somebody else to 
begin. Silence resulting, the officer (no singer 
himself) rather reproachfully gave us the first 
line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an 
old gentleman, remarkable throughout the 
passage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little 
stamp with his boot (as if he were leading off 
a country dance), and blithely warbled us into 
a show of joining. At the end of the first 
verse we became, through these tactics, so 
much refreshed and encouraged, that none of 
us, howsoever unmelodious, would submit to 
be left out of the second verse ; while as to the 
third, we lifted up our voices in a sacred howl 
that left it doubtful whether we were the more 
boastful of the sentiments we united in pro- 
fessing, or of professing them with a most dis- 
cordant defiance of time and tune. 

Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples. 

SHIP— At sea. 

At length and at last, the promised wind 
canje up in right good earnest, and away we 
went before it, with every stitch of canvas set, 
slashing through the water nobly. There was a 
grandeur in the motion of the splendid ship, as, 
overshadowed by her mass of sails, she rode at 



a furious pace upon the waves, which filled one 
with an indescribable sense of pride and exul- 
tation. As she plunged into a foaming valley, 
how I loved to see the green waves, bordered 
deep with white, come rushing on astern, to 
buoy her upward at their pleasure, and curl 
about her as she stooped again, but always own 
her for their haughty mistress still ! On, on we 
flew, with changing lights upon the water, be- 
ing now in the blessed region of fleecy skies ; a 
bright sun lighting us by day, and a bright 
moon by night ; the vane pointing directly 
homeward, alike the truthful index to the favor- 
ing wind and to our cheerful hearts. 

American Notes, Chap. 16. 

SHIP— Cabin of a. 

Before descending into the bowels of the ship 
we had passed from the deck into a long narrow 
apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with 
windows in the sides, having at the upper end 
a melancholy stove, at which three or four chilly 
stewards were warming their hands, while on 
either side, extending down its whole dreary 
length, was a long, long table, over each of 
which a rack, fixed to the low roof, and stuck 
full of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands, hinted 
dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather. I 
had not at that time seen the ideal presentment 
of this chamber which has since gratified me so 
much, but I observed that one of our friends 
who had made the arrangements for our voyage 
turned pale on entering, retreated on the friend 
behind him, smote his forehead involuntarily, 
and said, below his breath, " Impossible ! it 
cannot be ! " — American Notes, Chap. i. 

SHIP— Departure of an emigrant. 

It was such a strange scene to me, and so 
confined and dark, that, at first, I could make 
out hardly anything ; but, by degrees, it cleared, 
as my eyes became more accustomed to the 
gloom, and I seemed to stand in a picture by 
OsTADE. Among the great beams, bulks, and 
ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths 
and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps 
of miscellaneous baggage — lighted up, here and 
there, by dangling lanterns ; and elsewhere by 
the yellow day-light straying down a windsail 
or a hatchway — were crowded groups of people, 
making new friendships, taking leave of one 
another, talking, laughing, crying, eating, and 
drinking ; some, already settled down into the 
possession of their few feet of space, with their 
little households arranged, and tiny children 
established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs ; 
others, despairing of a resting-place, and wan- 
dering disconsolately. From babies, who had 
but a week or two of life behind them, to 
crooked old men and women who seemed to 
have but a week or two of life before them ; 
and from ploughmen bodily carrying out soil 
of England on their boots, to smiths taking 
away samples of its soot and smoke upon their 
skins ; every age and occupation appeared to 
be crammed into the narrow compass of the 
'tween decks. 

* * * ♦ » 

We went over the side into our boat, and lay 
at a little distance to see the ship wafted on her 
course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She 
lay between us and the red light ; and everj 
taper line and spar was visible against the glow 



SHIP 



SHIP 



A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and 
so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on 
the flushed water, with all the life on board her 
crowded at the bulwarks, and there clustering, 
for a moment, bare-headed and silent, I never 
saw. — David Copperfield, Chap. 57. 

SHIP— In a storm. 

But what the agitation of a steam-vessel is, on 
a bad winter's night in the wild Atlantic, it is 
impossible for the most vivid imagination to con- 
ceive. To say that she is flung down on her 
side in the waves, with her masts dipping 
into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls 
over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes 
her with the noise of a hundred great guns, and 
hurls her back — that she stops, and staggers, and 
shivers, as though stunned, and then, with a 
violent throbbing at her heart, darts onward like 
a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten 
down, and battered, and crushed, and leaped on 
by the angry sea — that thunder, lightning, hail, 
and rain, and wind, are all in fierce contention 
for the mastery — that ever}' plank has its groan, 
every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in 
the great ocean its howling voice — is nothing. 
To say that all is grand, and all appalling and 
horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words 
cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. 
Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury, 
rage, and passion. 

***** 

Of the outrageous antics performed by that 
ship next morning, which made bed a practical 
joke, and getting up, by any process short of 
falling out, an impossibility, I say nothing. But 
anything like the utter dreariness and desolation 
that met my eyes when I literally " tumbled up" 
on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky 
were all of one dull, heavy, uniform lead-color. 
There was no extent of prospect even over the 
dreary waste that lay around us, for the sea ran 
high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large 
black hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall 
bluff on shore, it would have been imposing and 
stupendous, no doubt ; but seen from the wet 
and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily 
and painfully. In the gale of last night the life- 
boat had been crushed by one blow of the sea, 
like a walnut-shell ; and there it hung dangling 
in the air, a. mere fagot of crazy boards. The 
planking of the paddle-boxes had been torn 
sheer away. T.he wheels were exposed and 
bare ; and they whirled and dashed their spray 
about the decks at random. Chimney white 
with crusted salt ; topmast struck ; storm-sails 
set ; rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and 
drooping ; a gloomier picture it would be hard 
to look upon. — American Notes, Chap. 2. 

SHIP— Prayer on board. 

Thus the scene. Some seventy passengers 
assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-books 
on tables. Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No 
Minister, Rumor has related that a modest 
young clergyman on board has responded to the 
captain's request that he will officiate. Pause 
again, and very heavy rolling. 

Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and 
two strong stewards skate in, supporting minis- 
ter between them. General appearance as of 
somebody picked up, drunk and incapable, and 
under conveyance to station-house. Stoppage, 



pause, and particularly heavy rolling. Stewards 
watch their opportunity, and balance themselves, 
but cannot balance minister ; who, straggling 
with a drooping head and a backward tendency, 
seems determined to return below, while they are 
as determined that he shall be got to the reading, 
desk in mid-saloon. Desk portable, sliding 
away down a long table, and aiming itself at 
the breasts of various members of the congrega- 
tion. Here the double doors, which have been 
carefully closed by other stewards, fly open 
again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, seem- 
ingly with Pale Ale designs; who, seeking 
friend, says " Joe ! " Perceiving incongruity^ 
says, *' Hullo 1 Beg yer pardon ! " and tumbles 
out again. All this time the congregation have 
been breaking up into sects — as the manner of 
congregations often is — each sect sliding away 
by itself, and all pounding the weakest sect, 
which slid first into the corner. Utmost point 
of dissent soon attained in every corner, and 
violent rolling. Stewards at length make a 
dash ; conduct minister to the mast in the cen- 
tre of the saloon, which he embraces with both 
arms ; skate out ; and leave him in that con- 
dition to arrange affairs with flock. 
Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples. 

SHIP— Preparations for departure. 

But we are made fast alongside the packet, 
whose huge red funnel is smoking bravely, giv- 
ing rich promise of serious intentions. Pack- 
ing-cases, portmanteaus, carpet-bags, and boxes 
are already passed from hand to hand, and 
hauled on board with breathless rapidity. The 
officers, smartly dressed, are at the gangway, 
handing the passengers up the side, and hurry- 
ing the men. In five minutes' time the little 
steamer is utterly deserted, and the packet is 
beset and overran by its late freight, who in- 
stantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be 
met with by the dozen in every nook and corner 
swarming down below with their own baggage, 
and stumbling over other people's ; disposinj 
themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, anc 
creating a most horrible confusion by having to 
turn out again ; madly bent upon opening locked 
doors, and on forcing a passage into all kinds 
of out-of-the-way places, where there is no 
thoroughfare : sending wild stewards with elfin 
hair to and fro upon the breezy decks on unintel- 
ligible errands, impossible of execution ; and, in 
short, creating the most extraordinary and be- 
wildering tumult. 

***** 

The state-room had grown pretty fast; but 
by this time it had expanded into something 
quite bulky, and almost boasted a bay-window 
to view the sea from. So we went upon deck 
again in high spirits ; and there everything was 
in such a state of bustle and active preparation, 
that the blood quickened its pace, and whirled 
through one's veins on that clear frosty morn- 
ing with involuntary mirthfulness. For every 
gallant ship was riding slowly up and down, 
and every little boat was plashing noisily in the 
water ; and knots of people stood upon the 
wharf, gazing with a kind of " dread delight " on 
the far-famed fast American steamer ; and one 
party of men were " taking in the milk," or, in 
other words, getting the cow on board ; and 
another were filling the ice-houses to the very 
throat with fresh provisions, — with butchers' 



SHIP 



487 



SHI* 



meat and garden-stuff, pale sucking-pigs, calves' 
heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and poul- 
try out of all proportion ; and others were coil- 
ing ropes, and busy with oakum yarns ; and 
others were lowering heavy packages into the 
hold : and the purser's head was barely visible 
as it loomed in a state of exquisite perplexity 
from the midst of a vast pile of passengers' lug- 
gage ; and there seemed to be nothing going on 
anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of any- 
body, but preparations for this mighty voyage. 
This, with the bright cold sun, the bracing air, 
the crisply curling water, the thin white crust 
of morning ice upon the decks, which crackled 
with a sharp and cheerful sound beneath the 
lightest tread, was irresistible. And when, again 
upon the shore, we turned and saw from the ves- 
sel's mast her name signalled in flags of joyous 
colors, and fluttering by their side the beautiful 
American banner, with its stars and stripes, the 
long three thousand miles and more, and, long- 
er still, the six whole months of absence, so 
dwindled and faded, that the ship had gone 
out and come home again, and it was broad 
spring already in the Coburg Dock at Liver- 
pool. — American Notes, Chap, i, 

SHIP— Scenes on board. 

My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for 
the firm of Human Interest Brothers have not 
slackened since I last reported of them, but have 
kept me continually on the move. I remain in 
the same idle employment. I never solicit an 
order, I never get any commission, I am the roll- 
ing stone that gathers no moss, — unless any 
should by chance be found among these Samples. 

Some half a year ago, I found myself in my 
idlest, dreamiest, and least accountable condi- 
tion altogether, on board ship, in the harbor of 
the city of New York, in the United States of 
America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine 
was the good steamship Russia, Captain Cook, 
Cunard Line, bound for Liverpool. What more 
could I wish for ? 

***** 

A bright sun and a clear sky had melted the 
snow in the great crucible of nature, and it had 
been poured out again that morning over sea 
and land, transformed into myriads of gold and 
silver sparkles. 

The ship was fragrant with flowers. Some- 
thing of the old Mexican passion for flowers 
may have gradually passed into North America, 
where flowers are luxuriously grown and taste- 
fully combined in the richest profusion ; but, be 
that as it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers 
had come on board, that the small officer's cabin 
on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed over into 
the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other flowers 
that it could n't hold, made a garden of the 
unoccupied tables in the passengers' saloon. 
These delicious scents of the shore, mingling 
with the fresh airs of the sea, made the atmos- 
phere a dreamy, an enchanting one. And so, 
with the watch aloft setting all the sails, and 
with the screw below revolving at a mighty rate, 
and occasionally giving the ship an angry shake 
for resisting,! fell into my idlest ways and lost my- 
self. — Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples. 

SHIP— State-room of a. 

That this state-room had been specially 
engaged for " Charles Dickens, Esquire, and 



Lady" was rendered sufficiently clear even to 
my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, 
announcing the fact, which was pinned on a 
very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress, 
spread like a surgical plaster on a most inacces- 
sible shelf. 

***** 

That this room of state, in short, could be 
anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful 
jest of the captain's, invented and put in practice 
for the better relish and enjoyment of the real 
state-room presently to be disclosed ; — these 
were truths which I really could not, for the 
moment, bring my mind at all to bear upon or 
comprehend. And I sat down upon a kind of 
horse-hair slab, or perch, of which there were 
two within ; and looked, without any expression 
of countenance whatever, at some friends who 
had come on board with us, and who were 
crushing their faces into all manner of shapes 
by endeavoring to squeeze them through the 
small doorway. — American Notes, Chap. i. 

SHIPS— Their associations. 

" Think of this wine, for instance," said old 
Sol, " which has been to the East Indies and 
back, I'm not able to say how often, and has 
been once round the world. Think of the pitch- 
dark nights, the roaring winds, and rolling seas." 

" The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of 
all kinds," said the boy. 

" To be sure," said Solomon — " that this wine 
has passed through. Think what a straining and 
creaking of timbers and masts ; what a whist- 
ling and howling of the gale through ropes and 
rigging : " 

" What a clambering aloft of men, vying with 
each other who shall lie out first upon the yards 
to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls and 
pitches, like mad ! " cried his nephew. 

Dombey b' Son, Chap. 4. 

SHIPS— The rigrgring of. 

Arrived at the wharf, this great commander's 
ship was jammed in among some five hundred 
companions, whose tangled rigging looked like 
monstrous cobwebs half swept down. 

Dombey (5r» Son, Chap. 23. 

SHIPWRECK -Capt. Cuttie's description 
of a. 

" Day arter day that there unfort'nate ship be- 
haved noble, I'm told, and did her duty brave, 
my pretty, but at one blow a'most her bulwarks 
was stove in, her masts and rudder carried away, 
her best men swept overboard, and she left to 
the mercy of the storm as had no mercy, but 
blowed harder and harder yet, while the waves 
dashed over her, and beat her in, and every time 
they come a thundering at her, broke her like a 
shell. Every black spot in every mountain of 
water that rolled away was a bit o' the ship's 
life or a living man ; and so she went to pieces, 
Beauty, and no grass will never grow upon the 
graves of them as manned that ship." 

Dombey b' Son, Chap. 49. 

SHIP— The voice of the Screw. 

And now, lying down again, awaiting the sea- 
son for broiled ham and tea, I would be com- 
pelled to listen to the voice of conscience, — the 
Screw. 

It mijiht be, in some cases, no more than 



438 



SHIPWBECE 



the voice of Stomach, but I called it in my 
fancy by the higher name. Because it seemed 
to me that we were all of us, all day long, en- 
deavoring to stifle the Voice. Because it was 
under everybody's pillow, everybody's plate, 
everybody's camp-stool, everybody's book, every- 
body's occupation. Because we pretended not 
to hear it, especially at meal-times, evening 
whist, and morning conversation on deck ; but 
it was always among us in an under monotone, 
not to be drowned in pea-soup, not to be shuffled 
with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to 
be knitted into any pattern, not to be walked 
away from. It was smoked in the weediest 
cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail ; it 
was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, 
who lay there in their wrappers until the stars 
shone ; it waited at table with the stewards ; no- 
body could put it out with the lights. It was 
considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknow- 
ledge the Voice of Conscience. It was not 
polite to mention it. One squally day an amia- 
ble gentleman in love gave much offence to a 
surrounding circle, including the object of his 
attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded 
him over two easy-chairs and a skylight, 
" Screw ! " 

Sometimes it would appear subdued. In 
fleeting moments, when bubbles of champagne 
pervaded the nose, or when there was "hot 
pot " in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we 
had had regularly every day was described in 
that official document by a new name — under 
such excitements, one would almost believe it 
hushed. The ceremony of washing plates on 
deck, performed after every meal by a circle as 
of ringers of crockery triple-bob-majors for a 
prize, would keep it down. Hauling the reel, 
taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty-four 
hours' run, altering the ship's time by the meri- 
dian, casting the waste food overboard, and at- 
tracting the eager gulls that followed in our 
wake ; these events would suppress it for a 
while. But the instant any break or pause 
took place in any such diversion, the Voice 
would be at it again, importuning us to the last 
extent. A newly-married young pair, who 
walked the deck affectionately some twenty 
miles per day, would, in the full flush of their 
exercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and 
stand trembling, but otherwise immovable, un- 
der its reproaches. 

***** 

Lights out, we in our berths, and the wind 
rising, the Voice grows angrier and deeper. 
Under the mattress and under the pillow, un- 
der the sofa and under the washing-stand, un- 
der the ship and under the sea, seeming to arise 
from the foundations under the earth with every 
scoop of the great Atlantic (and O, why scoop 
so !), always the Voice. Vain to deny its exist- 
ence in the night season ; impossible to be hard 
of hearing ; Screw, Screw, Screw. Sometimes 
it lifts out of the water, and revolves with a 
whirr, like a ferocious firework — except that it 
never expends itself, but is always ready to go 
oft" again ; sometimes it seems to be aguish and 
shivers ; sometimes it seems to be terrified by 
its last plunge, and has a fit which causes it to 
struggle, quiver, and for an instant stop. And 
now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so 
fiercely screwed through time and space, day 
and night, fair weather and foul, can roll. I 



Did she ever take a roll before like that last ? 
Did she ever take a roll before like this worse 
one that is coming now ? Here is the partition 
at my ear down in the deep on the lee side. 
Are we ever coming up again together ? I think 
not ; the partition and I are so long about it 
that I really do believe we have overdone it 
this time. Heavens, what a scoop ! What a 
deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long 
scoop ! Will it ever end ! 

***** 

At last, at nine of the clock, on a fair evening 
early in May, we stopped, and the Voice ceased. 
A very curious sensation, not unlike having my 
own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence ; 
and it was with a no less curious sensation that 
I went over the side of the good Cunard ship 
Russia, (whom Prosperity attend through all her 
voyages !) and surveyed the outer hull of the 
gracious monster that the Voice had inhabited. 
So, perhaps, shall we all, in the spirit, one day 
survey the frame that held the busier Voice 
from which my vagrant fancy derived this simil- 
itude. 

Aboard Ship. New Uncommercial Samples. 

SHIPWRECK— (The death of Ham). 

" A wreck ! Close by ! " 

I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck ? 

" A schooner from Spain or Portugal, laden 
with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you 
want to see her ! It's thought, down on the 
beach, she'll go to pieces every moment." 

The excited voice went clamoring along the 
staircase ; and I wrapped myself in my clothes 
as quickly as I could, and ran into the street. 

The wind might by this time have lulled a 
little, though not more sensibly than if the can- 
nonading I had dreamed of had been diminish- 
ed by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of 
hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the ad- 
ditional agitation of the whole night, was infi- 
nitely more terrific than when I had seen it 
last. Every appearance it had then presented, 
bore the expression of being swelled : and the 
height to which the breakers rose, and, looking 
over one another, bore one another down, and 
rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most ap- 
palling. 

In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind 
and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeak- 
able confusion, and my first breathless efforts to 
stand against the weather, I was so confused 
that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw 
nothing but the foaming heads of the great 
waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next 
me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo'd arrow 
on it, pointing in the same direction), to the 
left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in 
upon us ! 

One mast was broken short off, six or eigh* 
feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entan- 
gled in a maze of sail and rigging ; and all that 
ruin, as the ship rolled and beat — which she did 
without a moment's pause, and with a violence 
quite inconceivable, beat the side as if it would 
stave it in. Some efforts were even then being 
made, to cut this portion of the wreck away • 
for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned 
towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried he- 
people at work with axes, especially one active 
figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among 
the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even 



SHIPWRECK 



489 



SHIPBOABD 



above the wind and water, rose from the shore 
at this moment ; the sea, sweeping over the roll- 
ing wreck, made a clean breach, and carried 
men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of 
such toys, into the boiling surge. 

The second mast was yet standing, with the 
rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of bro- 
ken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship had 
struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in 
my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I 
understood him to add that she was parting 
amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for 
the rolling and beating were too tremendous for 
any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, 
there was another great cry of pity from the 
beach : four men arose with the wreck out of the 
deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining 
mast ; uppermost, the active figure with the 
curling hair. 

There was a bell on board ; and as the ship 
rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature 
driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep 
of her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends 
towards the shore, now nothing but her keel, as 
she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, 
the bell rang ; and its sound, the knell of those 
unhappy men, was borne towards us on the 
wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. 
Two men were gone. The agony on shore in- 
creased. Men groaned, and clasped their hands ; 
women shrieked, and turned away their faces. 
Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, 
crying for help where no help could be. I 
found myself one of these, frantically imploring 
a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those 
two lost creatures perish before our eyes. 

They were making out to me, in an agitated 
way — I don't know how, for the little I could 
hear I was scarcely composed enough to under- 
stand — that the lifeboat had been bravely 
manned an hour ago, and could do nothing ; 
and that, as no man would be so desperate as 
to attempt to wade off with a rope, and estab- 
lish a communication with the shore, there was 
nothing left to try ; when I noticed that some 
new sensation moved the people on the beach, 
and saw them part, and Ham come breaking 
through them to the front. 

***** 

Then I saw him standing alone, in a sea- 
man's frock and trowsers : a rope in his hand, 
or slung to his wrist : another round his body : 
and several of the best men holding, at a little 
distance, to the latter, which he laid out him- 
self, slack upon the shore, at his feet. 

The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was 
breaking up. I saw that she was parting in 
the middle, and that the life of the solitary man 
upon the mast hung by a thread. Still, he 
clung to it. He had a singular red cap on, — 
not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer color ; and 
as the few yielding planks between him and 
destruction rolled and bulged, and his antici- 
pative death-knell rung, he was seen by all of 
us to wave it. I saw him do it now, and 
thought I was going distracted, when his action 
brought an old remembrance to my mind of a 
once dear friend. 

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with 
the silence of suspended breath behind him, 
and the storm before, until there was a great 
retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at 
those who held the rope which was made fast 



round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a 
moment was buffeting with the water ; rising 
with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost be- 
neath the foam : then drawn again to land. 
They hauled in hastily. 

He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from 
where I stood ; but he took no thought of that. 
He seemed hurriedly to give them some direc- 
tions for leaving him more free — or so I judg- 
ed from the motion of his arm — and was gone 
as before. 

And now he made for the wreck, rising 
with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost be- 
neath the rugged foam, borne in towards the 
shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard 
and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but 
the power of the sea and wind made the strife 
deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He 
was so near, that with one more of his vigor- 
ous strokes he would be clinging to it, — when 
a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on 
shoreward from beyond the ship, he seemed 
to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the 
ship was gone. 

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as 
if a mere cask had been broken, in running to 
the spot where they were hauling in. Consterna- 
tion was in every face. They drew him to my 
very feet — insensible — dead. He was carried 
to the nearest house ; and, no one preventing 
me now, I remained near him, busy, while every 
means of restoration were tried ! but he had 
been beaten to death by the great wave, and 
his generous heart was stilled for ever. 

David Copperfieldy Chap. 55. 

SHIPBOARD— Mark Tapley's jollity on. 

It is due to Mark Tapley to state, that he suf- 
fered at least as much from sea-sickness as any 
man, woman, or child on board ; and that he 
had a peculiar faculty of knocking himself about 
on the smallest provocation, and losing his legs 
at every lurch of the ship. But resolved, in his 
usual phrase, to " come out strong " under dis- 
advantageous circumstances, he was the life and 
soul of the steerage, and made no more of 
stopping in the middle of a facetious conversa- 
tion to go away and be excessively ill by him- 
self, and afterwards come back in the very best 
and gayest of tempers to resume it, than if such 
a course of proceeding had been the commonest 
in the world. 

It cannot be said that as his illness wore off 
his cheerfulness and good nature increased, be- 
cause they would hardly admit of augmentation ; 
but his usefulness among the weaker members 
of the party was much enlarged ; and at all 
times and seasons there he was exerting it. If 
a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky, down 
Mark tumbled into the cabin, and presently up 
he came again with a woman in his arms, or 
half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a 
saucepan, or a basket, or something animate or 
inanimate, that he thought would be the better 
for the air. If an hour or two of fine weather 
in the middle of the day tempted those who 
seldom or never came on deck at other times, 
to crawl into the long-boat, or lie down upon 
the spare spars, and try to eat, there, in the 
centre of the group, was Mr. Tapley, handing 
about salt beef and biscuit, or dispensing tastes 
of grog, or cutting up the children's provisions 
with his pocket-knife, for their greater ease and 



SHTPBOABD 



440 



SHIPBOARD 



comfort, or reading aloud from a venerable 
newspaper, or singing some roaring old song to 
a select party, or writing the beginnings of let- 
ters to their friends at home for people who 
couldn't write, or cracking jokes with the crew, 
or nearly getting blown over the side, or emer- 
ging, half-drowned, from a shower of spray, or 
lending a hand somewhere or other : but always 
doing something for the general entertainment. 
At night, when the cooking-fire was lighted on 
the deck, and the driving sparks that flew among 
the rigging, and the cloud of sails, seemed to 
menace the ship with certain annihilation by fire, 
in case the elements of air and water failed to 
compass her destruction ; there, again, was Mr. 
Tapley, with his coat off and his shirt-sleeves 
turned up to his elbows, doing all kinds of culi- 
nary offices ; compounding the strangest dishes ; 
recognized by every one as an established au- 
thority ; and helping all parties to achieve some- 
thing, which, left to themselves, they never 
could have done, and never would have dreamed 
of. In short, there never was a more popular 
character than Mark Tapley became, on board 
that noble and fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, 
the Screw ; and he attained at last to such a 
pitch of universal admiration, that he began to 
have grave doubts within himself whether a man 
might reasonably claim any credit for being 
jolly under such exciting circumstances. 

'* If this was going to last," said Mr. Tapley, 
'• there'd be no great difference, as I can per- 
ceive, between the Screw and the Dragon. I 
never am to get credit, I think. I begin to be 
afraid that the Fates is determined to make the 
world easy to me." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 15. 

SHIPBOARD— Night scenes on. 

The perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the 
decks gave place to a heavy silence, and the 
whole human freight was stowed away below, 
excepting a very few stragglers, like myself, who 
were probably, like me, afraid to go there. 

To one unaccustomed to such scenes this is a 
very striking time on shipboard. Afterwards, 
and when its novelty had long worn off, it never 
ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm for 
me. The gloom through which the great black 
mass holds its direct and certain course ; the 
rushing water, plainly heard, but dimly seen ; 
the broad, white, glistening track that follows 
in the vessel's wake ; the men on the lookout 
forward, who would be scarcely visible against 
the dark sky, but for their blotting out some 
score of glistening stars ; the helmsman at the 
wheel, with the illuminated card before him, 
shining, a speck of light amidst the darkness, 
like something sentient and of Divine intelli- 
gence ; the melancholy sighing of the wind 
through block, and rope, and chain ; the gleam- 
ing forth of light from every crevice, nook, and 
tiny piece of glass about the decks, as though 
the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to 
burst through any outlet, wild with its resistless 
power of death and ruin. At first, too, and even 
when the hour and all the objects it exalts have 
come to be familiar, it is difficult, alone and 
thoughtful, to hold them to their proper shapes 
and forms. They change with the wandering 
fancy, assume the semblance of things left far 
away, put on the well-remembered aspect of 
favorite places dearly loved, and even people 



them with shadows. Streets, houses, rooms, 
figures so like their usual occupants, that they 
have startled me by their reality, which far ex- 
ceeded, as it seemed to me, all power of mine to 
conjure up the absent, have many and many a 
time, at such an hour, grown suddenly out of 
objects with whose real look and use and pur- 
pose I was as well acquainted as with my own 
two hands. — American Notes, Chap. 2. 

SHIPBOARD— Scenes on. 

Everything sloped the wrong way, which in 
itself was an aggravation scarcely to be borne. 
I had left the door open, a moment before, in 
the bosom of a gentle declivity, and, when I 
turned to shut it, it was on the summit of a 
lofty eminence. Now, every plank and timber 
creaked, as if the ship were made of wicker- 
work ; and now crackled, like an enormous fire 
of the driest possible twigs. There was nothing 
for it but bed ; so I went to bed. 

It was pretty much the same for the next 
two days, with a tolerably fair wind and dry 
weather. I read in bed (but to this hour I don't 
know what) a good deal, and reeled on deck a 
little, drank cold brandy-and-water with an un- 
speakable disgust, and ate hard biscuit perse- 
veringly ; not ill, but going to be. 

It is the third morning. I am awakened out 
of my sleep by a dismal shriek from my wife, 
who demands to know whether there's any dan- 
ger. I rouse myself and look out of bed. The 
water-jug is plunging and leaping like a lively 
dolphin ; all the smaller articles are afloat, ex- 
cept my shoes, which are stranded on a carpet- 
bag high and dry, like a couple of coal-barges. 
Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and be- 
hold the looking-glass, which is nailed to the 
wall, sticking fast upon the ceiling. At the 
same time the door entirely disappears and a 
new one is opened in the floor. Then I begin to 
comprehend that the state-room is standing on 
its head. 

Before it is possible to make any arrangement 
at all compatible with this novel state of things, 
the ship rights. Before one can say, " Thank 
Heaven ! " she wrongs again. Before one can 
cry she is wrong, she seems to have started for- 
ward, and to be a creature actively running of 
its own accord, with broken knees and failing 
legs, through every variety of hole and pit- 
fall, and stumbling constantly. Before one can 
so much as wonder, she takes a high leap into 
the air. Before she has well done that, she 
takes a deep dive into the water. Before she 
has gained the surface, she throws a summerset. 
The instant she is on her legs she rushes back- 
ward. And so she goes on, staggering, heaving, 
wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, pitching, 
throbbing, rolling, and rocking, and going 
through all these movements, sometimes by 
turns, and sometimes all together, until one feels 
disposed to roar for mercy. 

A steward passes. "Steward!" "Sir?" 
" What is the matter ? what do you call this ? " 
" Rather a heavy sea on, sir, and a head-wind." 

A head-wind ! Imagine a human face upon 
the vessel's prow, with fifteen thousand Samsons 
in one bent upon driving her back, and hitting 
her exactly between the eyes whenever she at- 
tempts to advance an inch. Imagine the ship 
herself, with every pulse and artery of her huge 
body swollen and bursting under this maltreat- 



SHIP 



441 



SICKNESS 



ment, sworn to go on or die. Imagine the wind 
howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating, all in 
furious array against her. Picture the sky both 
dark and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympa- 
thy with the waves, making another ocean in the 
air. Add to all this the clattering on deck and 
down below, the tread of hurried feet, the loud 
hoarse shouts of seamen, the gurgling in and out 
of water through the scuppers, with every now 
and then the striking of a heavy sea upon the 
planks above, with the deep, dead, heavy sound 
of thunder heard within a vault — and there is 
the head-wind of that January morning. 

American Notes ^ Chap. 2. 

SHIP— Steam. 

The steamer — which, with its machinery on 
deck, looked, as it worked its long, slim legs, like 
some enormously magnified insect or antediluv- 
ian monster — dashed at great speed up a beauti- 
ful bay ; and presently they saw some heights, 
and islands, and a long, flat, straggling city. 
Martin Chuzzlewit^ Chap. 15, 

SHOP— A curiosity. 

The place through which he made his way at 
leisure, was one of those receptacles for old and 
curious things which seem to crouch in odd cor- 
ners of this town, and to hide their musty treas- 
ures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. 
There were suits of mail, standing like ghosts 
in armor, here and there ; fantastic carvings 
brought from monkish cloisters ; rusty weapons 
of various kinds ; distorted figures in china, and 
wood, and iron, and ivory ; tapestry, and strange 
furniture that might have been designed in 
dreams. The haggard aspect of the little old 
man was wonderfully suited to the place ; he 
might have groped among old churches, and 
tombs, and deserted houses, and gathered all 
the spoils with his own hands. There was noth- 
ing in the whole collection but was in keeping 
with himself ; nothing that looked older or more 
worn than he. — Old Curiosity Shop^ Chap. i. 

SHOP-An old clo'. 

I happened to pass a little shop, where it was 
written up that ladies' and gentlemen's ward- 
robes were bought, and that the best price was 
given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The 
master of this shop was sitting at the door in 
his shirt-sleeves, smoking : and as there were a 
great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling 
from the low ceiling, and only two feeble can- 
dles burning inside to show what they were, I 
fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful 
disposition, who had hung all his enemies and 
was enjoying himself. 

David Copperjieldf Chap. 13. 

SHOP-Tetterby's. 

Tetterby's was the corner shop in Jerusalem 
Buildings. There was a good show of literature 
in the window, chiefly consisting of picture- 
newspapers out of date, and serial pirates and 
footpads. Walking-sticks, likewise, and mar- 
bles, were included in the stock in trade. It 
had once extended into the light confectionery 
line ; but it would seem that those elegancies of 
life were not in demand about Jerusalem Build- 
ings, for nothing connected with that branch of 
commerce remained in the window, except a 
«ort of small glass lantern containing a languish- 



ing mass of bull's-eyes, which had melted in the 
summer and congealed in the winter until all 
hope of ever getting them out, or of eating 
them without eating the lantern too, was gone 
forever. Tetterby's had tried its hand at sev- 
eral things. It had once made a feeble little 
dart at the toy business ; for, in another lantern, 
there was a heap of minute wax dolls, all stick- 
ing together upside down, in the direst confu- 
sion, with their feet on one another's heads, and 
a precipitate of broken arms and legs at the 
bottom. It had made a move in the millinery 
direction, which a few dry, wiry bonnet-shapes 
remained in the corner of the window to attest. 
It had fancied that a living might lie hidden in 
the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a represen- 
tation of a native of each of the three integral 
portions of the British empire, in the act of con- 
suming that fragrant weed ; with a poetic legend 
attached, importing that united in one cause 
they sat and joked, one chewed tobacco, one 
took snuff", one smoked : but nothing seemed to 
have come of it — except flies. Time had been 
when it had put a forlorn trust in imitative jew- 
elry, for in one pane of glass there was a card 
of cheap seals, and another of pencil-cases, and 
a mysterious black amulet of inscrutable inten- 
tion, labelled ninepence. But, to that hour, 
Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them. 
In short, Tetterby's had tried so hard to get a 
livelihood out of Jerusalem Buildings in one 
way or other, and appeared to have done so in- 
differently in all, that the best position in the 
firm was too evidently Co.'s ; Co., as a bodiless 
creation, being untroubled with the vulgar in- 
conveniences of hunger and thirst, being charge- 
able neither to the poor's-rates nor the assessed 
taxes, and having no young family to provide 
for. — Haunted Man^ Chap. 2. 

SHREWDNESS. 

" Ha ! ha ! my dear," replied the Jew, " you 
must get up very early in the morning, to win 
against the Dodger." 

" Morning ! " said Charley Bates ; " you must 
put your boots on overnight ; and have a tele- 
scope at each eye, and a opera-glass between 
your shoulders, if you want to come over him." 
Oliver Twisty Chap. 25. 

SICKNESS— The suspense of. 

Oh ! the suspense, the fearful, acute suspense, 
of standing idly by while the life of one we 
dearly love is trembling in the balance ! Oh ! 
the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, 
and make the heart beat violently, and the 
breath come thick, by the force of the images 
they conjure up before it : the desperate anxiety 
to be doing something to relieve the pain, or 
lessen the danger, which we have no power to 
alleviate ; the sinking of soul and spirit, which 
the sad remembrance of our helplessness pro- 
duces : what tortures can equal these ; what re- 
flections or endeavors can, in the full tide and 
fever of the time, allay them ! 

Morning came; and the little cottage was 
lonely and still. People spoke in whispers ; 
anxious faces appeared at the gate, from time to 
time ; women and children went away in tears. 
All the livelong day, and for hours after it had 
grown dark, Oliver paced softly up and down 
the garden, raising his eyes every instant to the 
sick-chamber, and shuddering to see the dark. 



SIGH 



442 



SKEMFOLE 



ened window, looking as if death lay stretched 
inside. 

* « 4: « 4c 

The sun shone brightly : as brightly as if it 
looked upon no misery or care ; and, with every 
leaf and flower in full bloom about her ; with 
life, and health, and sounds and sights of joy, 
surrounding her on every side ; the fair young 
creature lay, wasting fast. Oliver crept away to 
the old churchyard, and sitting down on one of 
the green mounds, wept and prayed for her, in 
silence. 

There was such peace and beauty in the 
scene ; so much of brightness and mirth in the 
sunny landscape ; such blithesome music in the 
songs of the summer birds ; such freedom in 
the rapid flight of the rook, careering overhead ; 
so much of life and joyousness in all ; that, 
when the boy raised his aching eyes, and looked 
about, the thought instinctively occurred to him, 
that this was not a time for death ; that Rose 
could surely never die when humbler things 
were all so glad and gay ; that graves were for 
cold and cheerless winter : not for sunlight and 
fragrance. He almost thought that shrouds 
were for the old and shrunken ; and that they 
never wrapped the young and graceful form 
within their ghastly folds. 

* * * * 4fr 

We need be careful how we deal with those 
about us, when every death carries to some 
small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much 
omitted, and so little done — of so many things 
forgotten, and so many more which might have 
been repaired ! There is no remorse so deep 
as that which is unavailing ; if we would be 
spared its tortures, let us remember this in time. 
Oliver Twisty Chap. 33. 

SIGH. 

" Poor Edward ! " sighed Little Dorrit, with 
the whole family history in the sigh. 

Little Dorrit, Book JI., Chap. 14. 

SIGN— A tobacco. 

The business was of too modest a character 
to support a life-size Highlander, but it main- 
tained a little one on a bracket on the door post, 
who looked like a fallen Cherub that had found 
it necessary to take to a kilt. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 18. 

SIGNS— The grhosts of dead biisinesses. 

Very little life was to be seen on either bank ; 
windows and doors were shut, and the staring 
black and white letters upon wharves and ware- 
houses "looked," said Eugene to Mortimer, 
" like inscriptions over the graves of dead busi- 
nesses." — Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 14. 

SINCERITY. 

"What I want," drawled Mrs. Skewton, 
pinching her shrivelled throat, " is heart." It 
was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that 
in which she used the phrase. " What I want, 
is frankness, confidence, less conventionality, 
and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully 
artificial." — Dombey <Sr» Son, Chap. 21. 



Miss Tox's sympathy is such that she can 
scarcely speak. She is no chicken, but she has 
not grown tough with age and celibacy. Her 
heart is very tender, her compassion very gen- 



uine, her homage very real. Beneath the locket 
with the fishy-eye in it. Miss Tox bears better 
qualities than many a less whimsical outside ; 
such qualities as will outlive, by many courses 
of the sun, the best outsides and brightest husks 
that fall in the harvest of the great reaper. 

Dombey ^^ Son, Chap. 59. 

" Why are we not more natural ! Dear me ! 
With all those yearnings, and gushings, and im- 
pulsive throbbings that we have implanted in 
our souls, and which are so very charming, why 
are we not more natural ? " 

Mr. Dombey said it was very true, very true. 

" We could be more natural, I suppose, if wc 
tried ? " said Mrs. Skewton. 

Mr. Dombey thought it possible. 

" Devil a bit. Ma'am," said the Major, " We 
couldn't afford it. Unless the world was peo- 
pled with J. B.'s — tough and blunt old Joes, 
Ma'am, plain red herrings with hard roes, Sir — 
we couldn't afford it. It wouldn't do." 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 21. 

SEIMFOLE, HAROIiD— His character. 

When we went down stairs, we were pre- 
sented to Mr. Skimpole, who was standing be- 
fore the fire, telling Richard how fond he used 
to be, in his school-time, of football. He was a 
little, bright creature, with a rather large head ; 
but a delicate face, and a sweet voice, and there 
was a perfect charm in him. All he said was 
so free from effort, and spontaneous, and was 
said with such a captivating gayety, that it was 
fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more 
slender figure than Mr. Jarndyce, and having a 
richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked 
younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance, 
in all respects, of a damaged young man, than a 
well-preserved elderly one. There was an easy 
negligence in his manner and even in his dress 
(his hair carelessly disposed, and his neckerchief 
loose and flowing, as I have seen artists paint 
their own portraits), which I could not separate 
from the idea of a romantic youth who had un- 
dergone some unique process of depreciation. 
It struck me as being not at all like the manner 
or appearance of a man who had advanced in 
life by the usual road of years, cares, and ex- 
periences. 

I gathered from the conversation, that Mr. 
Skimpole had been educated for the medical 
profession, and had once lived, in his profes- 
sional capacity, in the household of a German 
prince. He told us, however, that as he had 
always been a mere child in points of weights 
and measures, and had never known anything 
about them (except that they disgusted him), he 
had never been able to prescribe with the requi- 
site accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had 
no head for detail. And he told us, with great 
humor, that when he was wanted to bleed the 
prince, or physic any of his people, he was gen- 
erally found lying on his back, in bed, reading 
the newspapers, or making fancy sketches in 
pencil, and couldn't come. The prince at last 
objecting to this, " in which," said Mr. Skimpole, 
in the frankest manner, " he was perfectly right," 
the engagement terminated, and Mr. Skimpole 
having (as he added with delightful gayety) 
" nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, 
and married, and surrounded himself with rosy 
cheeks." His good friend Jarndyce and some 



SKIMPOIiE 



448 



SLEEP 



other of his good friends then helped him, in 
quicker or slower succession, to several openings 
in life ; but to no purpose, for he must confess 
to two of the oldest infirmities in the world ; 
one was that he had no idea of time ; the other, 
that he had no idea of money. In consequence 
of which he never kept an appointment, never 
could transact any business, and never knew the 
value of anything ! Well ! So he had got on 
ih life, and here he was ! He was very fond of 
reading the papers, very fond of making fancy- 
sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very 
fond of art. All he asked of society was, to let 
him live. That wasn't much. His wants were 
few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, 
mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a 
few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, 
and he asked no more. He was a mere child in 
the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He 
said to the world, " Go your several ways in 
peace I Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves, 
put pens behind your ears, wear aprons ; go 
after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any ob- 
ject you prefer ; only — let Harold Skimpole 
live ! " 

All this, and a great deal more, he told us, not 
only with the utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, 
but with a certain vivacious candor — speaking 
of himself as if he were not at all his own affair, 
as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he 
knew that Skimpole had his singularities, but 
still had his claims too, which were the general 
business of the community, and must not be 
slighted. He was quite enchanting. If I felt 
at all confused at that early time, in endeavoring 
to reconcile anything he said with anything I 
had thought about the duties and accountabili- 
ties of life (which I am far from sure of), I was 
confused by not exactly understanding why he 
was free of them. That he was free of them, I 
scarcely doubted ; he was so very clear about it 
himself. 

" I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole, in the 
same light way. " Possession is nothing to me. 
Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent house. I 
feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can 
sketch it, and alter it. I can set it to music. 
When I am here, I have sufficient possession of 
it, and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsi- 
bility. My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce, 
and he can't cheat me. We have been men- 
tioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed 
woman, of a strong will and immense power of 
business-detail, who throws herself into objects 
with surprising ardor ! I don't regret that / 
have not a strong will and an immense power 
of business-detail, to throw myself into objects 
with surprising ardor. I can admire her without 
envy. I can sympathize with the objects. I can 
dream of them. I can lie down on the grass — 
in fine weather — and float along an African 
river, embracing all the natives I meet, as sensi- 
ble of the deep silence, and sketching the dense 
overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if 
I were there. I don't know that it's of any di- 
rect use my doing so, but it's all I can do, and 
I do it thoroughly. Then, for Heaven's sake, 
having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, 
petitioning you, the world, an agglomeration of 

firactical people of business habits, to let him 
ive and admire the human family, do it some- 
how or other, like good souls, and suffer him to 
ride his rocking-horse ! " — Bleak House, Chap. 6. 



SLANDER— Of the xmfortunate. 

At feasts and festivals also : in firmaments 
she has often graced, and among constellations 
she outshone but yesterday, she is still the 
prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? 
When was it ? Where was it ? How was it ? 
She is discussed by her dear friends with all 
the genteelest slang in vogue, the last new word, 
the last new manner, the last new drawl, and 
the perfection of polite indifference. A remark- 
able feature of the theme is, that it is found to 
be so inspiring, that several people come out upon 
it who never came out before — positively say 
things ! William Buffy carries one of these 
smartnesses from the place where he dines, 
down to the House, where the Whip for his 
party hands it about with his snuff-box, to keep 
men together who want to be off, with such 
effect that the Speaker (who has had it private- 
ly insinuated into his own ear under the corner 
of his wig) cries " Order at the bar ! " three 
times without making an impression. 

And not the least amazing circumstance con- 
nected with her being vaguely the town talk, 
is, that people hovering on the confines of Mr. 
Sladdery's high connection, people who know 
nothing and ever did know nothing about 
her, think it essential to their reputation 
to pretend that she is their topic too ; 
and to retail her at second-hand with the 
last new word, and the last new manner, and 
the last new drawl, and the last new polite in- 
difference, and all the rest of it, all at second- 
hand, but considered equal to new, in inferior 
systems and to fainter stars. If there be any 
man of letters, art, or science, among these lit- 
tle dealers, how noble in him to support the 
feeble sisters on such majestic crutches ! 

Bleak House, Chap. 58. 

SLANG-Of the pulpit. 

All slangs and twangs are objectionable 
everywhere, but the slang and twang of the 
conventicle — as bad in its way as that of the 
House of Commons, and nothing worse can be 
said of it — should be studiously avoided under 
such circumstances as I describe. The avoid- 
ance was not complete on this occasion. Nor 
was it quite agreeable to see the preacher ad- 
dressing his pet " points " to his backers on the 
stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show 
him up, and testify to the multitude that each 
of those points was a clincher. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 4. 

SLEEP. 

Mr. Riderhood poetically remarking that he 
would pick the bones of his night's rest, in his 
wooden chair, sat in the window. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 7. 



There is a drowsy state, between sleeping 
and waking, when you dream more in five min- 
utes with your eyes half open, and yourself half 
conscious of everything that is passing around 
you, than you would in five nights with your 
eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in per- 
fect unconsciousness. At such times, a mortal 
knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to 
form some glimmering conception of its mighty 
powers, its bounding from earth and spurning 
time and space, when freed from the restraint 
of its corporeal associate.— Oliver Twist, Chap. 9. 



SLEEP 



444 



SLEEP 



Gradually, he fell into that deep, tranquil sleep 
which ease from recent suffering alone imparts ; 
that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to 
wake from. Who, if this were death, would be 
roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of 
life ; to all its cares for the present ; its anxieties 
for the future ; more than all, its weary recollec- 
tions of the past ! — Oliver Twist, Chap. 12. 

As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon 
his forehead. 

The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as 
though these marks of pity and compassion had 
awakened some pleasant dream of love and affec- 
tion he had never known. Thus, a strain of 
gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent 
place, or the odor of a flower, or even the men- 
tion of a familiar word, will sometimes call up 
sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never 
were, in this life ; which vanish like a breath ; 
which some brief memory of a happier exist- 
ence, long gone by, would seem to have awak- 
ened ; which no voluntary exertion of the mind 
can ever recall. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 30. 



There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us 
sometimes, which, while it holds the body pris- 
oner, does not free the mind from a sense of 
things about it, and enable it to ramble at its 
pleasure. So far as an overpowering heaviness, 
a prostration of strength, and an utter inability 
to control our thoughts or power of motion, can 
be called sleep, this is it ; and yet, we have a con- 
sciousness of all that is going on about us, and 
if we dream at such a time, words which are 
really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the 
moment, accommodate themselves with surpris- 
ing readiness to our visions, until reality and 
imagination become so strangely blended that it 
is afterward almost matter of impossibility to 
separate the two. Nor is this the most striking 
phenomenon incidental to such a state. It is an 
undoubted fact, that although our senses of touch 
and sight be for the time dead, yet our sleeping 
thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass be- 
fore us, will be influenced, and materially influ- 
enced, by the mere silent presence of some external 
object, which may not have been near us when 
we closed our eyes, and of whose vicinity we 
have had no waking consciousness. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 34. 

SLEEP— After wine. 

Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the 
champagne — honor to the soil that grew the 
grape, to the grape that made the wine, to the 
sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who 
adulterated it — and being fast asleep in a corner 
of the carriage, I rode by the side and talked to 
Dora. — David Copperfield, Chap. 33. 

SLEEP— A refreshing (Sam WeUer on). 

" And if I might adwise, sir," added Mr. 
Weller, " I'd just have a good night's rest arter- 
wards, and not begin inquiring arter this here 
deep *un 'till mornin'. There's nothin' so re- 
freshin' as sleep, sir, as the servant-girl said 
afore she drank the egg-cupful o' laudanum." 
Pickwick, Chap. 16. 

SLEEP— Dick SwiveUer's " balmy." 

" In the meantime, as it's rather late, I'll try 
and get a wink or two of the balmy." 



" The balmy " came almost as soon as it was 
courted. In a very few minutes Mr. Swiveller 
was fast asleep, dreaming that he had married 
Nelly Trent, and come into the property, and 
that his first act of power was to lay waste the 
market-garden of Mr. Cheggs, and turn it into 
a brick-field. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 8. 

SLEEP— Of TJriali Heep. 

I stole into the next room to look at him. 
There I saw him, lying on his back, with his 
legs extending to I don't know where, gurglings 
taking place in his throat, stoppages in his nose, 
and his mouth open like a post-office. He was 
so much worse in reality than in my distem- 
pered fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to 
him in very repulsion, and could not help wan- 
dering in and out every half hour or so, and 
taking another look at him. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 25. 

SLEEP— The snoring of Mr. Willet. 

The room was so very warm, the tobacco so 
very good, and the fire so very soothing, that 
Mr. Willet by degrees began to doze ; but as 
he had perfectly acquired, by dint of long habit, 
the art of smoking in his sleep, and as his breath- 
ing was pretty much the same, awake or asleep, 
saving that in the latter case he sometimes ex- 
perienced a slight difficulty in respiration (such 
as a carpenter meets with when he is planing 
and comes to a knot), neither of his companions 
was aware of the circumstance, until he met 
with one of these impediments and was obliged 
to try again. 

" Johnny's dropped off," said Mr. Parker, in 
a whisper. 

" Fast as a top," said Mr. Cobb. 

Neither of them said any more until Mr. 
Willet came to another knot — one of surpass- 
ing obduracy — which bade fair to throw him 
into convulsions, but which he got over at last 
without waking, by an effort quite superhu- 
man. 

" He sleeps uncommon hard," said Mr. Cobb. 
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33. 

SLEEP. 

" The witch region of sleep." 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. i^. 

SLEEP— And dreams, among the poor. 

The cold, feeble dawn of a January morning 
was stealing in at the windows of the common 
sleeping-room, when Nicholas, raising himself 
on his arm, looked among the prostrate forms 
which on every side surrounded him, as though 
in search of some particular object. 

It needed a quick eye to detect, from among 
the huddled mass of sleepers, the form of any 
given individual. As they lay closely packed to- 
gether, covered, for warmth's sake, with their 
patched and ragged clothes, little could be dis- 
tinguished but the .sharp outlines of pale faces, 
over which the sombre light shed the same dull 
heavy color, with here and there a gaunt arm 
thrust forth : its thinness hidden by no covering, 
but fully exposed to view, in all its shrunken 
ugliness. There were some who, lying on their 
backs with upturned faces and clenched hands, 
just visible in the leaden light, bore more the 
aspect of dead bodies than of living creatures ; 
and there were others coiled up into strange 



SliBEFING 



445 



SMOKE 



and fantastic postures; such as might have been 
taken for the uneasy efforts of pain to gain some 
temporary relief, rather than the freaks of slum- 
ber. A few — and these were among the young- 
est of the children — slept peacefully on, with 
smiles upon their faces, dreaming perhaps of 
home ; but ever and again a deep and heavy 
sigh, breaking the stillness of the room, an- 
nounced that some new sleeper had awakened to 
the ini'^ery of anolh.M" day; and, as morning 
took the place of night, the smiles gradually 
faded away, with the friendly darkness which 
had given them birth. 

Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and 
legend, who sport on earth in the night season, 
and melt away in the first beam of the sun, 
which lights grim care and stern reality on 
their daily pilgrimage through the world. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 13. 

SLEEPING— In a stage coach. 

I recollect being very much surprised by the 
feint everybody made, then, of not having been 
to sleep at all, and by the uncommon indigna- 
tion with which every one repelled the charge. 
I labor under the same kind of astonishment to 
this day, having invariably observed that of all 
human weaknesses, the one to which our com- 
mon nature is the least disposed to confess (I 
cannot imagine why) is the weakness of having 
gone to sleep in a coach. 

David CopperfieM, Chap. 5. 

SMILES— Description of. 

A carved grin. 

The very twilight of a smile ; so singularly 
were its light and darkness blended. 

Dovibey 6^ Son, Chap. 21. 

An irrepressible smile that rather seemed to 
strike upon the surface of his face and glance 
away, as finding no resting-place, than to play 
there for an instant. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 11. 

A smile which had been at first but three 
specks — one at the right-hand corner of his 
mouth, and one at the corner of each eye — grad- 
ually over-spread his whole face, and rippling up 
into his forehead, lifted the glazed hat. 

Dovibey ^ Son, Chap. 15. 

He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first 
faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his 
countenance. It was mere imbecility ; but Mrs. 
Pipchin took it into her head that it was impu- 
dence, and made a snap at him directly. 

Dombey 6r» Son, Chap. ii. 



He sprang up from his reverie and looked 
around with a sudden smile, as courteous and as 
soft as if he had had numerous observers to 
propitiate ; nor did he relapse, after being thus 
awakened ; but clearing his face, like one who 
bethought himself that it might otherwise wrin- 
kle and tell tales, went smiling on, as if for 
practice. — Dombey dr' Son, Chap. 27. 

A stately look, which was instantaneous in its 
duration, but inclusive (if any one had seen it) 
of a multitude of expressions, among which that 
of the twilight smile, without the smile itself, 
overshadowed all the rest. — D. (Sr* S., Ch. 21. 



"Sir!" cried Mr. Toots, starting from his 
chair and shaking hands with him anew, "the 
relief is so excessive and unspeakable, that if 
you were to tell me now that Miss Dombey was 
married even, I could smile. Yes, Captain 
Gills," said Mr. Toots, appealing to him, " upon 
my soul and body, I really think, whatever 
I might do to myself immediately afterwards, 
that I could smile, I am so relieved." 

Dovibey (2r Son, Chap. 50. 



Meanwhile, Toby, putting a hand on each 
knee, bent down his nose to the basket, and took 
a long inspiration at the lid ; the grin upon his 
withered face expanding in the process, as if he 
were inhaling laughing gas. 

Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter. 



He would slowly carve a grin out of his 
wooden face, where it would rfemain until we 
were all gone. — Our School. Reprinted Pieces. 

As Clennam followed, she said to him, with 
the same external composure and in the same 
level voice, but with a smile that is only seen 
on cruel faces ; a very faint smile, lifting the 
nostril, scarcely touching the lips, and not break- 
ing away gradually, but instantly dismissed 
when done with. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 2,1 . 



His very smile was cunning, as if he had 
been studying smiles among the portraits of his 
misers. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. 5. 



A smile, which in common with all other to- 
kens of emotion, seemed to skulk under his 
face, rather than play boldly over it. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 19. 

I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with 
such demonstrative attention, that his lank fore- 
finger followed up every line as he read, and 
made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully 
believed) like a snail. 

"You are working late to-night, Uriah," 
says I. 

" Yes, Master Copperfield," says Uriah. 

As I was getting on the stool opposite, to 
talk to him more conveniently, I observed that 
he had not such a thing as a smile about him, 
and that he could only widen his mouth and 
make two hard creases down his cheeks, one on 
each side, to stand for one. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 16. 

SMOKE. 

Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome 
cough, in the midst of which she articulated 
with much difficulty, " He was took ill here, 
ma'am, and — ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! dear me ! — and 
he died ! " 

" Hey? What did he die of?" asked my aunt. 

"Well, ma'am, he died of drink," said Mrs. 
Crupp, in confidence. " And smoke." 

" Smoke? You don't mean chimneys?" said 
my aunt. 

"No, ma'am," returned Mrs. Cnipp. "Cigars 
and pipes." 

" That's not catching. Trot, at any rate," re- 
marked my aunt, turning to me. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 23. 



SMOKINQ 



446 



SOCIETY 



SMOKING. 

The smoke came crookedly out of Mr. Flint- 
winch's mouth, as if it circulated through the 
whole of his wry figure and came back by his 
wry throat, before coming forth to mingle with 
the smoke from the crooked chimneys and the 
mists from the crooked river. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 23. 

SMOKING—Board and lodging-. 

" You don't find this sort of thing disagree- 
able, I hope, sir?" said his right-hand neigh- 
bor, a gentleman in a checked shirt, and Mosaic 
studs, with a cigar in his mouth. 

" Not in the least," replied Mr. Pickwick, " I 
like it very much, although I am no smoker my- 
self." 

" I should be very sorry to say I wasn't," in- 
terposed another gentleman on the opposite side 
of the table. " It's board and lodging to me, is 
smoke." 

Mr. Pickwick glanced at the speaker, and 
thought that if it were washing too, it would be 
all the better. — Pickwick, Chap. 20. 

SMOBIING— The content of. 

The manner in which the Captain tried to 
make believe that the cause of these effects lay 
hidden in the pipe itself, and the way in which 
he looked into the bowl for it, and not finding 
it there, pretended to blow it out of the stem, 
was wonderfully pleasant. The pipe soon get- 
ting into better condition, he fell into that state 
of repose becoming a good smoker : but sat 
with his eyes fixed on Florence, and with a 
beaming placidity not to be described, and 
stopping every now and then to discharge a lit- 
tle cloud from his lips, slowly puffed it forth, as 
if it were a scroll coming out of his mouth, 
bearing the legend " Poor Wal'r, aye, aye. 
Drownded, an't he ? " after which he would re- 
sume his smoking with infinite gentleness. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 49. 

SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS. 

" Wait a minute," said the stranger, " fun 
presently — nobs not come yet — queer place — 
Dock-yard people of upper rank don't know 
Dock-yard people of lower rank — Dock-yard 
people of lower rank don't know small gentry 
— small gentry don't know tradespeople — Com- 
missioners don't know anybody." 

" Mr. Smithie, Mrs. Smithie, and the Misses 
Smithie," was the next announcement. 

" What's Mr. Smithie ? " inquired Mr. Tracy 
Tupman. 

" Something in the yard," replied the stranger. 
Mr. Smithie bowed deferentially to Sir Thomas 
Clubber ; and Sir Thomas Clubber acknowledg- 
ed the salute with conscious condescension. 
Lady Clubber took a telescopic view of Mrs. 
Smithie and family through her eye-glass, and 
Mrs. Smithie stared in her turn at Mrs. Some- 
body else, whose husband was not in the Dock- 
yard at all. 

***** 

Miss Bulder was warmly welcomed by the 
Miss Clubbers ; the greeting between Mrs. Colo- 
nel Bulder and Lady Clubber was of the most 
affectionate description ; Colonel Bulder and 
Sir Thomas Clubber exchanged snuff-boxes, and 



looked very much like a pair of Alexander Sel- 
kirks — " Monarchs of all they surveyed." 

Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

SOCIAIiliY DILAPIDATED— Chevy Slyme. 

He was brooding over the remains of yester- 
day's decanter of brandy, and was engaged in 
the thoughtful occupation of making a chain of 
rings on the top of the table with the wet foot of 
his drinking-glass. Wretched and forlorn as he 
looked, Mr. Slyme had once been, in his way, 
the choicest of swaggerers ; putting forth his 
pretensions, boldly, as a man of infinite taste 
and most undoubted promise. The stock-in- 
trade requisite to set up an amateur in this de- 
partment of business is very slight, and easily 
got together : a trick of the nose and a curl of 
the lip sufficient to compound a tolerable sneer, 
being ample provision for any exigency. But, 
in an evil hour, this off-shoot of the Chuzzlewit 
trunk, being lazy, and ill qualified for any regular 
pursuit, and having dissipated such means as he 
ever possessed, had formally established himself 
as a professor of Taste for a livelihood ; and 
finding, too late, that something more than his 
old, amount of qualifications was necessary to 
sustain him in this calling, had quickly fallen to 
his present level, where he retained nothing of 
his old self but his boastfulness and his bile, 
and seemed to have no existence separate or 
apart from his friend Tigg. And now, so abject 
and so pitiful was he — at once so maudlin, in- 
solent, beggarly, and proud — that even his friend 
and parasite, standing erect beside him, swelled 
into a Man by contrast. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 7. 

SOCIETY— Its vices. 

Was Mr. Dombey's master-vice, that ruled 
him so inexorably, an unnatural characteristic ? 
It might be worth while, sometimes, to inquire 
what Nature is, and how men work to change 
her, and whether, in the enforced distortions 
so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. 
Coop any son or daughter of our mighty mother 
within narrow range, and bind the prisoner to 
one idea, and foster it by servile worship of it 
on the part of the few timid or designing peo- 
ple standing round, and what is Nature to the 
willing captive who has never risen up upon the 
wings of a free mind — drooping and useless 
soon — to see her in her comprehensive truth ! 

Alas ! are there so few things in the world, 
about us, most unnatural, and yet most natural 
in being so ! Hear the magistrate or judge ad- 
monish the unnatural outcasts of society ; un- 
natural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of 
decency, unnatural in losing and confounding 
all distinctions between good and evil ; unnatu- 
ral in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in con- 
tumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. But 
follow the good clergyman or doctor, who, with 
his life imperilled at every breath he draws, 
goes down into their dens, lying within the 
echoes of our carriage-wheels and daily tre^d 
upon the pavement stones. Look round upon 
the world of odious sights — millions of immor- 
tal creatures have no other world on earth — at 
the lightest mention of which humanity revolts 
and dainty delicacy, living in the next street, 
stops her ears, and lisps, " I don't believe it ! " 
Breathe the polluted air, foul with every impuri- 
ty that is poisonous to health and life ; and have 



SOCIETY 



447 



SOCIETY 



every sense, conferred upon our race for its de- 
light and happiness, offended, sickened, and dis- 
gusted, and made a channel by which misery 
and death alone can enter. Vainly attempt to 
think of any simple plant, or flower, or whole- 
some weed, that, set in this foetid bed, could 
have its natural growth, or put its little leaves 
off to the sun, as God designed it. And then, 
calling up some ghastly child, with stunted form 
and wicked face, hold forth on its unnatural 
sinfulness, and lament its being, so early, far 
away from Heaven — but think a little of its hav- 
ing been conceived, and born, and bred, in 
Hell! 

Those who study the physical sciences, and 
bring them to bear upon the health of Man, tell 
us that if the noxious particles that rise from 
vitiated air were palpable to the sight, we should 
see them lowering in a dense black cloud above 
such haunts, and rolling slowly on to corrupt 
the better portions of a town. But if the moral 
pestilence that rises with them, and, in the eter- 
nal laws of outraged Nature, is inseparable from 
them, could be made discernible too, how terri- 
ble the revelation ! Then should we see deprav- 
ity, impiety, drunkenness, theft, murder, and a 
long train of nameless sins against the natural 
affections and repulsions of mankind, overhang- 
ing the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight 
the innocent and spread contagion among the 
pure. Then should we see how the same poi- 
soned fountains that flow into our hospitals and 
lazar-houses, inundate the jails, and make the 
convict-ships swim deep, and roll across the seas, 
and over-run vast continents with crime. Then 
should we stand appalled to know, that where 
we generate disease to strike our children down 
and entail itself on unborn generations, there 
also we breed, by the same certain process, in- 
fancy that knows no innocence, youth without 
modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in noth- 
ing but in suffering and guilt, blasted old age 
that is a scandal on the form we bear. Unnat- 
ural humanity ! When we shall gather grapes 
from thorns, and figs from thistles ; when fields 
of grain shall spring up from the offal in the 
bye-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom 
in the fat churchyards that they cherish ; then 
we may look for natural humanity, and find it 
growing from such seed. 

Oh, for a good spirit who would take the 
house-tops off, with a more potent and benignant 
hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show 
a Christian people what dark shapes issue from 
amidst their homes, to swell the retinue of the 
Destroying Angel as he moves forth among 
them ! For only one night's view of the pale 
phantoms, rising from the scenes of our too-long 
neglect ; and from the thick and sullen air where 
Vice and Fever propagate together, raining the 
tremendous social retributions which are ever 
pouring down, and ever coming thicker ! Bright 
and blest the morning that should rise on such 
a night ; for men, delayed no more by stumbling- 
blocks of their own making, which are but specks 
of dust upon the path between them and eter- 
nity, would then apply themselves, like crea- 
tures of one common origin, owing one duty 
to the Father of one family, and tending to 
one common end, to make the world a better 
place. 

Not the less bright and blest would that day 
be for rousing some who never have looked out 



upon the world of human life around them, to a 
knowledge of their own relation to it, and for 
making them acquainted with a perversion of 
nature in -their own contracted sympathies and 
estimates ; as great and yet as natural in its de- 
velopment when once begun, as the lowest de- 
gradation known. — Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 47. 

SOCIETY- At dinner. 

Mr. Merdle himself was usually late on these 
occasions, as a man still detained in the clutch 
of giant enterprises when other men had shaken 
off their dwarfs for the day. On this occasion, 
he was the last arrival. Treasury said Merdle's 
work punished him a little. Bishop said he was 
glad to think that this wealth flowed into the 
coffers of a gentleman who accepted it with 
meekness. 

Powder ! There was so much Powder in wait- 
ing, that it flavored the dinner. Pulverous par- 
ticles got into the dishes, and Society's meats 
had a seasoning of first-rate footmen. Mr. Mer- 
dle took down a countess who was secluded 
somewhere in the core of an immense dress, to 
which she was in the proportion of the heart to 
the overgrown cabbage. If so low a simile may 
be admitted, the dress went down the staircase 
like a richly brocaded Jack in the Green, and no- 
body knew what sort of small person carried it. 
Society had everything it could want, and 
could not want, for dinner. It had everything 
to look at, and everything to eat, and every- 
thing to drink. It is to be hoped it enjoyed it- 
self ; for Mr. Merdle's own share of the repast 
might have been paid for with eighteenpence. 
Mrs. Merdle was magnificent. The chief but- 
ler was the next magnificent institution of the 
day. He was the stateliest man in company. 
He did nothing, but he looked on as few other 
men could have done. He was Mr. Merdle's 
last gift to Society. Mr. Merdle didn't want 
him, and was put out of countenance when the 
great creature looked at him ; but inappeasable 
Society would have him — and had got him. 
Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 2i. 

SOCIETY— Fashionable. 

*• Society," said Mrs. Merdle, with another 
curve of her little finger, " is so difficult to ex- 
plain to young persons (indeed, is so difficult to 
explain to most persons), that I am glad to hear 
that. I wish Society was not so arbitrary, I 
wish it was not so exacting — Bird, be quiet ! " 

The parrot had given a most piercing shriek, 
as if its name were Society, and it asserted its 
right to its exactions. 

" But," resumed Mrs. Merdle, " we must take 
it as we find it. We know it is hollow and con- 
ventional and worldly and very shocking, but 
unless we are Savages in the Tropical seas, 
(I should have been charmed to be one myself 
— most delightful life and perfect climate, I am 
told), we must consult it." 

***** 

" A more primitive state of society would be 
delicious to me. There used to be a poem 
when I learned lessons, something about Lo, 
the poor Indian, whose something mind ! If a 
few thousand persons moving in Society, could 
only go and be Indians, I would put my name 
down directly ; but as moving in Society, we 
can't be Indians, unfortunately — Good morn- 
ing ! "—Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap, 20. 



SOCIETY 



448 



SOLDIER 



SOCIETY— Mr. Merdle, the ricli man. 

Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more 
than aware of Mr. and Mrs. Merdle. Intruders 
there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not 
aware ; but Mr. and Mrs. Merdle it delighted to 
honor. Society was aware of Mr. and Mrs. 
Merdle. Society had said " Let us license them ; 
let us know them." 

Mr. Merdle was immensely rich ; a man of 
prodigious enterprise ; a Midas without the ears, 
who turned all he touched to gold. He was in 
everything good, from banking to building. He 
was in Parliament, of course. He was in the 
City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this. 
Trustee of that. President of the other. The 
weightiest of men had said to projectors, 
" Now, what name have you got? Have you 
.got Merdle ? " And the reply being in the 
negative, had said, " Then I won't look at 
you."^ 

This great and fortunate man had provided 
that extensive bosom, which required so much 
room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of 
crimson and gold some fifteen years before. It 
was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a 
capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr. Mer- 
dle wanted something to hang jewels upon, and 
he bought it for the purpose. Storr and Mor- 
timer might have married on the same specula- 
tion. 

Like all his other speculations, it was sound 
and successful. The jewels shone to the richest 
advantage. The bosom, moving in Society with 
the jewels displayed upon it, attracted general 
admiration. Society approving, Mr. Merdle 
was satisfied. He was the most disinterested 
of men, — did everything for Society, and got as 
little for himself, out of all his gain and care, as 
a man might. 

That is to say, it may be supposed that he 
got all he wanted, otherwise with unlimited 
wealth he would have got it. But his desire was 
to the utmost to satisfy Society (whatever that 
was), and take up all its drafts upon him for 
tribute. He did not shine in company ; he had 
not very much to say for himself ; he was a re- 
served man, with a broad, overhanging, watch- 
ful head, that particular kind of dull red color 
in his cheeks which is rather stale than fresh, 
and a somewhat uneasy expression about his 
coat-cuffs, as if they were in his confidence, and 
had reasons for being anxious to hide his hands. 
In the little he said, he was a pleasant man 
enough ; plain, emphatic about public and pri- 
vate confidence, and tenacious of the utmost 
deference being shown by every one, in all 
things, to Society. In this same Society (if that 
were it which came to his dinners, and to Mrs. 
Merdle's receptions and concerts), he hardly 
seemed to enjoy himself much, and was mostly 
to be found against walls and behind doors. 
Also, when he went out to it, instead of its com- 
ing home to him, he seemed a little fatigued, 
and upon the whole rather more disposed for 
bed ; but he was always cultivating it, neverthe- 
less, and always moving in it, and always laying 
out money on it with the greatest liberality. 
Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 21. 

SOCIETY— The fashionable yotmg: ladies. 

And the three expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, 
double-loaded with accomplishments and ready 
to go off, and yet not going off with the sharp- 



ness of flash and bang that might have been 
expected, but rather hanging fire. 

Little Dof-rit, Book /., Chap. 34. 

SOCIETY— The rich man of. 

" Why, in the name of all the infernal powers, 
Mrs. Merdle, who does more for Society than I 
do ? Do you see these premises, Mrs. Merdle ? 
Do you see this furniture. Mrs. Merdle ? Do you 
look in the glass and see yourself, Mrs. Merdle? 
Do you know the cost of all this, and who it's 
all provided for? And yet will you tell me that 
I oughtn't to go into Society? I, who shower 
money upon it in this way ? I, who might be 
almost said — to — to — to harness myself to a 
watering-cart full of money, and go about, satti- 
rating Society, every day of my life ! " 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 33. 

SOLD— By friends and society. 

" Do you sell all your friends ? " 

Rigaud took his cigarette from his mouth, 
and eyed him with a momentary revelation of 
surprise. But he put it between his lips again, 
as he answered with coolness : 

" I sell anything that commands a price. How 
do your lawyers live, your politicians, your in- 
triguers, your men of the Exchange ? How do 
you live ? How do you come here ? Have you 
sold no friend ? Lady of mine ! I rather think, 
yes ! " 

Clennam turned away from him towards the 
window, and sat looking out at the wall. 

" EfiFectively, sir," said Rigaud, "Society sells 
itself and sells me ; and I sell Society. 

Little Dorrit, Book LL., Chap. 28. 

SOLDIER— Military glory. 

" Is he recruiting for a — for a fine regiment?" 
said Joe, glancing at a little round mirror that 
hung in the bar. 

" I believe he is," replied the host. " It's much 
the same thing, whatever regiment he's recruit- 
ing for. I'm told there an't a deal of difference 
between a fine man and another one, when 
they're shot through and through." 

" They're not all shot," said Joe. 

" No," the Lion answered, " not all. Those 
that are — supposing it's done easy — are the best 
off", in my opinion." 

" Ah ! " retorted Joe, " but you don't care for 
glory." 

" For what? " said the Lion. 

" Glory." 

" No," returned the Lion, with supreme indif- 
ference. " I don't. You're right in that, Mr. 
Willet. When Glory comes here, and calls for 
anything to drink and changes a guinea to pay 
for it, I'll give it him for nothing. It's my be- 
lief, sir, that the Glory's Arms wouldn't do a very 
strong business." 

These remarks were not at all comforting. Joe 
walked out, stopped at the door of the next room, 
and listened. The Serjeant was describing a 
military life. It was all drinking, he said, ex- 
cept that there were frequent intervals of eating 
and love-making. A battle was the finest thing 
in the world — ^when your side won it — and Eng- 
lishmen always did that. " Supposing you 
should be killed, sir ? " said a timid voice in one 
corner. " Well, sir, supposing you should be," 
said the serjeant, "what then? Your country 
loves you, sir: his Majesty King George the 



SOLDIERS 



449 



SOLITUDE 



Third loves you ; your memory is honored, 
revered, x-espected ; everybody is fond of you, 
and grateful to you ; your name's wrote down 
at full length in a book in the War-office. 
Damme, gentlemen, we must all die some time 
or another, eh ? " 

The voice coughed, and said no more. 

Bamaby Rtidge^ Chap. 31. 

SOLDIERS— A swarm of. 

Though there was a great agglomeration of 
soldiers in the town and neighboring country, 
you might have held a grand Review and Field 
Day of them every one, and looked in vain 
among them all for a soldier choking behind his 
foolish stock, or a soldier lamed by his ill-fitting 
shoes, 01 a soldier deprived of the use of his 
limbs by straps and buttons, or a soldier elabor- 
ately forced to be self-helpless in all the small 
affairs of life. A swarm of brisk, bright, active, 
bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able 
to turn to cleverly at anything, from a siege to 
soup, from great guns to needles and thread, 
from the broadsword exercise to slicing an 
onion, from making war to making omelets, was 
all you would have found. 

What a swarm ! From the Great Place under 
the eye of Mr. The Englishman, where a few 
awkward squads from the last conscription were 
doing the goose-step, — some members of those 
squads still, as to their bodies, in the chrysalis 
peasant-state of Blouse, and only military butter- 
flies as to their regimentally clothed legs, — from 
the Great Place, away outside the fortifications, 
and away for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers 
swarmed. All day long, upon the grass-grown 
ramparts of the town, practising soldiers trumpet- 
ed and bugled ; all day long, down in angles of 
dry trenches, practising soldiers drummed and 
drummed. Every forenoon, soldiers burst out 
of the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium- 
ground hard by, and flew over the wooden horse, 
and hung on to flying ropes, and dangled upside- 
down between parallel bars, and shot them- 
selves off wooden platforms, — splashes, sparks, 
coruscations, showers of soldiers. At every 
corner of the town wall, every guard-house, 
every gateway, every sentry-box, every draw- 
bridge, every reedy ditch and rushy dike, sol- 
diers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being 
pretty well all wall, guard-house, gateway, sen- 
try-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch and rushy dike, 
the town was pretty well all soldiers. 

What would the sleepy old town have been 
without the soldiers, seeing that even with them 
it had so overslept itself as to have slept its 
echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and 
bolts and chains all rusty, and its ditches stag- 
nant ! From the days when Vauban engineered 
it to that perplexing extent that to look at it 
was like being knocked on the head with it, the 
stranger becoming stunned and stertorous under 
the shock of its incomprehensibility, — from the 
days when Vauban made it the express incor- 
poration of every substantive and adjective in 
the art of military engineering, and not only 
twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to 
the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over 
there, in the dark, in the dirt, by gateway, arch- 
way, covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse, 
portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, 
pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise 
took a fortifying dive under the neighboring 



country, and came to the surface three or foui 
miles off, blowing out incomprehensible mounds 
and batteries among the quiet crops of chiccory 
and beet-root, — from those days to these the town 
had been asleep, and dust, and rust, and must 
had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and Mag- 
azines, and grass had grown up in its silent 
streets. — Somebody s Luggage, Chap. 2. 

SOLDIER— The Corporal. 

The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of 
thirty, perhaps a thought under the middle size, 
but very neatly made — a sunburnt Corporal 
with a brown peaked beard — faced about at the 
moment, addressing voluble words of instruc- 
tion to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss 
or awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble 
Corporal, quite complete, from the sparkling 
dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap, to his 
sparkling white gaiters. The very image and 
presentment of a Corporal of his country's 
army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of 
his waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer 
trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of 
his leg, — Somebody's Luggage, Chap. 2. 

SOLITUDE— The blessings of. 

Here was one of the advantages of having 
lived alone so long ! The little, bustling, active, 
cheerful creature existed entirely within herself, 
talked to herself, made a confidant of herself, 
was as sarcastic as she could be, on people who 
offended her, by herself; pleased herself, and 
did no harm. If she indulged in scandal, no- 
body's reputation suffered ; and if she enjoyed 
a little bit of revenge, no living soul was one 
atom the worse. One of the many to whom, 
from straitened circumstances, a consequent in- 
ability to form the associations they would wish, 
and a disinclination to mix with the society they 
could obtain, (London is as complete a solitude 
as the plains of Syria), the humble artist had 
pursued her lonely, but contented way for many 
years ; and, until the peculiar misfortunes of the 
Nickleby family attracted her attention, had 
made no friends, though brimful] of the friend- 
liest feelings to all mankind. There are many 
warm hearts in the same solitary guise as poor 
little Miss La Creevy's. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 20. 

SOLITUDE-The misery of. 

Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into 
the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among 
a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who 
looks into ten thousand faces for some an- 
swering look and never finds it, is in cheering 
society as compared with him who passes ten 
averted faces daily, that were once the counten- 
ances of friends. Such experience was to be 
Stephen's now, in every waking moment of his 
life ; at his work, on his way to it and from it, at 
his door, at his window, everywhere. By gene- 
ral consent, they even avoided that side of the 
street on which he habitually walked ; and left 
it, of all the working men, to him only. 

He had been for many years a quiet, silent 
man, associating but little with other men, and 
used to companionship with his own thoughts. 
He had never known before the strength of the 
want in his heart for the frequent recognition 
of a nod, a look, a word ; or the immense 
amount of relief that had been poured into it 



soNa 



450 



SPARSIT 



by drops, through such small means. It was 
even harder than he could have believed possi- 
ble, to separate in his own conscience his 
abandonment by all his fellows, from a baseless 
sense of shame and disgrace. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 4. 

SONG- An TineartMy. 

I don't know what it was, in her touch or 
voice, that made that song the most unearthly I 
have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. 
There was something fearful in the reality of it. 
It was as if it had never been written, or set to 
music, but sprung out of the passion within her ; 
which found imperfect utterance in the low 
sounds of her voice, and crouched again when 
all was still. — David Copperfield, Chap. 2g. 

SONGK-" The table-beer of acoustics." 

Mrs. Micawber was god^ enough to sing us 
(in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered 
to have considered, when I first knew her, the 
very table-beer of acoustics) the favorite ballads 
of " The Dashing White Serjeant," and " Little 
Tafflin." — David Copperfield, Chap. 28. 

SORROW— A teacher. 

" But for some trouble and sorrow we should 
never know half the good there is about us." 
Haunted Man, Chap. 2. 

SPARKS— In a Christmas fire. 

This was the time for bringing the poker to 
bear on the billet of wood. I tapped it three 
times, like an enchanted talisman, and a bril- 
liant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and 
sported off by the chimney, — rushing up the 
middle in a fiery country dance, and never com- 
ing down again. Meanwhile, by their spark- 
ling light, which threw our lamp into the shade, 
I filled the glasses, and gave my Travellers, 
Christmas! — Christmas Eve, my friends, 
when the shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, 
too, in their way, heard the Angels sing, " On 
earth, peace. Good-will towards men J " 

Seven Poor Travellers. 

SPARSIT, Mrs. 

Mr. Bounderby being a bachelor, an elderly 
lady presided over his establishment, in con- 
sideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs. 
Sparsit was this lady's name ; and she was a 
prominent figure in attendance on Mr. Boun- 
derby's car, as it rolled along in triumph, with 
the Bully of humility inside. 

The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother's 
side a Powler, married this lady, being by the 
father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an 
immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate 
appetite for butcher's meat, and a mysterious 
leg which had now refused to get out of bed for 
fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a pe- 
riod when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly 
noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported 
on two long slim props, and surmounted by no 
head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair 
fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before 
he came into it, and spent it twice over imme- 
diately afterwards. Thus, when he died at 
twenty-four (the scene of his decease, Calais, 
and the cause brandy), he did not leave his 
widow, from whom he had been separated soon 



after the honeymoon, in affluent circumstances. 
That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than he, 
fell presently at deadly feud with her only rela- 
tive, Lady Scadgers ; and, partly to spite her 
ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went 
out at a salary. And here she was now, in her 
elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose 
and the dense black eyebrows which had cap- 
tivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby's tea as 
he took his breakfast. 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 7. 

The indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent 
cold upon her, her voice reduced to a whisper, 
and her stately frame so racked by continual 
sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismember- 
ment, gave chase to her patron until she found 
him in the metropolis ; and there, majestically 
sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James's 
Street, exploded the combustibles with which 
she was charged, and blew up. Having ex- 
ecuted her mission with infinite relish, this 
high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr. 
Bounderby's coat-collar. 

Mr. Bounderby's first procedure was to shake 
Mrs. Sparsit off", and leave her to progress as she 
might through various stages of suffering on the 
floor. He next had recourse to the administra- 
tion of potent restoratives, such as screwing the 
patient's thumbs, smiting her hands, abundantly 
watering her face, and inserting salt in her 
mouth. When these attentions had recovered 
her (which they speedily did), he hustled her 
into a fast train without offering any other re- 
freshment, and carried her back to Coketown 
more dead than alive. 

Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was 
an interesting spectacle on her arrival at her 
journey's end ; but considered in any other light, 
the amount of damage she had by that time 
sustained was excessive, and impaired her claims 
to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and 
tear of her clothes and constitution, and ada- 
mant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr. Bounderby 
immediately crammed her into a coach, and 
bore her off to Stone Lodge. 

Hard Times, Book III., Chap. 3. 



The same Hermetical state of mind led to her 
renunciation of made dishes and wines at dinner, 
until fairly commanded by Mr. Bounderby to 
take them ; when she said, " Indeed, you are 
very good, sir ; " and departed from a resolution 
of which she had made rather formal and public 
announcement, to " wait for the simple mutton." 
She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting 
the salt ; and, feeling amiably bound to bear out 
Mr. Bounderby to the fullest extent in the testi- 
mony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally 
sat back in her chair and silently wept ; at which 
periods a tear of large dimensions, like a crystai 
ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must be, 
for it insisted on public notice) sliding down her 
Roman nose. — Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 8. 



Mrs. Sparsit, lying by to recover the tone of 
her nerves in Mr. Bounderby's retreat, kept such 
a sharp look-out, night and day, under her Cori- 
olanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of 
lighthouses on an iron-bound coast, might have 
warned all prudent mariners from that bold 
rock her Roman nose, and the dark and craggy 
region in its neighborhood, but for the placidity 



SPECIALITY 



451 



SPECULATOR 



of her manner. Although it was hard to be- 
lieve that her retiring for the night could be 
anything but a form, so severely vi'ide avs^ake 
were those classical eyes of hers, and so impos- 
sible did it seem that her rigid nose could yield 
to any relaxing influence, yet her manner of 
sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to 
say gritty, mittens (they were constructed of a 
cool fabric like a meat-safe) or of ambling to 
unknown places of destination with her foot in 
her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that 
most observers would have been constrained to 
suppose her a dove, embodied, by some freak of 
nature, in the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the 
hook-beaked order. 

She was a most wonderful woman for prowling 
about the house. How she got from story to story 
was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so de- 
corous in herself, and so highly connected, was 
not to be suspected of dropping over the banis- 
ters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary 
facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. 
Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Spar- 
sit was, that she was never hurried. She would 
shoot with consummate velocity from the roof 
to the hall, yet would be in full possession of 
her breath and dignity on the moment of her 
arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by 
human vision to go at a great pace. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 9. 



iVirs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman ; but 
she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical 
fancy into her head. Much watching of Louisa, 
and much consequent observation of her impen- 
etrable demeanor, which keenly whetted and 
sharpened Mrs. Sparsit's edge, must have given 
her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. 
She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, 
with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bot- 
tom ; and down those stairs, from day to day, 
and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 10. 

Wet through and through : with her 
feet squelching and squashing in her shoes 
whenever she moved ; with a rash of rain upon 
her classical visage ; with a bonnet like an 
over-ripe fig ; with all her clothes spoiled ; 
with damp impressions of every button, string, 
and hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon 
her highly-connected back ; with a stagnant 
verdure on her general exterior, such as accu- 
mulates on an old park fence in a mouldy lane ; 
Mrs. Sparsit had no resource but to burst into 
tears of bitterness and say, " I have lost her ! " 
Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 11. 

SPECIALITY- Sparkler's idea of a. 

" Pray, does Mr. Henry Gowan paint — ha — 
Portraits?" inquired Mr. Dorrit. 

Mr. Sparkler opined that he painted any- 
thing, if he could get the job. 

" He has no particular walk ? " said Mr. Dor- 
rit. 

Mr. Sparkler, stimulated by Love to brilliancy, 
replied that for a particular walk, a man ought to 
have a particular pair of shoes ; as, for example, 
shooting, shooting-shoes ; cricket, cricket-slioes. 
Whereas, he believed that Henry Gowan had 
no particular pair of shoes. 

'* No speciality ? " said Mr. Dorrit. 

This being a very long word for Mr. Spark- 



ler, and his mind being exhausted by his late 
eifort, he replied, " No, thank you. I seldom 
take it." — Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6. 

SPECULATOR— Scadder, the American. 

It was a small place : something like a turn- 
pike. But a great deal of land may be got into 
a dice-box, and why may not a whole territory 
be bargained for in a shed ? It was but a tem- 
porary office too ; for the Edeners were " go- 
ing " to build a superb establishment for the 
transaction of their business, and had already 
got so far as to mark out the site. Which is a 
great way in America. The office-door was 
wide open, and in the door-way was the agent : 
no doubt a tremendous fellow to get through 
his work, for he seemed to have no arrears, but 
was swinging backwards and forwards in a 
rocking-chair, with one of his legs planted 
high up against the door-post, and the other 
doubled up under him, as if he were hatching 
his foot. 

He was a gaunt man in a huge straw hat, 
and a coat of green stuff. The weather being 
hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar 
wide open ; so that every time he spoke some- 
thing was seen to twitch and jerk up in his 
throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord 
when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the 
Truth feebly endeavoring to leap to his lips. 
If so, it never reached them. 

Two gray eyes lurked deep within this agent's 
head, but one of them had no sight in it, and 
stood stock still. With that side of his face 
he seemed to listen to what the other side was 
doing. Thus each profile had a distinct ex- 
pression ; and when the movable side was most 
in action, the rigid one was in its coldest state 
of watchfulness. It was like turning the man 
inside out, to pass to that view of his features 
in his liveliest mood, and see how calculating 
and intent they were. 

Each long black hair upon his head hung 
down as straight as any plummet line ; but 
rumpled tufts were on the arches of his eyes, 
as if the crow whose foot was deeply printed in 
the corners, had pecked and torn them in a 
savage recognition of his kindred nature as a 
bird of prey. 

Such was the man whom they now approach- 
ed, and whom the General saluted by the name 

of Scadder. 

He * 4c « * 

Martin thanked him, and took leave of 
Mr. Scadder ; who had resumed his post in the 
rocking-chair immediately on the General's 
rising from it, and was once more swinging 
away as if he had never been disturbed. Mark 
looked back several times as they went down 
the road towards the National Hotel, but now 
his blighted profile was towards them, and 
nothing but attentive thoughtfulness was writ- 
ten on it. Strangely different to the other 
side ! He was not a man much given to laugh- 
ing, and never laughed outright ; but every 
line in the print of the crow's-foot, and every 
little wiry vein in that division of his head, was 
wrinkled up into a grin 1 The compound figure 
of Death and the Lady at the top of the old 
ballad was not divided with a greater nicety, 
and hadn't halves more monstrously unlike each 
other, than the two profiles of Zephaniah Scad- 
der. — Martin ChuzzUivit, Chap. 21. 



SPECULATORS 



452 



SPRINa 



SPECTTLATORS— Mr. Lammle's friends on 
'Changre. 

High-stepping horses seemed necessary to all 
Mr. Lammle's friends — as necessary as their 
transaction of business together in a gypsy way 
at untimely hours of the morning and evening, 
and in rushes and snatches. There were friends 
who seemed to be always coming and going 
across the Channel, on errands about the Bourse, 
and Greek, and Spanish, and India, and Mexi- 
can, and par, and premium, and discount and 
three-quarters, and seven-eighths. There were 
other friends who seemed to be always lolling 
and lounging in and out of the City, on ques- 
tions of the Bourse, and Greek, and Spanish and 
India, and Mexican, and par, and premium, 
and discount, and three-quarters, and seven- 
eighths. They were all feverish, boastful, and in- 
definably loose ; and they all ate and drank a 
great deal ; and made bets in eating and drink- 
ing. They all spoke of sums of money, and 
only mentioned the sums and left the money to 
be understood ; as " Five and forty thousand, 
Tom," or "Two hundred and twenty-two on every 
individual share in the lot, Joe." They seem- 
ed to divide the world into two classes of peo- 
ple ; people who were making enormous fortunes, 
and people who were being enormously ruined. 
They were always in a hurry, and yet seemed to 
have nothing tangible to do ; except a few of them 
(these, mo?.tly asthmatic and thick-lipped) who 
were forever demonstrating to the rest, with 
gold pencil-cases which they could hardly hold 
because of the big rings on their forefingers, 
how money was to be made. Lastly, they all 
swore at their grooms, and the grooms were 
not quite as respectful or complete as other men's 
grooms ; seeming somehow to fall short of the 
groom point as their masters fell short of the 
gentleman point. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 4. 

SPEECH— A morsel of. 

Smike opened his mouth to speak, but John 
Browdie stopped him. 

" Stan' still," said the Yorkshireman, " and 
doant'ee speak a morsel o' talk till I tell'ee." 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 39. 

SPEECH-" The gift of ^b." 

" Worn't one o' these chaps slim and tall, 
with long hair, and the gift o' the gab wery gal- 
lon in ' ? " — Pirhimrk. C.hn/h on 



lopin ' 



-Pickwick, Chap. 20. 



SPINSTER — Bagrstock's opinion of Miss 
Tox. 

The major paused in his eating, and looked 
mysteriously indignant. "That's a de-vilish 
ambitious woman. Sir." 

Mr. Dombey said " Indeed ? " with frigid in- 
difference : mingled perhaps with some con- 
temptuous incredulity as to Miss Tox having the 
presumption to harbor such a superior quality. 

" That woman. Sir," said the Major, " is, in 
her way, a Lucifer, Joey B. has had his day. 
Sir, but he keeps his eyes. He sees, does Joe. 
His Royal Highness the late Duke of York ob- 
served of Joey, at a levee, that he saw." 

The Major accompanied this with such a look, 
and, between eating, drinking, hot tea, devilled 
grill, muffins, and meaning, was altogether so 
swollen and inflamed about the head, that even 
Mr. Dombey showed some anxiety for him. 



" That ridiculous old spectacle, Sir," pursued 
the Major, " aspires. She aspires sky-high, Sir. 
Matrimonially, Dombey." 

" I am sorry for her," said Mr. Dombey. 

Dombey 6r» Son, Chap. 20. 

SPINSTERS— Influence of young men on. 

Fielding tells us that man is fire, and woman 
tow, and the Prince of Darkness sets a light to 
'em. Mr. Jingle knew that young men, to spin- 
ster aunts, are as lighted gas to gunpowder, and 
he determined to essay the effect of an explosion 
without loss of time. — Pickwick, Chap. 8. 

SPIRITUAL GROWTH-Of dead children. 

" Pet had a twin sister who died when we could 
just see her eyes — exactly like Pet's — above the 
table, as she stood on tiptoe holding by it." 

"Ah! indeed, indeed?" 

" Yes, and being practical people, a result has 
gradually sprung up in the minds of Mrs. Mea- 
gles and myself which perhaps you may — or 
perhaps you may not — understand. Pet and 
her baby sister were so exactly alike, and so 
completely one, that in our thoughts we have 
never been able to separate them since. It 
would be of no use to tell us that our dead 
child was a mere infant. We have changed 
that child according to the changes in the child 
spared to us, and always with us. As Pet has 
grown, that child has grown ; as Pet has become 
more sensible and womanly, her sister has be- 
come more sensible and womanly, by just the 
same degrees. It would be as hard to convince 
me that if I was to pass into the other world to- 
morrow, I should not, through the mercy of God, 
be received there by a daughter just like Pet, 
as to persuade me that Pet herself is not a 
reality at my side." 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 2. 

SPITE. 

Spite is a little word ; but it represents as 
strange a jumble of feelings, and compounds of 
discords, as any polysyllable in the language. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 12. il 

SPORTSMAN-Winkle as a. " 

Mr. Winkle flashed, and blazed, and smoked 
away, without producing any material results 
worthy of being noted down ; sometimes ex- 
pending his charge in mid-air, and at others 
sending it skimming along so near the surface 
of the ground as to place the lives of the two 
dogs on a rather uncertain and precarious ten- 
ure. As a display of fancy shooting, it was ex- 
tremely varied and curious ; as an exhibition of 
firing with any precise object, it was, upon the 
whole, perhaps a failure. It is an established 
axiom, that " every bullet has its billet." If it 
apply in an equal degree to shot, those of Mr. 
Winkle were unfortunate foundlings, deprived 
of their natural rights, cast loose upon the 
world, and billeted nowhere. 

Pickwick, Chap. 19. 

SPRING. 

The first of May ! There is a merry fresh- 
ness in the sound, calling to our minds a thou- 
sand thoughts of all that is pleasant and beauti- 
ful in Nature, in her most delightful form. 
What man is there, over whose mind a bright 
spring morning does not exercise a magic in- 



SPRING-TIME 



463 



STEAMBOAT 



fluence— carrying him back to the days of his 
childish sports, and conjuring up before him the 
old green field with its gently-waving trees, 
where the birds sang as he has never heard them 
since — where the butterfly fluttered far more 
gaily than he ever sees him now, in all his ram- 
blings — where the sky seemed bluer, and the 
sun shone more brightly — where the air blew 
more freshly over greener grass, and sweeter- 
smelling flowers — where everything wore a 
richer and more brilliant hue than it is ever 
dressed in now ! Such are the deep feelings of 
childhood, and such are the impressions which 
every lovely object stamps upon its heart ! The 
hardy traveller wanders through the maze of 
thick and pathless woods, where the sun's rays 
never shone, and heaven's pure air never played ; 
he stands on the brink of the roaring waterfall, 
and, giddy and bewildered, watches the foaming 
mass as it leaps from stone to stone, and from 
crag to crag ; he lingers in the fertile plains of 
a land of perpetual sunshine, and revels in the 
luxury of their balmy breath. But what are the 
deep forests, or the thundering waters, or the 
richest landscapes that bounteous nature ever 
spread, to charm the eyes, and captivate the 
senses of man, compared with the recollection 
of the old scenes of his early youth ? Magic 
scenes indeed, for the fancies of childhood 
dressed them in colors brighter than the rain- 
bow, and almost as fleeting ! — Scenes, Chap. 20. 

SPRING-TIME. 

Everything was fresh and gay, as though the 
world were but that morning made, when Mr. 
Chester rode at a tranquil pace along the Forest 
road. Though early in the season, it was warm 
and genial weather ; the trees were budding 
into leaf, the hedges and the grass were green, 
the air was musical with songs of birds, and 
high above them all the lark poured out her 
richest melody. In shady spots, the morning 
dew sparkled on each young leaf and blade of 
grass ; and where the sun was shining, some 
diamond drops yet glistened brightly, as in un- 
willingness to leave so fair a world, and have 
such brief existence. Even the light wind, 
whose rustling was as gentle to the ear as softly 
falling water, had its hope and promise ; and, 
leaving a pleasant fragrance in its track as it 
went fluttering by, whispered of its intercourse 
with Summer, and of his happy coming. 

Barnaby Rttdge, Chap. 29. 

STAGE— Adapted to the. 

" The stage ! " cried Nicholas, in a voice al- 
most as loud. 

" The theatrical profession," said Mr. Vincent 
Crummies. " I am in the theatrical profession 
myself, my wife is in the theatrical profession, 
my children are in the theatrical profession. I 
had a dog that lived and died in it from a pup- 
py ; and my chaise-pony goes on, in Timour 
the Tartar. I'll bring you out and your friend 
too. Say the word. I want a novelty." 

" I don't know anything about it," rejoined 
Nicholas, whose breath had been almost taken 
away by this sudden proposal. " I never acted 
a part in my life, except at school." 

" There's genteel comedy in your walk and 
manner, juvenile tragedy in your eye, and touch- 
and-go farce in your laugh," said Mr. Vincent 
Crummies. " You'll do as well as if you had 



thought of nothing else but the lamps, from your 
birth downwards.' 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 22. 

STARCHED PEOPIiE. 

There was a good deal of competition in the 
Commons on all points of display, and it turned 
out some very choice equipages then ; though I 
always have considered, and always shall con- 
sider, that in my time the great article of com- 
petition there was starch : which I think was 
worn among the proctors to as great an extent 
as it is in the nature of man to bear. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 26. 

STARS— Their alphabet yet tmknown. 

But Mr. Grewgious seeing nothing there, his 
gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, 
as if he would have read in them something that 
was hidden from him. Many of us would if we 
could ; but none of us so much as know our 
letters in the stars yet — or seem likely to do it 
in this state of existence — and few languages 
can be read until their alphabets are mastered. 
Edwin Drood, Chap. 17. 

STARS— The eyes of augrels. 

" Hush ! " said Barnaby, laying his fingers Om 
his lips. " He went out to-day a-wooing. I 
wouldn't for a light guinea that he should never 
go a-wooing again, for, if he did, some eyes 
would grow dim that are now as bright as — see, 
when I talk of eyes, the stars come out ! Whose 
eyes are they? If they are angels' eyes, why do 
they look down here, and see good men hurt, 
and only wink and sparkle all the night ? " 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 3. 

STEAMBOAT— An American. 

She was a large vessel of five hundred tons, 
and handsomely fitted up, though with high- 
pressure engines ; which always conveyed that 
kind of feeling to me which I should be likely 
to experience, I think, if I had lodgings on the 
first floor of a powder-mill. 

American Notes, Chap. 14. 

STEAMBOAT -Night scenes on the Poto- 
mac. 

I go on board, open the door of the gentle- 
men's cabin, and walk in. Somehow or other 
— from its being so quiet, I suppose — I have 
taken it into my head that there is nobody 
there. To my horror and amazement, it is full 
of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, and 
variety of slumber — in the berths, on the chairs, 
on the floors, on the tables, and particularly 
round the stove, my detested enemy. I take 
another step forward, and slip upon the shining 
face of a black steward, who lies rolled up in a 
blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins, half 
in pain, half in hospitality ; whispers my own 
name in my ear ; and, groping among the sleep- 
ers, leads me to my berth. Standing beside it, 
I count these slumbering passengers, and get 
past forty. There is no use in going farther, 
so I begin to undress. As the chairs are all oc- 
cupied, and there is nothing else to put my 
clothes on, I deposit them upon the ground ; not 
without soiling my hands, for it is in the same 
condition as the carpets in the Capitol, and from 
the same cause. Having but partially undress- 
ed, I clamber on my shelf, and hold the curtaia 



STEAMBOATS 



454 



STEAHEB 



open for a few minutes while I look round on 
all my fellow-travellers again. That done, I 
let it fall on them, and on the world, and turn 
round, and go to sleep. 

I wake, of course, when we get under way, for 
there is a good deal of noise. The day is then 
just breaking. Everybody wakes at the 
same time. Some are self-possessed directly, 
and some are much perplexed to make out 
where they are, until they have rubbed their eyes, 
and, leaning on one elbow, looked about them. 
Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a 
few get up. I am among the risers, for it is 
easy to feel, without going into the fresh air, 
that the atmosphere of the cabin is vile in the 
last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go down 
into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, 
and wash myself The washing and dressing 
apparatus for the passengers generally consists 
of two jack-towels, three small wooden basins, 
a keg of water, and a ladle to serve it out with, 
six square inches of looking-glass, two ditto 
ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush for the 
head, and nothing for the teeth. Everybody 
uses the comb and brush except myself. Every- 
body stares to see me using my own ; and two 
or three gentlemen are strongly disposed to ban- 
ter me on my prejudices, but don't. When I 
have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane- 
deck, and set in for two hours of hard walking 
up and down. The sun is rising brilliantly ; we 
are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington 
lies buried ; the river is wide and rapid, and its 
banks are beautiful. All the glory and splendor 
of the day are coming on, and growing brighter 
every minute. — American Notes ^ Chap, 9. 

STEAMBOATS— In the harbor. 

There they lay, alongside of each other ; hard 
and fast forever, to all appearance, but design- 
ing to get out somehow, and quite confident of 
doing it ; and in that faith shoals of passengers, 
and heaps of luggage, were proceeding hurriedly 
on board. Little steamboats dashed up and 
down the stream incessantly. Tiers upon tiers 
of vessels, scores of masts, labyrinths of tackle, 
idle sails, splashing oars, gliding row-boats, lum- 
bering barges, sunken piles, with ugly lodgings 
for the water-rat within their mud-discolored 
nooks ; church steeples, warehouses, house-roofs, 
arches, bridges, men and women, children, casks, 
cranes, boxes, horses, coaches, idlers, and hard- 
laborers ; there they were, all jumbled up to- 
gether, any summer morning, far beyond Tom's 
power of separation. 

In the midst of all this turmoil, there was an 
incessant roar from every packet's funnel, which 
quite expressed and carried out the uppermost 
emotion of the scene. They all appeared to be 
perspiring and bothering themselves, exactly as 
their passengers did ; they never left off fretting 
and chafing, in their own hoarse manner, once ; 
but were always panting out, without any stops, 
" Come along do make haste I'm very nervous 
come along oh good gracious we shall never get 
there Row late you are do make haste I'm off 
directly come along ! " Even when they had 
left off, and had got safely out into the current, 
on the smallest provocation they began again : 
for the bravest packet of them all, being stopped 
by some entanglement in the river, would im- 
mediately begin to fume and pant afresh, " Oh 
here's a stoppage what's the matter do go on 



there I'm in a hurry it's done on purpose did 
you ever oh my goodness do go on there ! " and 
so, in a state of mind bordering on distraction, 
would be last seen drifting slowly through the 
mist into the summer light beyond, that made 
it red. — Martin Chuzzlewity Chap. 40. 

STEAMER— Crossing the Channel. 

A stout wooden wedge, driven in at my right 
temple and out at my left, a floating deposit of 
lukewarm oil in my throat, and a compression 
of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pin- 
cers, — these are the personal sensations by which 
I know we are off, and by which I shall con- 
tinue to know it until I am on the soil of France. 
My symptoms have scarcely established them- 
selves comfortably, when two or three skating 
shadows that have been trying to walk or stand 
get flung together, and other two or three shad- 
ows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners 
and cover them up. Then the South Foreland 
lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes 
no good. 

It is at about this period that my detestation 
of Calais knows no bounds. Inwardly I resolve 
afresh that I never will forgive that hated town. 
I have done so before, many times ; but that is 
past. Let me register a vow. Implacable ani- 
mosity to Calais everm — that was an awkward 
sea ; and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it 
gives a complaining roar. 

The wind blows stiffly from the Nor'-east, the 
sea runs high, we ship a deal of water, the night 
is dark and cold, and the shapeless passengers 
lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were 
sorted out for the laundress ; but for my own 
uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I am 
much inconvenienced by any of these things, 
A general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, 
and scooping, I am aware of, and a general 
knocking about of nature ; but the impressions 
I receive are very vague. In a sweet, faint 
temper, something like the smell of damaged 
oranges, I think I should feel languidly benevo- 
lent if I had time. I have not time, because I 
am under a curious compulsion to occupy my- 
self with the Irish Melodies. " Rich and rare 
were the gems she wore," is the particular melo- 
dy to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to 
myself in the most charming manner and with 
the greatest expression. Now and then I raise 
my head (I am sitting on the hardest of wet 
seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet atti- 
tudes, but I don't mind it), and notice that I 
am a whirling shuttlecock between a fiery bat- 
tledore of a light-house on the French coast and 
a fiery battledore of a light-house on the Eng- 
lish coast ; but I don't notice it particularly, 
except to feel envenomed in my hatred of Ca- 
lais. Then I go on again, " Rich and rare were 
the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore. And a bright gold 
ring on her wa-and she bo-ore. But O her beauty 
was fa-a-a-a-r beyond," — I am particularly proud 
of my execution here, when I become aware of 
another awkward shock from the sea. 

•» * * * « 

So strangely goes the time, and on the whole, 
so quickly — though still I seem to have been on 
board a week — that I am bumped, rolled, gurg- 
led, washed, and pitched into Calais Harbor be- 
fore her maiden smile has finally lighted her 
through the Green Isle. When blest forever is 
she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of 



STEAM-ENGINE 



465 



STOBSI 



the tide. For we have~not to land to-night 
down among those slimy timbers — covered with 
green hair, as if it were the mermaids' favored 
combing-place — where one crawls to the surface 
of the jetty, like a stranded shrimp ; but we go 
steaming up the harbor to the Railway Station 
Quay. And, as we go, the sea washes in and 
out among piles and planks, with dead heavy 
beats and in quite a furious manner (whereof we 
are proud) ; and the lamps shake in the wind, 
and the bells of Calais striking One seem to 
send their vibrations struggling against troubled 
air, as we have come struggling against troubled 
water. And now, in the sudden relief and wip- 
ing of faces, everybody on board seems to have 
had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this 
very instant free of the dentist's hands. And 
now we all know for the first time how wet and 
cold we are, and how salt we are ; and now I 
love Calais with my heart of hearts ! 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 17. 

STEAM-ENGINE-A thinking. 

•* What a thinking steam-ingein this old lady 
is. And she don't know how she does it. 
Neither does the ingein ! " 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 9. 

STOCKS AND BONDS-The result of shares. 

The mature young gentleman is a gentleman 
of property. He invests his property. He goes 
in a condescending amateurish way into the 
City, attends meetings of Directors, and has to 
do with traffic in Shares. As is well known to 
the wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is 
the one thing to have to do with in this world. 
Have no antecedents, no established character, 
no cultivation, no ideas, no manners ; have 
Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards 
of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mys- 
terious business between London and Paris, 
and be great. Where does he come from ? 
Shares. Where is he going to ? Shares. What 
are his tastes ? Shares. Has he any principles ? 
Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament ? 
Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved 
success in anything, never originated anything, 
never produced anything. Sufficient answer 
to all ; Shares. O mighty Shares ! To set 
those blaring images so high, and to cause us 
smaller vermin, as under the influence of hen- 
bane or opium, to cry out, night and day, " Re- 
lieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy us 
and sell us, ruin us, only, we beseech ye, take 
rank among the powers of the earth, and fatten 
on us ! " — Our Muttial Friend, Book I., Chap. 10. 

STOBM— Approach of a. 

It had been gradually getting overcast, and 
now the sky was dark and lowering, save where 
the glory of the departing sun piled up masses 
of gold and burning fire, decaying embers of 
which gleamed here and there through the black 
veil, and shone redly down upon the earth. The 
wind began to moan in hollow murmurs, as the 
sun went down, carrying glad day elsewhere ; 
and a train of dull clouds coming up against it, 
menaced thunder and lightning. Large drops 
of rain soon began to fall, and, as the storm- 
clouds came sailing onward, others supplied the 
void they left behind and spread over all the 
sky. Then was heard the low rumbling of dis- 
tant thunder, then the lightning quivered, and 



then the darkness of an hour seemed to have 
gathered in an instant. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap, 29. 

STORM. 

The squall had come up, like a spiteful mes- 
senger, before the morning ; there followed in 
its wake a ragged tier of light which ripped the 
dark clouds until they showed a great gray hole 
of day. — Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 14. 



It was a murky confusion — here and there blot- 
ted with a color like the color of the smoke from 
damp fuel — of flying clouds tossed up into most 
remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in 
the clouds than there were depths below them 
to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the 
earth, through which the wild moon seemed to 
plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance 
of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and 
were frightened. There had been a wind all 
day ; and it was rising then, with an extraordi- 
nary great sound. In another hour it had much 
increased, and the sky was more overcast, and 
blew hard. 

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing 
in and densely overspreading the whole sky, 
then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and 
harder. It still increased, until our horses 
could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in 
the dark part of the night (it was then late in 
September, when the nights were not short), the 
leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop ; 
and we were often in serious apprehension that 
the coach would be blown over. Sweeping 
gusts of ram came up before this storm, like 
showers of steel ; and, at those times, when 
there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be 
got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer inpossibil- 
ity of continuing the struggle. 

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the 
sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing 
dead on shore, its force became more and more 
terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray 
was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. 
The water was out, over miles and miles of the 
flat country adjacent to Yarmouth ; and every 
sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its 
stress of little breakers setting heavily toward 
us. When we came within sight of the sea, the 
waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above 
the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another 
shore, with towers and buildings. When at last 
we got into the town, the people came out to 
their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, 
making a wonder of the mail that had come 
through such a night. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 55. 

STORM-At nigrht. 

The blast went by, and the moon contended 
with the fast-flying clouds, and the wild disorder 
reigning up there made the pitiful little tumults 
in the streets of no account. It was not that 
the wind swept all the brawlers into places of 
shelter, as it had swept the hail still lingering in 
heaps wherever there was refuge for it ; but that 
it seemed as if the streets were absorbed by the 
sky, and the night were all in the air. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 12. 

It was one of those hot, silent nights, when 
people sit at windows, listening for the thunder 



STOBM 



460 



STOBM 



which they know will shortly break ; when they 
recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes ; 
and of lonely travellers on open plains, and 
lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning. Light- 
ning flashed and quivered on the black horizon 
even now ; and hollow murmurings were in the 
wind, as though it had been blowing where the 
thunder rolled, and still was charged with its 
exhausted echoes. But the storm, though gather- 
ing swiftly, had not yet come up ; and the pre- 
vailing stillness was the more solemn, from the 
dull intelligence that seemed to hover in the air, 
of noise and conflict afar off. 

It was very dark ; but in the murky sky 
there were masses of cloud which shone with a 
lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that 
had been heated in a furnace, and were grow- 
ing cold. 

9|e 4( :]( sH 4( 

Louder and louder the deep thunder rolled, 
as through the myriad halls of some vast temple 
in the sky ; fiercer and brighter became the 
lightning ; more and more heavily the rain 
poured down. 

The eye, partaking of the quickness of the 
flashing light, saw in its every gleam a multitude 
of objects which it could not see at steady noon 
in fifty times that period. Bells in steeples, with 
the rope and wheel that moved them ; ragged 
nests of birds in cornices and nooks ; faces full 
of consternation in the tilted wagons that 
came tearing past ; their frightened teams ring- 
ing out a warning which the thunder drowned ; 
harrows and plows left out in fields ; miles upon 
miles of hedge-divided country, with the distant 
fringe of trees as obvious as the scarecrow in 
the bean-field close at hand ; in a trembling, 
vivid, flickering instant, everything was clear 
and plain : then came a flush of red into the 
yellow light ; a change to blue ; a brightness so 
intense that there was nothing else but light ; 
and then the deepest and profoundest darkness. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 42. 

It was a melancholy time, even in the snug- 
ness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of 
corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle 
undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many 
hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees, 
was black and dreary, from the diamond panes 
of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the 
thunder seemed to roll along the hills. The 
heavy i-ain beat down the tender branches of 
vine and jessamine, and trampled on them in its 
fury ; and when the lightning gleamed, it showed 
the tearful leaves shivering and cowering to- 
gether at the window, and tapping at it urgently, 
as if beseeching to be sheltered from the dismal 
night. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 43. 

STORM. 

She paced the staircase gallery outside, looked 

out of window on the night, listened to the wind 

blowing and the rain falling, sat down and 

watched the faces in the fire, got up and 

watched the moon flying like a storm-driven ship 

through the sea of clouds. 

* « * » * 

Florence, more agitated, paced the room, and 
paced the gallery outside ; and looked out at 
the night, blurred and wavy with the rain-drops 
on the glass, and the tears in her own eyes ; and 
looked up at the hurry in the sky, so difi"erent 



from the repose below, and yet so tranquil and 
solitary. — Dombey d^ Son, Chap. 47. 

The weathercocks on spires and housetops 
were mysterious with hints of stormy wind, and 
pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to 
dangerous seas, where fragments of great wrecks 
were drifting, perhaps, and helpless men were 
rocked upon them into a sleep as deep as the 
unfathomable waters. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 23. 

STORM-At sea. 

A dark and dreary night ; people nestling 
in their beds or circling late about the fire ; 
Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the 
street corners ; church-towers humming with 
the faint vibration of their own tongues, but 
newly resting from the ghostly preachment, 
" One ! " The earth covered with a sable pall 
as for the burial of yesterday ; the clumps of 
dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, 
waving sadly to and fro : all hushed, all noise- 
less, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds 
that skim across the moon, and the cautious 
wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, 
it stops to listen, and goes rustling on, and 
stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail. 

Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? 
If, like guilty spirits, they repair to some dread 
conference with powers like themselves, in what 
wild regions do the elements hold council, or 
where unbend in terrible disport ? 

Here ! Free from that cramped prison called 
the earth, and out upon the waste of waters. - 
Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all I 
night long. Hither come the sounding voices T 
from the caverns on the coast of that small 
island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, so qui- 
etly in the midst of angry waves ; and hither, 
to meet them, rush the blasts from unknown 
desert places of the world. Here, in the fury 
of their unchecked liberty, they storm and 
buffet with each other, until the sea, lashed into 
passion like their own, leaps up, in ravings might- 
ier than theirs, and the whole scene is madness. 

On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry 
space roll the long heaving billows. Moun- 
tains and caves are here, and yet are not ; for 
what is now the one, is now the other ; then, all 
is but a boiling heap of rushing water. Pursuit, 
and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, 
and savage struggle, ending in a spouting-up 
of foam, that whitens the black night ; inces- 
sant change of place, and form, and hue ; con- 
stancy in nothing, but eternal strife ; on, on, 
on, they roll, and darker grows the night, and 
louder howls the wind, and more clamorous and 
fierce become the million voices in the sea, 
when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm, 
" A ship ! " 

Onward she comes, in gallant combat with 
the elements, her tall masts trembling, and her 
timbers starting on the strain ; onward she 
comes, now high upon the curling billows, now 
low down in the hollows of the sea, as hiding 
for the moment from its fury ; and every storm- 
voice in the air and water cries more loudly 
yet, " A ship ! " 

Still she comes striving on ; and at her bold- 
ness and the spreading cry, the angry waves 
rise up above each other's hoary heads to look ; 
and round about the vessel, far as the mariners 
on the decks can pierce into the gloom they 



STORM 



467 



STREETS 



press upon her, forcing each other down, and 
starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in 
dreadful curiosity. High over her they break ; 
and round her surge and roar ; and, giving place 
to others, moaningly depart, and dash them- 
selves to fragments in their baffled anger. Still 
she comes onward bravely. And though the 
eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her 
all the night, and dawn of day discovers the un- 
tiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in 
an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, 
with dim lights burning in her hull, and people 
there, asleep ; as if no deadly element were 
peering in at every seam and chink, and no 
drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to 
cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable 
depths below. — Martin Chuzzlewit^ Chap, 15. 

STORM— Thtmder. 

The clouds were flying fast, the wind was 
coming up in gusts, banging some neighboring 
shutters that had broken loose, twirling the 
rusty chimney- cowls and weathercocks, and 
rushing round and round a confined adjacent 
churchyard as if it had a mind to blow the dead 
citizens out of their graves. The low thunder, 
mi>ttering in all quarters of the sky at once, 
seemed to threaten vengeance for this attempt- 
ed desecration, and to mutter, " Let them rest ! 
Let them rest ! " 

Little Dorr it. Book /., Chap. 29. 

STORM— Its influence on hunia,n passions. 

There are times when, the elements being in 
unusual commotion, those who are bent on dar- 
ing enterprises, or agitated by great thoughts, 
whether of good or evil, feel a mysterious 
sympathy with the tumult of nature, and are 
roused into corresponding violence. In the 
midst of thunder, lightning, and storm, many 
tremendous deeds have been committed ; men, 
self-possessed before, have given a sudden loose 
to passions they could no longer control. The 
demons of wrath and despair have striven to 
emulate those who ride the whirlwind and 
direct the storm ; and man, lashed into madness 
with the roaring winds and boiling waters, has 
become for the time as wild and merciless as 
the elements themselves. 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 2. 

STREET— A dull. 

It is a dull street under the best conditions ; 
where the two long rows of houses stare at each 
other with that severity, that half-a-dozen of its 
greatest mansions seem to have been slowly 
stared into stone, rather than originally built in 
that material. It is a street of such dismal 
grandeur, so determined not to condescend to 
liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a 
gloomy state of their own in black paint and 
dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry 
and massive appearance, as if they were reserved 
to stable the stone chargers of noble statues. 
Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines it- 
self over the flights of steps in this awful street ; 
and from these petrified bowers, extinguishers 
for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the upstart gas. 
Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through 
which bold boys aspire to throw their friends' 
caps (its only present use), retains its place 
among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory 
of departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet linger- 



ing at long intervals in a little absurd glass pot, 
with a knob in the bottom like an oyster, blinks 
and sulks at newer lights every night, like its 
high and dry master in the House of Lords. 
Bleak House, Chap. 48. 

STREET— A gloomy. 

It was one of the parasite streets ; long, re- 
gular, narrow, dull, and gloomy ; like a brick 
and mortar funeral. They inquired at several 
little area gates, where a dejected youth stood 
spiking his chin on the summit of a precipitous 
little shoot of wooden steps, but could gain no 
information. They walked up the street on one 
side of the way, and down it on the other, what 
time two vociferous news-sellers, announcing an 
extraordinary event that had never happened 
and never would happen, pitched their hoarse 
voices into the secret chambers ; but nothing 
came of it. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 27. 

STREET— A London. 

Mr, Casby lived in a street in the Gray's Inn 
Road, which had set off from that thoroughfare 
with the intention of running at one heat down 
into the valley, and up again to the top of Pen- 
tonville Hill ; but which had run itself out of 
breath in twenty yards, and had stood still ever 
since. There is no such place in that part now ; 
but it remained there for many years, looking 
with a balked countenance at the wilderness 
patched with unfruitful gardens and pimpled 
with eruptive summer-houses, that it had meant 
to run over in no time. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 13. 

STREETS— A repulsive neig-hborhood. 

Near to that part of the Thames on which 
the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the 
buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the 
vessels on the river blackest with the dust of 
colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed 
houses, there exists, at the present day, the fil- 
thiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of 
many localities that are hidden in London, 
wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass 
of its inhabitants. 

To reach this place the visitor has to penetrate 
through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy 
streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of 
water-side people, and devoted to tlie traffic 
they may be supposed to occasion. The cheap- 
est and least delicate provisions are heaped in 
the shops ; the coarsest and commonest articles 
of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman's 
door, and stream from the house-parapet and 
windows. Jostling with unemployed laborers 
of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whip- 
pers, brazen women, ragged children, and the 
very raff and refuse of the river, he makes his 
way with difficulty along, assailed by oflensive 
sights and smells from the narrow alleys which 
branch off on the right and left, and deafened 
by the clash of ponderous wagons that bear great 
piles of merchandise from the stacks of ware- 
houses that rise from every corner. Arriving, at 
length, in streets remoter and less-frequented 
than those through which he has passed, he 
walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting 
over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem 
to totter as he passes, chimneys half-crushed, 
half-hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty 
iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten 



STBEET 



468 



STREET SCENES 



away, and every imaginable sign of desolation 
and neglect. 

***** 

Crazy wooden galleries, common to the backs 
of half a dozen houses, with holes from which 
to look upon the slime beneath ; windows 
broken and patched : with poles thrust out, on 
which to dry the linen that is never there ; 
rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air 
would seem too tainted even for the dirt and 
squalor which they shelter ; wooden chambers 
thrusting themselves out above the mud, and 
threatening to fall into it — as some have done ; 
dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations ; 
every repulsive lineament of poverty, every 
loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage ; 
all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch. 
Oliver Twisty Chap. 50. 

STREET— A qxdet. 

There is a repose about Lant Street, in the 
Borough, which sheds a gentle melancholy upon 
the soul. There are always a good many houses 
to let in the street : it is a bye-street too, and its 
dullness is soothing. A house in Lant Street 
would not come within the denomination of a 
first-rate residence, in the strict acceptation of 
the term ; but it is a most desirable spot never- 
theless. If a man wished to abstract himself 
from the world — to remove himself from within 
the reach of temptation — to place himself be- 
yond the possibility of any inducement to look 
out of the window — he should by all means go 
to Lant Street. 

In this happy retreat are colonized a few 
clear-starchers, a sprinkling of journeymen 
bookbinders, one or two prison agents for the 
Insolvent Court, several small housekeepers who 
are employed in the Docks, a handful of mantua- 
makers, and a seasoning of jobbing tailors. 
The majority of the inhabitants either direct 
their energies to the letting of furnished apart- 
ments, or devote themselves to the healthful and 
invigorating pursuit of mangling. The chief 
features in the still life of the street are green 
shutters, lodging-bills, brass door-plates, and bell- 
handles ; the principal specimens of animated 
nature, the pot-boy, the muffin youth, and the 
baked-potato man. The population is migra- 
tory, usually disappearing on the verge of quar- 
ter-day, and generally by night. His Majesty's 
revenues are seldom collected in this happy 
valley ; the rents are dubious ; and the water 
communication is very frequently cut oif. 

Pickwick, Chap. 32. 

STREET— Crowd and mud. 

It is quite dark, now, and the gas-lamps have 
acquired their full effect. Jostling against clerks 
going to post the day's letters, and against coun- 
sel and attorneys going home to dinner, and 
against plaintiffs and defendants, and suitors of 
all sorts, and against the general crowd, in whose 
way the forensic wisdom of ages has interposed 
a million of obstacles to the transaction of the 
commonest business of life — diving through law 
and equity, and through that kindred mystery, 
the street mud, which is made of nobody knows 
what, and collects about us nobody knows 
whence or how ; we only knowing in general 
that when there is too much of it, we find it 
necessary to shovel it away — the lawyer and the 
law-stationer come to a Rag and Bottle shop, 



and general emporium of much disregarded 
merchandise, lying and being in the shadow of 
the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept, as is an- 
nounced in paint, to all whom it may concern 
by one Krook. — Bleak House, Chap. lo. 

STREETS— In London. 

They rattled on through the noisy, bustling, 
crowded streets of London, now displaying long 
double rows of brightly-burning lamps, dotted 
here and there with the chemists' glaring lights, 
and illuminated besides with the brilliant flood 
that streamed from the windows of the shops, 
where sparkling jewelry, silks and velvets of 
the richest colors, the most inviting delicacies, 
and most sumptuous articles of luxurious orna- 
ment, succeeded each other in rich and glitter- 
ing profusion. Streams of people apparently 
without end poured on and on, jostling each 
other in the crowd and hurrying forward, scarce- 
ly seeming to notice the riches that surrounded 
them on every side ; while vehicles of all shapes 
and makes, mingled up together in one moving A 
mass like running water, lent their ceaseless ■ 
roar to swell the noise and tumult. 

As they dashed by the quickly-changing and 
ever- varying objects, it was curious to observe in 
what a strange procession they passed before the 
eye. Emporiums of splendid dresses, the mate- 
rials brought from every quarter of the world ; 
tempting stores of everything \o stimulate and 
pamper the sated appetite and give new relish 
to the oft-repeated feast ; vessels of burnished 
gold and silver, wrought into every exquisite ■ 
form of vase, and dish, and goblet ; guns, ■ 
swords, pistols, and patent engines of destruc- i 
tion ; screws and irons for the crooked, clothes 
for the newly-born, drugs for the sick, coffins for 
the dead, church-yards for the buried — all these, 
jumbled each with the other and flocking side 
by side, seemed to flit by in motley dance, like 
the fantastic groups of the old Dutch painter, 
and with the same stern moral for the unheed- 
ing, restless crowd. 

Nor were there wanting objects in the crowd 
itself to give new point and purpose to the 
shifting scene. The rags of the squalid ballad- 
singer fluttered in the rich light that showed the 
goldsmith's treasures ; pale and pin ched-up faces 
hovered about the windows where was tempting 
food ; hungry eyes wandered over the profusion 
guarded by one thin sheet of brittle glass — an 
iron wall to them ; half-naked, shivering figures 
stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden 
stuffs of India. There was a christening party 
at the largest coffin-maker's, and a funeral hatch- 
ment had stopped some great improvements in 
the bravest mansion. Life and death went hand 
in hand : wealth and poverty stood side by side ; 
repletion and starvation laid them down to- 
gether. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 32. 

STREET SCENES— liOndon. 

It was now summer-time ; a gray, hot, dusty 
evening. They rode to the top of Oxford Street, 
and there alighting, dived in among the great 
streets of melancholy stateliness, and the little 
streets that try to be as stately and succeed in being 
more melancholy, of which there is a labyrinth 
near Park Lane. Wildernesses of comer-houses, 
with barbarous old porticoes and appurtenances ; 
horrors that came into existence under some wrong- 
headed person, in some wrong-headed time 



STBEET SCENES 



459 



STBEET SCENES 



still demanding the blind admiration of all en- 
suing generations, and determined to do so 
until they tumbled down, frowned upon the 
twilight. Parasite little tenements with the 
cramp in their whole frame, from the dwarf 
hall-door on the giant model of His Grace's in 
the Square, to the squeezed window of the 
boudoir commanding the dunghills in the 
Mews, made the evening doleful. Rickety 
dwellings of undoubted fashion, but of a capacity 
to hold nothing comfortably except a dismal 
smell, looked like the last result of the great 
mansions' breeding in and-in ; and, where their 
little supplementary bows and balconies were 
supported on thin iron columns, seemed to 
be scrofulously resting upon crutches. Here and 
there a Hatchment, with the whole science of 
Heraldry in it, loomed down upon the street, 
like an Archbishop discoursing on Vanity. The 
shops, few in number, made no show ; for pop- 
ular opinion was as nothing to them. The 
pastry-cook knew who was on his books, and 
in that knowledge could be calm, with a few 
glass cylinders of dowager peppermint-drops in 
his window, and half a-dozen ancient speci- 
mens of currant-jelly. A few oranges formed 
the greengrocer's whole concession to the vul- 
gar mind. A single basket made of moss, once 
containing plovers' eggs, held all that the 
poulterer had to say to the rabble. Every- 
body in those streets seemed (which is always 
the case at that hour and season) to be gone 
out to dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving 
the dinners they had gone to. On the door- 
steps there were lounging, footmen with bright 
parti-colored plumage and white polls, like an 
extinct race of monstrous birds ; and butlers, 
solitary men of recluse demeanor, each of 
whom appeared distrustful of all other butlers. 
The roll of carriages in the Park was done for 
the day ; the street lamps were lighting ; and 
wicked little grooms in the tightest fitting gar- 
ments, with twists in their legs answering to 
the twists in their minds, hung about in pairs, 
chewing straws and exchanging fraudulent se- 
crets. The spotted dogs who went out with 
the carriages, and who were so associated with 
splendid equipages, that it looked like a conde- 
scension in those animals to come out without 
them, accompanied helpers to and fro on mes- 
sages. Here and there was a retiring public- 
house which did not require to be supported 
on the shoulders of the people, and where gen- 
tlemen out of livery were not much wanted. 
Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 27. 

STREET SCENES— In London (Morning-). 

The shops are now completely opened, and 
apprentices and shopmen are busily engaged in 
cleaning and decking the windows for the day. 
The bakers' shops in town are filled with ser- 
vants and children waiting for the drawing of 
the first batch of rolls — an operation which was 
performed a full hour ago in the suburbs ; for 
the early clerk population of Somers and Cam- 
den Towns, Islington and Pentonville, are fast 
pouring into the city, or directing their steps 
towards Chancery Lane and the Inns of Court. 
Middle-aged men, whose salaries have by no 
means increased in the same proportion as their 
families, plod steadily along, apparently with no 
object in view but the counting-house ; knowing 
by sight almost everybody they meet or over- 



take, for they have seen them every morning 
(Sundays excepted) during the last twenty years, 
but speaking to no one. If they do happen to 
overtake a personal acquaintance, they just ex- 
change a hurried salutation, and keep walking 
on either by his side, or in front of him, as his 
rate of walking may chance to be. As to stop- 
ping to shake hands, or to take the friend's arm, 
they seem to think that as it is not included in 
their salary, they have no right to do it. Small 
office lads in large hats, who are made men be- 
fore they are boys, hurry along in pairs, with 
their first coat carefully brushed, and the white 
trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared 
with dust and ink. It evidently requires a con- 
siderable mental struggle to avoid investing a 
part of the day's dinner-money in the purchase 
of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty 
tins at the pastry-cook's doors ; but a conscious- 
ness of their own importance and the receipt of 
seven shillings a-week, with the prospect of an 
early rise to eight, comes to their aid, and they 
accordingly put their hats a little more on one 
side, and look under the bonnets of all the mil- 
liners' and staymakers' apprentices they meet — 
poor girls ! — the hardest worked, the worst paid, 
and too often the worst used class of the com- 
munity. — Sketches {Scenes), Chap. i. 

STREET SCENES-In London ("The Di- 
als "). 

It is odd enough that one class of men in 
London appear to have no enjoyment beyond 
leaning against posts. We never saw a regular 
bricklayer's laborer take any other recreation, 
fighting excepted. Pass through St. Giles's in 
the evening of a week-day, there they are in 
their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust 
and whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk 
through Seven Dials on Sunday morning : there 
they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, 
Blucher boots, blue coats, and great yellow 
waistcoats, leaning against posts. The idea of 
a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to 
lean against a post all day ! 

The peculiar character of these streets, and 
the close resemblance each one bears to its 
neighbor, by no means tends to decrease the 
bewilderment in which the unexperienced way- 
farer through " The Dials " finds himself in- 
volved. He traverses streets of dirty, strag- 
gling houses, with now and then an unexpected 
court composed of buildings as ill-proportioned 
and deformed as the half naked children that 
wallow in the kennels. Here and there, a little 
dark chandler's shop, with a cracked bell hung 
up behind the door to announce the entrance 
of a customer, or betray the presence of some 
young gentleman in whom a passion for shop 
tills has developed itself at an early age ; others, 
as if for support, against some handsome lofty 
building, which usurps the place of a low, din- 
gy public-house ; long rows of broken and 
])atched windows expose plants that may have 
flourished when " The Dials " were built, in ves- 
sels as dirty as "The Dials " tliemselves ; and 
shops for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, 
and kitchen-stuft", vie in cleanliness with the 
bird-fanciers and rabbit-doalcrs, which one 
might fancy so many arks, but for the irresisti- 
ble conviction that no bird in its proper senses, 
who was permitted to leave one of them, would 
ever come back again. Brokers' shops, which 



STREBT-SINGEB 



460 



SWIVELIiER 



would seem to have been established by humane 
individuals as refuges for destitute bugs, inter- 
spersed with announcements of day-schools, 
penny theatres, petition-writers, mangles, and 
music for balls or routs, complete the " still 
life " of the subject ; and dirty men, filthy 
women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks, 
noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more 
than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed 
dogs, and anatomical fowls, are its cheerful ac- 
companiments. 

•» ^- « * * 

Now, anybody who passed through The Dials 
on a hoi summer's evening, and saw the differ- 
ent women of the house gossiping on the steps, 
would be apt to think that all was harmony 
among them, and that a more primitive set of 
people than the native Diallers could not be 
imagined, Alas ! the man in the shop ill-treats 
his family ; the carpet-beater extends his pro- 
fessional pursuits to his wife ; the one-pair front 
has an undying feud with the two-pair front, 
in consequence of the two-pair front persisting 
in dancing over his (the one-pair front's) head, 
when he and his family have retired for the 
night ; the two-pair back will interfere with the 
front kitchen's children ; the Irishman comes 
home drunk every other night, and attacks every- 
body ; and the one-pair back screams at every- 
thing. Animosities spring up between floor 
and floor ; the very cellar asserts his equality. 
Mrs. A. " smacks " Mrs. B.'s child, for " making 
faces." Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water 
over Mrs. A.'s child, for " calling names." The 
husbands are embroiled — the quarrel becomes 
general — an assault is the consequence, and a po- 
lice-oflicer the result. — Sketches {Scenes), Chap. 5. 

STREET-SINGER-The. 

That wretched woman with the infant in her 
arms, round whose meagre form the remnant of 
her own scanty shawl is carefully wrapped, has 
been attempting to sing some popular ballad, 
in the hope of wringing a few pence from the 
compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her 
weak voice is all she has gained. The tears fall 
thick and fast down her own pale face ; the 
child is cold and hungry, and its low, half- 
stifled wailing adds to the misery of its wretched 
mother, as she moans aloud, and sinks despair- 
ingly down, on a cold, damp door-step. 

Singing ! How few of those who pass such a 
miserable creature as this, think of the anguish of 
heart, the sinking of soul and spirit, which the 
very effort of singing produces. Bitter mock- 
ery ! Disease, neglect, and starvation, faintly 
articulating the words of the joyous ditty that 
has enlivened your hours of feasting and merri- 
ment — God knows how often ! It is no subject 
of jeering. The weak, tremulous voice tells a 
fearful tale of want and famishing ; and the 
feeble singer of this roaring song may turn away, 
only to die of cold and hunger. 

Sketclies f Scenes J, Chap. 2. 



SWIVEIiliEB.— Dick, and Sally Brass. 

Dick stood at the desk in a state of utter stu- 
pefaction, staring with all his might at the beau- 
teous Sally, as if she had been some curious 
animal whose like had never lived. 

Miss Brass being by this time deep in the 
bill of costs, took no notice whatever of Dick, 
but went scratching on with a noisy pen, scor- 



ing down the figures with evident delight, and 
working like a steam-engine. There stood 
Dick, gazing, now at the green gown, now at the 
brown head-dress, now at the face, and now at 
the rapid pen, in a state of stupid perplexity, 
wondering how he got into the company of that 
strange monster, and whether it was a dream, 
and he would ever wake. At last he heaved a 
deep sigh, and began slowly pulling off his coat. 

Mr. Swiveller pulled off his coat, and folded 
it up with great elaboration, staring at Miss 
Sally all the time ; then put on a blue jacket, 
with a double row of gilt buttons, which he had 
originally ordered for aquatic expeditions, but 
had brought with him that morning for office 
purposes ; and, still keeping his eye upon her, 
suffered himself to drop down silently on Mr. 
Brass's stool. Then he underwent a relapse, 
and becoming powerless again, rested his chin 
upon his hand, and opened his eyes so wide that 
it appeared quite out of the question that he 
could ever close them any more. 

"When he had looked so long that he could see 
nothing, Dick took his eyes off the fair object 
of his amazement, turned over the leaves of the 
draft he was to copy, dipped his pen into the 
ink-stand, and at last, and by slow approaches, 
began to write. But he had not written half-a- 
dozen words when, reaching over to the ink- 
stand to take a fresh dip, he happened to raise 
his eyes. There was the intolerable brown 
head-dress — there was the green gown — there, 
in short, was Miss Sally Brass, arrayed in all her 
charms, and more tremendous than ever. 

This happened so often, that Mr. Swiveller 
by degrees began to feel strange influences creep- 
ing over him — horrible desires to annihilate this 
Sally Brass — mysterious promptings to knock 
her head-dress off and try how she looked with- 
out it. There was a very large ruler on the 
table ; a large, black, shining ruler. Mr. Swiv- 
eller took it up and began to rub his nose with it. 

From rubbing his nose with the ruler, to 
poising it in his hand and giving it an occa- 
sional flourish after the tomahawk manner, the 
transition was easy and natural. In some of 
these flourishes it went close to Miss Sally's 
head ; the ragged edges of the head-dress flut- 
tered with the wind it raised ; advance it but 
an inch, and that great brown knot was on the 
ground : yet still the unconscious maiden worked 
away, and never raised her eyes. 

Well, this was a great relief. It was a good 
thing to write doggedly and obstinately until he 
was desperate, and then snatch up the ruler and 
whirl it about the brown head-dress with the 
consciousness that he could have it off if he 
liked. It was a good thing to draw it back, 
and rub his nose very hard with it, if he thought 
Miss Sally was going to look up, and to recom- 
pense himself with more hardy flourishes when 
he found she was still absorbed. By these means 
Mr. Swiveller calmed the agitation of his feel- 
ings, until his applications to the ruler became 
less fierce and frequent, and he could even write 
as many as half-a-dozen consecutive lines with- 
out having recourse to it, — which was a great 
victory. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 33. 

S'WIVEIiLER — Dick — His apology for 
drunkeniiess. 
" Sit down," repeated his companion. 
Mr. Swiveller complied, and looking about 




Sickness of Dick Swiveller. 



461 



SWIVELLER 



461 



SWIVELLEB 



him with a propitiatory smile, observed that last 
week was a fine week for the ducks, and this 
week was a fine week for the dust ; he also ob- 
served that whilst standing by the post at the 
street corner, he had observed a pig with a straw 
in his mouth issuing out of the tobacco-shop, 
from which appearance he argued that another 
fine week for the ducks was approaching, and 
that rain would certainly ensue. He further- 
more took occasion to apologize for any negli- 
gence that might be perceptible in his dress, on 
the ground that last night he had had " the sun 
very strong in his eyes ; " by which expression 
he was understood to convey to his hearers in 
the most delicate manner possible, the informa- 
tion that he had been extremely drunk. 

" But what," said Mr. Swiveller with a sigh, 
" what is the odds so long as the fire of soul is 
kindled at the taper of conwiviality, and the 
wing of friendship never moults a feather ! 
What is the odds so long as the spirit is ex- 
panded by means of rosy wine, and the present 
moment is the least happiest of our existence !" 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 2. 

SWIVELLER— Dick— His sweetheart. 

" She's the sphynx of private life, is Sally B." 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 50. 

SWIVELLER— Sickness of Dick. 

Tossing to and fro upon his hot, uneasy bed ; 
tormented by a fierce thirst which nothing could 
appease ; unable to find, in any change of pos- 
ture, a moment's peace or ease ; and rambling, 
ever, through deserts of thought where there 
was no resting-place, no sight or sound sugges- 
tive of refreshment or repose, nothing but a dull 
eternal weariness, with no change but the rest- 
less shiftings of his miserable body, and the 
weary wandering of his mind, constant still to 
one ever-present anxiety — to a sense of some- 
thing left undone, of some fearful obstacle to be 
surmounted, of some carking care that would not 
be driven away, and which haunted the distem- 
pered brain, now in this form, now in that ; al- 
ways shadowy and dim, but recognizable for the 
same phantom in every shape it took ; darken- 
ing every vision like an evil conscience, and 
making slumber horrible — in these slow tor- 
tures of his dread disease, the unfortunate Rich- 
ard lay wasting and consuming inch by inch, 
until, at last, when he seemed to fight and strug- 
gle to rise up, and to be held down by devils, 
he sank into a deep sleep, and dreamed no 
more. 

He awoke. With a sensation of most bliss- 
ful rest, better than sleep itself, be began grad- 
ually to remember something of these sufferings, 
and to think what a long night it had been, and 
whether he had not been delirious twice or 
thrice. Happening, in the midst of these cogi- 
tations, to raise his hand, he was astonished to 
find how heavy it seemed, and yet how thin and 
light it really was. Still, he felt indifferent and 
happy ; and having no curiosity to pursue the 
subject, remained in the same waking slumber 
until his attention was attracted by a cough. 
This made him doubt whether he had locked 
his door last night, and feel a little surprised 
at having a companion in the room. Still, he 
lacked energy to follow up this train of thought ; 
and unconsciously fell, in a luxury of repose, to 
staring at some green stripes on the bed-furni- 



ture, and associating them strangely with patches 
of fresh turf, while the yellow ground between 
made gravel-walks, and so helped out a long 
perspective of trim gardens. 

He was rambling in imagination on these ter- 
races, and had quite lost himself among them, 
indeed, when he heard the cough once more. 
The walls shrunk into stripes again at the sound, 
and raising himself a little in the bed, and hold- 
ing the curtain open with one hand, he looked 
out. 

The same room certainly, and still by candle- 
light ; but with what unbounded astonishment 
did he see all those bottles, and basins, and arti- 
cles of linen airing by the fire, and such-like 
furniture of a sick chamber — all very clean and 
neat, but all quite different from anything he 
left there, when he went to bed ! The atmos- 
phere, too. filled with the cool smell of herbs and 
vinegar ; the floor newly sprinkled ; the — the 
what ? The Marchioness? 

Yes ; playing cribbage with herself at the 
table. There she sat, intent upon her gan>e, 
coughing now and then in a subdued manner, 
as if she feared to disturb him — shuffling the 
cards, cutting, dealing, playing, counting, peg- 
ging — going through all the mysteries of crib- 
bage as if she had been in full practice from her 
cradle. 

Mr. Swiveller contemplated these things for 
a short time, and suffering the curtain to fall in- 
to its former position, laid his head on the pil- 
low again. 

" I'm dreaming," thought Richard, " that's 
clear. When I went to bed, my hands were 
not made of egg-shells, and now I can almost 
see through 'em. If this is not a dream, I have 
woke up, by mistake, in an Arabian Night, in- 
stead of a London one. But I have no doubt 
I'm asleep. Not the least." 

Here the small servant had another cough. 

"Very remarkable !" thought Mr. Swiveller. 
" I never dreamt such a real cough as that, 
before. I don't know, indeed, that I ever dreamt 
either a cough or a sneeze. Perhaps it's part 
of the philosophy of dreams that one never 
does. There's another — and another. I say ! 
— I'm dreaming rather fast ! " 

For the purpose of testing his real condition, 
Mr. Swiveller, after some reflection, pinched 
hims(;lf in the arm. 

" Queerer still ! " he thought. " I came to 
bed rather plump than otherwise, and now 
there's nothing to lay hold of. I'll take another 
survey." 

The result of this additional inspection was, 
to convince Mr. Swiveller that the objects by 
which he was surrounded were real, and that he 
saw them, beyond all question, with his waking 
eyes. 

" It's an Arabian Night ; that's what it is," 
said Richard. " I'm in Damascus or Grand 
Cairo. The Marchioness is a Genie, and hav- 
ing had a wager with another Genie about who 
is the handsomest young man alive, and the 
worthiest to be the husband of the Princess of 
China, has brought me away, room and all, to 
compare us together. Perhaps," said Mr. 
Swiveller, turning languidly round on his pillow, 
and looking on that side of his bed which was 
next the wall, " the Princess may be still— No, 
she's gone." 

Not feeling quite satisfied with this explana- 



SwivEIiliEB 



463 



SWlVJbJLLER 



tion, as, even taking it to be the correct one, it 
still involved a little mystery and doubt, Mr. 
Swiveller raised the curtain again, determined 
to take the first favorable opportunity of ad- 
dressing his companion. An occasion soon 
presented itself. The Marchioness dealt, turn- 
ed up a knave, and omitted to take the usual 
advantage : upon which Mr. Swiveller called 
out as loud as he could — " Two for his 
heels!" 

The Marchioness jumped up quickly, and 
clapped her hands. " Arabian Night, certain- 
ly," thought Mr. Swiveller ; " they always clap 
their hands instead of ringing the bell. Now 
for the two thousand black slaves, with jars of 
jewels on their heads ! " 

It appeared, however, that she had only 
clapped her hands for joy ; as, directly after- 
wards she began to laugh, and then to cry ; 
declaring, not in choice Arabic but in familiar 
English, that she was " so glad, she didn't 
know what to do." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 64. 

S w 1 V EliliER— The ]\![arcliioness as his 
nurse. 

Mr. Swiveller was silent for a long while. 
By-and-bye, he began to talk again, inquiring 
how long he had been there. 

" Three weeks to-morrow," replied the small 
servant. 

" Three what ? " said Dick. 

" Weeks," returned the Marchioness emphati- 
cally, " three long, slow weeks." 

The bare thought of having been in such ex- 
tremity caused Richard to fall into another si- 
lence, and to lie flat down again, at his full 
length. The Marchioness, having arranged the 
bed-clothes more comfortably, and felt that his 
hands and forehead were quite cool — a discovery 
that filled her with delight — cried a little more, 
and then applied herself to getting tea ready, 
and making some thin dry toast. 

While she was thus engaged, Mr. Swiveller 
looked on with a grateful heart, very much as- 
tonished to see how thoroughly at home she 
made herself, and attributing this attention, in 
its origin, to Sally Brass, whom, in his own 
mind, he could not thank enough. When the 
Marchioness had finished her toasting, she 
spread a clean cloth on a tray, and brought him 
some crisp slices and a great basin of weak tea, 
with which (she said) the doctor had left word 
he might refresh himself when he awoke. She 
propped him up with pillows, if not as skillfully 
as if she had been a professional nurse all her 
life, at least as tenderly ; and looked on with 
unutterable satisfaction while the patient — stop- 
ping every now and then to shake her by the 
hand— took his poor meal with an appetite and 
relish, which the greatest dainties of the earth, 
under any other circumstances, would have 
failed to provoke. Having cleared away, and 
disposed everything comfortably about him 
again, she sat down at the table to take her own 
tea. 

" Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, " how's 
Sally?" 

The small servant screwed her face into an 
expression of the very uttermost entanglement 
of slyness, and shook her head. 

*' What, haven't you seen her lately ? " said 
Dick. 



" Seen her ! " cried the small servant. " Bless 
you, I've run away ! " 

Mr. Swiveller immediately laid himself down 
again quite flat, and so remained for about five 
minutes. By slow degrees he resumed his sit- 
ting posture after that lapse of time, and in- 
quired : 

" And where do you live. Marchioness ? " 

" Live ! " cried the small servant. " Here ! " 

" Oh ! " said Mr. Swiveller. 

And with that he fell down flat again, as sud- 
denly as if he had been shot. Thus he remained, 
motionless and bereft of speech, until she had 
finished her meal, put everything in its place, 
and swept the hearth ; when he motioned her to 
bring a chair to the bedside, and being propped 
up again, opened a farther conversation. 

" And so," said Dick, "you have run away ? " 

" Yes," said the Marchioness, " and they've 
been a tizing of me." 

"Been — I beg your pardon," said Dick — 
" what have they been doing ? " 

•' Been a tizing of me — tizing you know — in 
the newspapers," rejoined the Marchioness. 

"Aye, aye," said Dick, "advertising? " 

The small servant nodded and winked. Her 
eyes were so red with waking and crying, that 
the Tragic Muse might have winked with 
greater consistency. And so Dick felt. 

" Tell me," said he, " how it was that you 
thought of coming here." 

" Why, you see," returned the Marchioness, 
" when you was gone, I hadn't any friend at all, 
because the lodger he never come back, and I 
didn't know where either him or you was to be 
found, you know. But one morning, when I 
was — " 

"Was near a keyhole," suggested Mr. Swivel- 
ler, observing that she faltered. 

" Well then," said the small servant, nodding ; 
" when I was near the oflSce keyhole — as you 
see me through, you know — I heard somebody 
saying that she lived here, and was the lady 
whose house you lodged at, and that you was 
took very bad, and wouldn't nobody come and 
take care of you. Mr. Brass, he says, * It's no 
business of mine,' he says ; and Miss Sally, she 
says, ' He's a funny chap, but it's no business 
of mine ; * and the lady went away, and slammed 
the door to, when she went out, I can tell you. 
So I run away that night, and come here, and 
told 'em you was my brother, and they believed 
me, and I've been here ever since." 

***** 

" Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, plucking 
off his nightcap and flinging it to the other end 
of the room ; " if you'll do me the favor to re- 
tire for a few minutes and see what sort of a 
night it is, Fll get up." 

" You mustn't think of such a thing," cried 
his nurse. 

" I must indeed," said the patient, looking 
round the room. " Whereabouts are my 
clothes ? " 

" Oh, I'm so glad — you haven't got any," re- 
plied the Marchioness. 

" Ma'am !" said Mr. Swiveller, in great aston- 
ishment. 

" I've been obliged to sell them, eveiy one, to 
get the things that was ordered for you. But 
don't take on about that," urged the Marchion- 
ess, as Dick fell back upon his pillow. " You're 
too weak to stand, indeed." 



SWIVELLER 



463 



SWIVELLER 



" I suppose," said Dick, as she closed the door 
slowly, and peeped into the room again, to make 
sure that he was comfortable, " I suppose there's 
nothing left — not so much as a waistcoat even ? " 

" No, nothing." 

'* It's embarrassing," said Mr. Swiveller, " in 
case of fire — even an umbrella would be some- 
thing — but you did quite right, dear Marchion- 
ess, I should have died without you ! " 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 64. 

SWIVELLER— The observations of Dick. 

Emboldened, as it seemed, to enter into a 
more general conversation, Mr. Swiveller plainly 
laid himself out to captivate our attention. 

He began by remarking that soda-water, 
though a good thing in the abstract, was apt to 
lie cold upon the stomach unless qualified with 
ginger, or a small infusion of brandy, which lat- 
ter article he held to be preferable in all cases, 
saving for the one consideration of expense. 
Nobody venturing to dispute these positions, he 
proceeded to observe that the human hair was 
a great retainer of tobacco-smoke, and that the 
young gentlemen of Westminster and Eton, 
after eating vast quantities of apples to conceal 
any scent of cigars from their anxious friends, 
were usually detected in consequence of their 
heads possessing this remarkable property ; 
whence he concluded that if the Royal Society 
would turn their attention to the circumstance, 
and endeavor to find, in the resources of science, 
a means of preventing such untoward revela- 
tions, they might indeed be looked upon as 
benefactors to mankind. These opinions being 
equally incontrovertible with those he had al- 
ready pronounced, he went on to inform us that 
Jamaica rum, though unquestionably an agreea- 
ble spirit of great richness and flavor, had the 
drawback of remaining constantly present to 
the taste next day ; and nobody being venturous 
enough to argue this point either, he increased 
in confidence and became yet more companion- 
able and communicative. 

" Its a devil of a thing, gentlemen," said Mr. 
Swiveller, " when relations fall out and disagree. 
If the wing of friendship should never moult a 
feather, the wing of relationship should never 
be clipped, but be always expanded and serene. 
Why should a grandson and grandfather peg 
away at each other with mutual wiolence when 
all might be bliss and concord? Why not jine 
hands and forget it ? " 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 2. 



"I say" — quoth Miss Brass, abruptly break- 
ing silence, " you haven't seen a silver pencil- 
case this morning, have you ? " 

" I didn't meet many in the street," rejoined 
Mr. Swiveller. " I saw one — a stout pencil-case 
of respectable appearance — but as he was in 
company with an elderly penknife and a young 
toothpick, with whom he was in earnest conver- 
sation, I felt a delicacy in speaking to him." 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 58. 

SWIVELLER— Dick, soliloquises on his 
destiny. 
"So I'm Brass's clerk, am I?" said Dick. 
'• Brass's clerk, eh ! And the clerk of Brass's 
sister — clerk to a female Dragon. Very good, 
very good ! What shall I be next ? Shall I be 
a convict in a felt hat and a gray suit, trotting 



about a dockyard with my number neatly em- 
broidered on my uniform, and the order of the 
garter on my leg, restrained from chafing my 
ankle by a twisted belcher handkerchief? Shall 
I be that? Will that do, or is it too genteel? 
Whatever you please, have it your own way, of 
course." 

As he was entirely alone, it may be presumed 
that, in these remarks, Mr. Swiveller addressed 
himself to his fate or destiny, whom, as we learn 
by the precedents, it is the custom of heroes to 
taunt in a very bitter and ironical manner when 
they find themselves in situations of an unpleas- 
ant nature. This is the more probable from the 
circumstance of Mr. Swiveller directing his ob- 
servations to the ceiling, which these bodily per- 
sonages are usually supposed to inhabit — except 
in theatrical cases, when they live in the heart 
of the great chandelier. 

" Quilp offers me this place, which he says he 
can insure me," resumed Dick, after a thought- 
ful silence, and telling off the circumstances of 
his position, one by one, upon his fingers ; 
" Fred, who, I could have taken my affidavit, 
would not have heard of such a thing, backs 
Quilp, to my astonishment, and urges me to 
take it also — staggerer, number one ! My aunt 
in the country stops the supplies, and writes an 
affectionate note to say that she has made a new 
will, and left me out of it — staggerer, number 
two. No money ; no credit ; no support from 
Fred, who seems to turn steady all at once ; 
notice to quit the old lodgings — staggerers, three, 
four, five, and six ! Under an accumulation of 
staggerers, no man can be considered a free 
agent. No man knocks himself down ; if his 
destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick 
him up again. Then I'm very glad that mine 
has brought all this upon itself, and I shall be 
as careless as I can, and make myself quite at 
home to spite it. So go on, my buck," said Mr. 
Swiveller, taking his leave of the ceiling with a 
significant nod, " and let us see which of us 
will be tired first ? " 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 34. 

SWIVELLER— Dick— On extra sleep. 

" Have^(?M been making that horrible noise ? " 
said the single gentleman. 

"I have been helping, sir," returned Dick, 
keeping his eye upon him, and waving the ruler 
gently in his right hand, as an indication of 
what the single gentleman had to expect if he 
attempted any violence. 

" How dare you, then," said the lodger, 
"Eh?" 

To this, Dick made no other reply than by 
inquiring whether the lodger held it to be con- 
sistent with the conduct and character of a 
gentleman, to go to sleep for six-and-twenty 
hours at a stretch, and whether the peace of an 
amiable and virtuous family was to weigh as 
nothing in the balance ? 

" Is my peace nothing ? " said the single gen- 
tleman. 

" Is their peace nothing, sir? " returned Dick. 
"I don't wish to hold out any threats, sir — 
indeed, the law does not allow of threats, for to 
threaten is an indictable offence— but if ever 
you do that again, take care you are not set upon 
by the coroner and buried in a cross-road before 
you wake. We have been distracted with fears 
that you were dead, sir," said Dick, gently slid 



SWIVELLEB 



464 



SWIVELLER 



ing to the ground, " and the short and the long 
of it is, that we cannot allow single gentlemen 
to come into this establishment and sleep like 
double gentlemen without paying extra for it? " 

" Indeed ! " cried the lodger. 

" Yes sir, indeed," returned Dick, yielding to 
his destiny and saying whatever came upper- 
most ; " an equal quantity of slumber was never 
got out of one bed and bedstead, and if you're 
going to sleep in that way, you must pay for a 
double-bedded room." 

Instead of being thrown into a greater pas- 
sion by these remarks, the lodger lapsed into a 
broad grin and looked at Mr. Swiveller with 
twinkling eyes. He was a brown-faced, sun- 
burnt man, and appeared browner and more 
sun-burnt from having a white night-cap on. 
As it was clear that he was a choleric fellow in 
some respects, Mr. Swiveller was relieved- to find 
him in such good humor, and to encourage him 
in it, smiled himself. 

" Can you drink anything ? " was his next in- 
quiry. 

Mr, Swiveller replied that he had very recently 
been assuaging the pangs of thirst, but that he 
was still open to " a modest quencher," if the 
materials were at hand. Without another word 
spoken on either side, the lodger took from his 
great trunk a kind of temple, shining as of pol- 
ished silver, and placed it carefully on the 
tahle.— Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 35. 

SWIVELIiER— Dick and the Marchioness. 

One cii-cumstance troubled Mr. Swiveller's 
mind very much, and that was that the small 
servant always remained somewhere in the bow- 
els of the earth under Bevis Marks, and never 
came to the surface unless the single gentleman 
rang his bell, when she would answer it and 
immediately disappear again. She never went 
out, or came into the office, or had a clean face, 
or took off the coarse apron, or looked out of 
any one of the windows, or stood at the street 
door for a breath of air, or had any rest or enjoy- 
ment whatever. Nobody ever came to ^ee her, 
nobody spoke of her, nobody cared about her. 
Mr. Brass had said once, that he believed she 
was a " love-child " (which means anything but 
a child of love), and that was all the information 
Richard Swiveller could obtain. 

***** 

" Now," said Dick, walking up and down with 
his hands in his pockets, " I'd give something — 
if I had it — to know how they use that child, 
and where they keep her. My mother must 
have been a very inquisitive woman ; I have no 
doubt I'm marked with a note of interrogation 
somewhere. My feelings I smother, but thou 
hast been the cause of this anguish my — upon 
my word," said Mr. Swiveller, checking himself 
and falling thoughtfully into the client's chair, 
*' I should like to know how they use her ! " 

After running on, in this way, for some time, 
Mr, Swiveller softly opened the office door, with 
the intention of darting across the street for a 
glass of the mild porter. At that moment he 
caught a parting glimpse of the brown head- 
dress of Miss Brass flitting down the kitchen 
stairs. " And by Jove ! " thought Dick, " she's 
going to feed the small servant. Now or never ! " 

First peeping over the hand-rail and allowing 
the head-dress to disappear in the darki^ess be- 
low, he groped his way down, and arrived at the 



door of a back kitchen immediately after Miss 
Brass had entered the same, bearing in her hand 
a cold leg of mutton. It was a very dark, mis- 
erable place, very low and very damp : the walls 
disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches. 
The water was trickling out of a leaky butt, and 
a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops 
with the sickly eagerness of starvation. The 
grate, which was a wide one, was wound and 
screwed up tight, so as to hold no more than a 
little thin sandwich of fire. Everything was 
locked up ; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the 
salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked. 
There was nothing that a beetle could have 
lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect 
of the place would have killed a chameleon : he 
would have known, at the first mouthful, that 
the air was not eatable, and must have given up 
the ghost in despair. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 36. 

While these acts and deeds were in progress 
in and out of the office of Sampson Brass Rich- 
ard Swiveller, being often left alone therein, be- 
gan to find the time hang heavy on his hands. 
For the better preservation of his cheerfulness, 
therefore, and to prevent his faculties from rust- 
ing, he provided himself with a cribbage-board 
and pack of cards, and accustomed himself to 
play at cribbage with a dummy, for twenty, thir- 
ty, or sometimes even fifty thousand pounds a 
side, besides many hazardous bets to a consid- 
erable amount. 

As these games were very silently conducted, 
notwithstanding the magnitude of the interests 
involved, Mr. Swiveller began to think that on 
those evenings when Mr, and Miss Brass were 
out (and they often went out now) he heard a 
kind of snorting or hard-breathing sound in the 
direction of the door, which, it occurred to him, 
after some reflection, must proceed from the 
small servant, who always had a cold from damp 
living. Looking intently that way one night, 
he plainly distinguished an eye gleaming and 
glistening at the keyhole ; and having now no 
doubt that his suspicions were correct, he stole 
softly to the door, and pounced upon her before 
she was aware of his approach. 

" Oh ! I didn't mean any harm indeed, upon 
my word I didn't," cried the small servant, 
struggling like a much larger one. " Its so very 
dull, down-stairs. Please don't tell upon me, 
please don't." 

" Tell upon you ! " said Dick. " Do you 
mean to say you were looking through the key- 
hole for company ? " 

" Yes, upon my word I was," replied the small 
servant. 

" How long have you been cooling your eye 
there?" said Dick. 

"Oh, ever since you first began to play them 
cards, and long before," 

" Well, — come in," — ^he said, after a little con- 
sideration. " Here, sit down, and I'll teach you 
how to play." 

" Oh ! I durstn't do it," rejoined the small 
servant ; " Miss Sally 'ud kill me, if she know'd 
I come up here." 

'• Have you got a fire down-stairs ? " said 
Dick. 

" A very little one," replied the small servant. 

" Miss Sally couldn't kill me if she know'd I 
went down there, so I'll come," said Richard, 




Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness. 



465 



SWIVEUliBB 



465 



SWIVELI4ER 



putting the cards in his pocket. *' Why, how 
thin you are I What do you mean by it ? " 

" It an't my fault." 

" Could you eat any bread and meat ? " said 
Dick, taking down his hat. " Yes ? Ah ! I thought 
so. Did you ever taste beer ? " 

" I had a sip of it once," said the small ser- 
vant. 

" Here's a state of things ! " cried Mr. Swiv- 
eller, raising his eyes to the ceiling, " She never 
tasted it — it can't be tasted in a sip ! Why, how 
old are you ? " 

" I don't know." 

Mr. Swiveller opened his eyes very wide, and 
appeared thoughtful for a moment ; then, bid- 
ding the child mind the door until he came back, 
vanished straightway. 

Presently he returned, followed by the boy 
from the public-house, who bore in one hand a 
plate of bread and beef, and in the other a great 
pot, filled with some very fragrant compound, 
which sent forth a grateful steam, and was in- 
deed choice purl, made after a particular recipe 
which Mr. Swiveller had imparted to the land- 
lord, at a period when he was deep in his books 
and desirous to conciliate his friendship. Re- 
lieving the boy of his burden at the door, and 
charging his little companion to fasten it to pre- 
vent surprise, Mr. Swiveller followed her into 
the kitchen. 

" There ! " said Richard, putting the plate 
before her. " First of all clear that off, and then 
you'll see what's next." 

The small servant needed no second bidding, 
and the plate was soon empty. 

*• Next," said Dick, handing the purl, " take 
a pull at that ; but moderate your transports, 
you know, for you're not used to it. Well, is it 
good ? " 

" Oh ! isn't it ? " said the small servant. 

Mr. Swiveller appeared gratified beyond all 
expression by this reply, and took a long draught 
himself; steadfastly regarding his companion 
while he did so. These preliminaries disposed 
of, he applied himself to teaching her the game, 
which she soon learnt tolerably well, being both 
sharp-witted and cunning. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 57. 

SWrVELIiER— Dick and the Marchioness. 

Mr. Swiveller and his partner played several 
rubbers with varying success, until the loss of 
three sixpences, the gradual sinking of the purl, 
and the striking of ten o'clock, combined to 
render that gentleman mindful of the flight of 
time, and the expediency of withdrawing before 
Mr. Sampson and Miss Sally Brass returned. 

" With which object in view, Marchioness," 
said Mr. Swiveller gravely, "I shall ask your 
ladyship's permission to put the board in my 
pocket, and to retire from the presence when I 
nave finished this tankard ; merely observing. 
Marchioness, that since life, like a river, is flow- 
ing, I care not how fast it rolls on, ma'am, on, 
while such purl on the bank still is growing, and 
such eyes light the waves as they run. Mar- 
chioness, your health. You will excuse my wear- 
ing my hat, but the palace is damp, and the 
marble floor is — if I may be allowed the expres- 
sion — sloppy." 

As a precaution against this latter inconve- 
nience, Mr. Swiveller had been sitting for some 
time with his feet on the hob, in which attitude 



he now gave utterance to these apologetic obser- 
vations, and slowly sipped the last choice drops 
of nectar. 

" The Baron Sampsono Brasso and his fair 
sister are (you tell me) at the Play ? " said Mr. 
Swiveller, leaning his left arm heavily upon the 
table, and raising his voice and his right leg 
after the manner of a theatrical bandit. 

The Marchioness nodded. 

"Ha!" said Mr. Swiveller, with a porten- 
tous frown. " 'Tis well. Marchioness ! — but no 
matter. Some wine there. Ho ! " He illus- 
trated these melo-dramatic morsels, by handing 
the tankard to himself with great humility, re- 
ceiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily, 
and smacking his lips fiercely. 

The small servant, who was not so well ac- 
quainted with theatrical conventionalities as Mr. 
Swiveller (having indeed never seen a play, or 
heard one spoken of, except by chance through 
chinks of doors and in other forbidden places), 
was rather alarmed by demonstrations so novel 
in their nature, and showed her concern so plain- 
ly in her looks, that Mr. Swiveller felt it neces- 
sary to discharge his brigand manner, for one 
more suitable to private life, as he asked, 

'* Do they often go where glory waits 'em, and 
leave you here ? " 

" Oh, yes : I believe you they do," returned 
the small servant. " Miss Sally's such a one-er 
for that, she is." 

"Such a what ? " said Dick. 

" Such a one-er," returned the Marchioness. 

After a moment's reflection, Mr. Swiveller de- 
termined to forego his responsible duty of set- 
ting her right, and to suffer her to talk on ; as it 
was evident that her tongue was loosened by the 
purl, and her opportunities for conversation were 
not so frequent as to render a momentary check 
of little consequence. 

" They sometimes go to see Mr. Quilp," said 
the small servant with a shrewd look ; " they go 
to a many places, bless you ! " 

" Is Mr. Brass a wunner ? " said Dick. 

" Not half what Miss Sally is, he isn't," re- 
plied the small servant, shaking her head. 
" Bless you, he'd never do anything without 
her." 

" Oh ! He wouldn't, wouldn't he ? " said 
Dick. 

" Miss Sally keeps him in such order," said 
the small servant ; " he always asks her advice, 
he does ; and he catches it sometimes. Bless 
you, you wouldn't believe how much he catches 
it." 

" I suppose," said Dick, " that they consult 
together, a good deal, and talk about a great 
many people — about me, for instance, some- 
times, eh. Marchioness?" 

The Marchioness nodded amazingly. 

" Complimentary ? " said Mr. Swiveller. 

The Marchioness changed the motion of her 
head, which had not yet left off nodding, and 
suddenly began to shake it from side to side, 
with a vehemence which threatened to dislo- 
cate her neck. 

" Humph ; " Dick muttered. " Would it be 
any breach of confidence, Marchioness, to re- 
late what they say of the humble individual 
who has now the honor to — ?" 

" Miss Sally says you're a funny chap," replied 
his friend. 

"Well, Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, 



SUBJECTS 



466 



STJBTTRB 



" that's not uncomplimentary. Merriment, 
Marchioness, is not a bad or a degrading qual- 
ity. Old King Cole was himself a merry old 
soul, if we may put any faith in the pages of 
history." 

" But she says," pursued his companion, 
" that you an't to be trusted." 

" Why, really, Marchioness," said Mr. Swivel- 
ler, thoughtfully ; " several ladies and gentle- 
men — not exactly professional persons, but 
tradespeople, ma'am, tradespeople — have made 
the same remark. The obscure citizen who 
keeps the hotel over the way, inclined strongly 
to that opinion to-night when I ordered him to 
prepare the banquet. It's a popular prejudice. 
Marchioness ; and yet I am sure T don't know 
why, for I have been trusted in my time to a 
considerable amount, and I can safely say that I 
never forsook my trust until it deserted me — 
never. Mr. Brass is of the same opinion, I sup- 
pose ? " 

His friend nodded again, with a cunning 
look which seemed to hint that Mr. Brass held 
stronger opinions on the subject than his sister ; 
and seeming to recollect herself, added implor- 
ingly, " But don't you ever tell upon me, or I 
shall be beat to death." 

" Marchioness," said Mr. Swiveller, rising, 
*' the word of a gentleman is as good as his 
bond — sometimes better, as in the present case, 
where his bond might prove but a doubtful sort 
of security. I am your friend, and I hope we 
shall play many more rubbers together in this 
same saloon. But, Marchioness," added Rich- 
ard, stopping in his way to the door, and wheel- 
ing slowly i-ound upon the small servant, who 
was following with the candle; "it occurs to 
me that you must be in the constant habit of 
airing your eye at keyholes, to know all this." 

" I only wanted," replied the trembling Mar- 
chioness, " to know where the key of the safe 
was hid ; that was all ; and I wouldn't have 
taken much, if I had found it — only enough to 
squench my hunger." 

" You didn't find it, then ? " said Dick. " But 
of course you didn't, or you'd be' plumper. 
Good night, Marchioness. Fare thee well — and 
if for ever, then for ever, fare thee well — and 
put up the chain, Marchioness, in case of acci- 
dents." — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 58, 

SUBJECTS— For sermons. 

He considered the subject of the day's homily 
ill chosen ; which was the less excusable, he 
added, when there were so many subjects 
" going about." 

" True again," said Uncle Pumblechook, 
"You've hit it, sir! Plenty of subjects going 
about, for them that know how to put salt upon 
their tails. That's what's wanted. A man 
needn't go far to find a subject if he's ready 
with his salt box." — Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

SUBLIME INTELLIQENCE— The power 
of. 

Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling fig- 
ure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure 
water in the village well — thousands of acres of 
land — a whole province of France — all France 
itself — lay under the night sky, concentrated in- 
to a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole 
world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, 
tie in a twinkling star. And as mere human 



knowledge can split a ray of light and analyze 
the manner of its composition, so, sublimer in- 
telligences may read in the feeble shining of this 
earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice 
and virtue, of every responsible creature on it. 
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 16. 

SUBPCENA— Sam Weller receives. 

" Samuel Weller? " said Mr. Jackson, inquir- 
ingly. 

" Vun o* the truest things as you've said for 
many a long year," replied Sam, in a most com- 
posed manner. 

" Here's a subpoena for you, Mr. Weller," said 
Jackson. 

" What's that, in English ? " inquired Sam. 

" Here's the original," said Jackson, declining 
the required explanation. 

" Which ? " said Sam. 

" This," replied Jackson, shaking the parch- 
ment. 

" Oh, that's the 'rig'nal, is it," said Sam. 
" Well, I'm wery glad I've seen the 'rig'nal, 'cos 
it's a gratifyin' sort o' thing, and eases vun's 
mind so much." 

" And here's the shilling," said Jackson "Its 
from Dodson and Fogg's." 

" And it's uncommon handsome o' Dodson 
and Foggs, as knows so little of me, to come 
down vith a present," said Sam. " I feel it as 
a wery high compliment, sir ; its a wery hon'ra- 
ble thing to them, as they knows how to reward 
merit werever they meets it. Besides wich, its 
affectin' to one's feelins." 

As Mr. Weller said this, he inflicted a little 
friction on his right eye-lid. with the sleeve of 
his coat, after the most approved manner of 
actors when they are in domestic pathetics. 

Pickwick, Chap. 31. 

SUBURB— A liondon. 

In the venerable suburb — it was a suburb 
once — of Clerk enwell, towards that part of its 
confines which is nearest to the Charter House, 
and in one of those cool, shady streets, of which 
a few, widely scattered and dispersed, yet remain 
in such old parts of the metropolis — each tene- 
ment quietly vegetating like an ancient citizen 
who long ago retired from business, and dozing 
on in its infirmity until in course of time it 
tumbles down, and is replaced by some extrava- 
gant young heir, flaunting in stucco and orna- 
mental work, and all the vanities of modern 
days — in this quarter, and in a street of this 
description, the business of the present chapter 
lies. 

At the time of which it treats, though only 
six-and-sixty years ago, a very large part of what 
is London now had no existence. Even in the 
brains of the wildest speculators, there had 
sprung up no long rows of streets connecting 
Highgate with Whitechapel, no assemblages of 
palaces in the swampy levels, nor little cities in 
the open fields. Although this part of town was 
then, as now, parcelled out in streets, and plen- 
tifully peopled, it wore a different aspect. There 
were gardens to many of the houses, and trees 
by the pavement side ; with an air of freshness 
breathing up and down, which in these days 
would be sought in vain. Fields were nigh at 
hand, through which the New River took its 
winding course, and where there was merry hay- 
making in the summer-time. Nature was not 



SUCCESS 



467 



SUMMER 



so far removed, or hard to get at, as in these 
days : and although there were busy trades in 
Clerkenwell, and working jewelers by scores, it 
was a purer place, with farm-houses nearer to 
it than many modern Londoners would readily 
believe, and lovers' walks at no great distance, 
which turned into squalid courts, long before 
the lovers of this age were born, or, as the 
phrase goes, thought of. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 4. 

SUCCESS— A crime. 

" If a man would commit an inexpiable 
offence against any society, large or small, let 
him be successful. They will forgive him any 
crime but that." — Nicholas Nickleby^ Chap. 30. 

SUCCESS— Constancy the secret of. 

" Look hopefully at the distance ! Rick, the 
world is before you ; and it is most probable 
that as you enter it, so it will receive you. Trust 
in nothing but in Providence and your own 
efforts. Never separate the two, like the hea- 
then wagoner. Constancy in love is a good 
thing ; but it means nothing, and is nothing, 
without constancy in every kind of effort. If 
you had the abilities of all the great men, past 
and present, you could do nothing well without 
sincerely meaning it, and setting about it. If 
you entertain the supposition that any real suc- 
cess, in great things or in small, ever was or 
could be, ever will or can be, wrested from For- 
tune by fits and starts, leave that wrong idea 
here, or leave your cousin Ada here." 

Bleak House, Chap. 13. 

SUICIDE— Excuse for. 

" Do you know," simpered Cleopatra, revers- 
ing the knave of clubs, who had come into her 
game with his heels uppermost, " that if anything 
could tempt me to put a period to my life, it 
would be curiosity to find out what it's all about 
and what it means ; there are so many provok- 
ing mysteries, really, that are hidden from us." 
Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 21. 

SUMMER- Cluiet, in London. 

But these are small oases, and I am soon back 
again in metropolitan Arcadia, It is my impres- 
sion that much of its serene and peaceful charac- 
ter is attributable to the absence of customary 
Talk. How do I know but there may be subtle 
influences in Talk to vex the souls of men who 
don't hear it ? How do I know but that Talk, 
five, ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air, 
and disagree with me? If I rise from my bed 
vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my 
life in the session of Parliament, who shall say 
that my noble friend, my right reverend friend, 
my right honorable friend, my honorable friend, 
my honorable and learned friend, or my honor- 
able and gallant friend, may not be responsible 
for that effect upon my nervous system ? Too 
much Ozone in the air, I am informed and fully 
believe (though I have no idea what it is), would 
affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way ; 
why may not too much Talk ? I don't see or hear 
the Ozone ; I don't see or hear the Talk. And 
there is so much Talk ; so much too much ; such 
loud cry, and such scant supply of wool ; such a 
deal of fleecing, and so little fleece I Hence, in the 
Arcadian season, I find it a delicious triumph 
to walk down to deserted Westminster and see 



the Courts shut up ; to walk a little farther and 
see the Two Houses shut up ; to stand in the 
Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the grand 
English History (concerning which unfortunate 
man a whole rookery of mares' nests is general- 
ly being discovered), and gloat upon the ruins 
of Talk. Returning to my primitive solitude, and 
lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands 
with the consciousness that there is no adjourned 
Debate, no ministerial explanation, nobody to 
give notice of intention to ask the noble Lord 
at the head of her Majesty's government five- 
and-twenty bootless questions in one, no term- 
time with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with 
eloquent appeal to British jury ; that the air will 
to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, re- 
main untroubled by this superbundant genera- 
ting of Talk. In a minor degree it is a delicious 
triumph to me to go into the club, and see the 
carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust 
dispersed to the four winds. Again, New Zea- 
lander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and say 
in the solitude : " Here I watched Bore A i, with 
voice always mysteriously low, and head always 
mysteriously drooped, whispering political se- 
crets into the ears of Adam's confiding children. 
Accursed be his memory forever and a day ! " 
* * H( « * 

I might stand, night and day, for a month to 
come, in Saville Row, with my tongue out, yet 
not find a doctor to look at it for love or money. 
The dentists' instruments are rusting in their 
drawers, and their horrible cool parlors, where 
people pretend to read the Every-Day Book and 
not to be afraid, are doing penance for their 
grimness, in white sheets. The light-weight of 
shrewd appearance, with one eye always shut 
up, as if he were eating a sharp gooseberry in 
all seasons, who usually stands at the gateway 
of the livery-stables on very little legs under a 
very large waistcoat, has gone to Doncaster. 
Of such undesigning aspect is his guileless yard 
now, with its gravel and scarlet beans, and the 
yellow Break housed under a glass roof in a 
corner, that I almost believe I could not be , 
taken in there, if I tried. In the places of busi- 
ness of the great tailors, the cheval glasses are 
dim and dusty for lack of being looked into. 
Ranges of brown paper coat and waistcoat bod- 
ies look as funereal as if they were the hatch- 
ments of the customers with whose names they 
are inscribed ; the measuring tapes hang idle 
on the wall ; the order-taker, left on the hope 
less chance of some one looking in, yawns in 
the last extremity over the book of patterns, as 
if he were trying to read that entertaining libra- 
ry. The hotels in Brook Street have no one in 
them, and the staffs of servants stare disconso- 
lately for next season out of all the windows. 
The very man who goes about like an erect 
Turtle between two boards recommendatory of 
the Sixteen Shilling Trousers, is aware of him- 
self as a hollow mockery, and eats filberts while 
he leans his hinder shell against a wall. 

Among these tranquillizing objects it is my 
delight to walk and meditate. Soothed by the 
repose around me, I wander insensibly to con- 
siderable distances, and guide myself back by 
the stars. Thus I enjoy the contrast of a few still 
partially inhabited and busy spots, where all the 
lights are not fled, j\'here all the garlands are not 
dead, whence all but I have not departed. Then 
does it appear to me that in this age three things 



SUMMER 



468 



SUMMER 



are clamorously required of Man in the miscella- 
neous thoroughfares of the metropolis. Firstly, 
that he have his boots cleaned. Secondly, that 
he eat a penny ice. Thirdly, that he get him- 
self photographed. Then do I speculate, what 
have those seam-worn artists been who stand 
at the photograph doors in Greek caps, sample 
in hand, and mysteriously salute the public — the 
female public with a pressing tenderness — to 
come in and be " took ? " What did they do 
with their greasy blandishments before the era of 
cheap photography ? Of what class were their 
previous victims, and how victimized? And 
how did they get, and how did they pay for, 
that large collection of likenesses, all purport- 
ing to have been taken inside, with the taking of 
none of which had that establishment any more 
to do than with the taking of Delhi ? 

A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquil- 
lity. Charming picture, but it will fade. The 
iron age will return, London will come back to 
town ; if I show my tongue then in Saville Row 
for half a minute, I shall be prescribed for ; the 
Doctor's man and the Dentist's man will then 
pretend that these days of unprofessional inno- 
cence never existed. Where Mr. and Mrs. 
Klem and their bed will be at that time passes 
human knowledge : but my hatter hermitage 
will then know them no more, nor will it then 
know me. The desk at which I have written 
these meditations will retributively assist at the 
making-out of my account, and the wheels of 
gorgeous carriages and the hoofs of high- 
stepping horses will crush the silence out of 
Bond Street — will grind Arcadia away, and 
give it to the elements in granite powder. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. i6. 

SUMMER. 

Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came. If 
the village had been beautiful at first, it was now 
in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. 
The great trees, which had looked shrunken and 
bare in the earlier months, had now burst into 
strong life and health ; and stretching forth 
their green arms over the thirsty ground, con- 
verted open and naked spots into choice nooks, 
where was a deep and pleasant shade from 
which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped 
in sunshine, which lay stretched beyond. The 
earth had donned her mantle of brightest green ; 
and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was 
the prime and vigor of the year ; all things were 
glad and flourishing. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 33. 

SUMMER— Augnst scenery. 

Ther^ is no month in the whole year, in which 
nature wears a more beautiful appearance than 
in the month of August. Spring has many beau- 
ties, and May is a fresh and blooming month, 
but the charms of this time of year are en- 
hanced by their contrast with the winter sea- 
son. August has no such advantage. It comes 
when we remenxber nothing but clear skies, 
green fields, and sweet-smelling flowers — when 
the recollection of snow, and ice, and bleak 
winds, has faded from our minds as completely 
as they have disappeared from the earth, — and 
yet what a pleasant time it is ! Orchards and 
corn-fields ring with the hum of labor ; trees 
bend beneath the thick clusters of rich fruit 
which bow their branches to the ground ; and 
the corn, piled in graceful sheaves, or waving 



in every light breath that sweeps above it, as if 
it wooed the sickle, tinges the landscape with a 
golden hue. A mellow softness appears to 
hang over the whole earth ; the influence of the 
season seems to extend itself to the very wagon, 
whose slow motion across the well-reaped field 
is perceptible only to the eye, but strikes with 
no harsh sound upon the ear. 

As the coach rolls swiftly past the fields and 
orchards which skirt the road, groups of women 
and children, piling the fruit in sieves, or gath- 
ering the scattered ears of com, pause for an 
instant from their labor, and shading the sun- 
burnt face with a still browner hand, gaze upon 
the passengers with curious eyes ; while some 
stout urchin, too small to work, but too.^-mis- 
chievous to be left at home, scrambles over the 
side of the basket in which he has been depos- 
ited for security, and kicks and screams with 
delight. The reaper stops in his work, and 
stands with folded arms, looking at the vehicle 
as it whirls past ; and the rough cart-horses be- 
stow a sleepy glance upon the smart coach team, 
which says, as plainly as a horse's glance can, 
" It's all very fine to look at, but slow going, 
over a heavy field, is better than warm work 
like that, upon a dusty road, after all." You 
cast a look behind you, as you turn a comer of 
the road. The women and children have re- 
sumed their labor : the reaper once more stoops 
to his work : the cart-horses have moved on : 
and all are again in motion. 

Pickwick, Chap. 16. 

SUMMER— A legal vacation. 

It is the hottest long vacation known for 
many years. All the young clerks are madly in 
love, and, according to their various degrees, 
pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Mar- 
gate, Ramsgate, or Gravesend. All the middle- 
aged clerks think their family too large. All 
the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of 
Court, and pant about staircases and other dry 
places, seeking water, give short howls of ag- 
gravation. All the blind men's dogs in the 
streets draw their masters against pumps, or 
trip them over buckets. A shop with a sun- 
blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of 
gold and silver fish in the window, is a sanc- 
tuary. Temple Bar gets so hot, that it is, to the 
adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater 
is in an urn, and keeps them simmering all 
night. 

There are offices about the Inns of Court in 
which a man might be cool, if any coolness were 
worth purchasing at such a price in dullness , 
but the little thoroughfares immediately out- 
side those retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. 
Krook's court, it is so hot that the people turn 
their houses inside out, and sit in chairs upon 

the pavement. 

***** 

Over all the legal neighborhood, there hangs, 
like some great veil of rust, or gigantic cobweb, 
the idleness and pensiveness of the long vaca- 
tion. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer, of Cook's 
Court, Cursitor Street, is sensible of the influ- 
ence ; not only in his mind as a sympathetic 
and contemplative man, but also in his business 
as a law-stationer aforesaid. He has more lei- 
sure for musing in Staple Inn and in the Rolls 
Yard, during the long vacation, than at other 
seasons ; and he says to the two 'prentices, what 



SUMMEK SCENEBT 



469 



SUNDAY 



a thing it is in such hot weather to think that 
you live in an island, with the sea a-rolling and 
a-bowling right round you. 

Bleak House y Chap. 19. 

SUMMER SCENERY, and sentiment. 

Plashwater Weir-Mill Lock looked tranquil 
and pretty on an evening in the summer-time. 
A soft air stirred the leaves of the fresh green 
trees, and passed like a smooth shadow over the 
river, and like a smoother shadow over the 
yielding grass. The voice of the falling water, 
like the voices of the sea and the wind, were as 
an outer memory to a contemplative listener ; 
but not particularly so to Mr. Riderhood, who 
sat on one of the blunt wooden levers of his 
lock-gates, dozing. Wine must be got into a 
butt by some agency before it can be drawn 
out ; and the wine of sentiment never having 
been got into Mr. Riderhood by any agency, 
nothing in nature tapped him. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV,y Chap, i. 

SUMMER VAC ATION-Of Courts. 

It is the long vacation in the regions of 
Chancery Lane. The good ships Law and 
Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron- 
fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means 
fast-sailing Clippers, are laid up in ordinary. 
The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ghostly 
clients imploring all whom they may encounter 
to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time 
being, Heaven knows where. The Courts are 
all shut up ; the public offices lie in a hot sleep ; 
Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude 
where nightingales might sing, and a tenderer 
class of suitors than is usually found there, 
walk. 

The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, 
and Lincoln's Inn even unto the Fields, are like 
tidal harbors at low water ; where stranded pro- 
ceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging 
on lop-sided stools that will not recover their 
perpendicular until the current of Term sets in, 
lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vaca- 
tioo. Outer doors of chambers are shut up by 
the score, messages and parcels are to be left at 
the Porter's Lodge by the bushel. A crop of 
grass would grow in the chinks of the stone 
pavement outside Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that 
the ticket-porters, who have nothing to do be- 
yond sitting in the shade there, with their white 
aprons over their heads to keep the flies off, 
grub it up and eat it thoughtfully. 

There is only one Judge in town. Even he 
only comes twice a-week to sit in chambers. If 
the country folks of those assize towns on his 
circuit could see him now ! No full-bottomed 
wig, no red petticoats, no fur, no javelin-men, 
no white wands. Merely a close-shaved gentle- 
man, in white trousers and a white hat, with 
sea-bronze on the judicial countenance, and a 
strip of bark peeled by the solar rays from the 
judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop 
as he comes along, and drinks iced ginger-beer ! 

The bar of England is scattered over the face 
of the earth. How England can get on through 
four long summer months without its bar — which 
is its acknowledged refuge in adversity, and its 
only legitimate triumph in prosperity — is beside 
the question ; assuredly that shield and buckler 
of Britannia are not in present wear. The 
learned gentleman who is always so tremen- 



dously indignant at the unprecedented outrage 
committed on the feelings of his client by the 
opposite party, that he never seems likely to re- 
cover it, is doing infinitely better than might be 
expected, in Switzerland. The learned gentle- 
man who does the withering business, and who 
blights all opponents with his gloomy sarcasm, 
is as merry as a grig at a French watering-place. 
The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint 
on the smallest provocation, has not shed a tear 
these six weeks. The very learned gentleman 
who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery 
coniplexion in pools and fountains of law, until 
he has become great in knotty arguments for 
term-time, when he poses the drowsy Bench 
with legal " chaff," inexplicable to the uniniti- 
ated and to most of the initiated too, is roam- 
ing, with a characteristic delight in aridity and 
dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed 
fragments of the same great Palladium are to 
be found on the canals of Venice, at the second 
cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, 
and sprinkled on the sea-sand all over the Eng- 
lish coast. Scarcely one is to be encountered in 
the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such 
a lonely member of the bar do flit across the 
waste, and come upon a prowling suitor who is 
unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his 
anxiety, they frighten one another, and retreat 
into opposite shades. — Bleak House, Chap. 19. 

SUMMER WEATHER. 

The summer weather in his bosom was re- 
flected in the breast of Nature. Through deep 
green vistas where the boughs arched over-head, 
and showed the sunlight flashing in the beautiful 
perspective ; through dewy fern, from which the 
startled hares leaped up, and fled at his approach ; 
by mantled pools, and fallen trees, and down in 
hollow places, rustling among last year's leaves, 
whose scent woke memory of the past, the pla- 
cid Pecksniff strolled. By meadow gates and 
hedges fragrant with wild roses ; and by thatch- 
ed-roofed cottages whose inmates humbly bowed 
before him as a man both good and wise ; the 
worthy Pecksniff walked in tranquil meditation. 
The bee passed onward, humming of the work 
he had to do ; the idle gnats, for ever going 
round and round in one contracting and ex- 
panding ring, yet always going on as fast as he, 
danced merrily before him ; the color of the 
long grass came and went, as if the light clouds 
made it timid as they floated through the dis- 
tant air. The birds, so many Pecksniff con- 
sciences, sang gaily upon every branch ; and 
Mr. Pecksniff paid his homage to the day by 
ruminating on his projects as he walked along. 
Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 30. 

SUNDAY— In London. 

Where are all the people who on busy work- 
ing-days pervade these scenes? The locomo- 
tive banker's clerk, who carries a black port- 
folio chained to him by a chain of steel,-— 
where is he? Does he go to bed with his 
chain on, — to church with his chain on, — or 
does he lay it by ? And if he lays it by, what 
becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained 
for a holiday? The waste-paper baskets of 
these closed counting-houses would let me into 
many hints of business matters if- 1 had the ex- 
ploration of them ; and what secrets of the 
heart should I discover on the '* pads" of the 



SUNDAYS 



470 



SUN 



young clerks, — the sheets of cartridge-paper 
and blotting-paper interposed between their 
writing and their desks ! Pads are taken into 
confidence on the tenderest occasions ; and 
oftentimes, when I have made a business visit, 
and have sent in my name from the outer 
office, have I had it forced on my discursive 
notice, that the officiating young gentleman has 
over and over again inscribed Amelia, in ink 
of various dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed, 
the pad may be regarded as the legitimate mod- 
ern successor of the old forest-tree, whereon 
these young knights (having no attainable for- 
est nearer than Epping) engraved the names 
of their mistresses. After all, it is a more sat- 
isfactory process than carving, and can be 
oftener repeated. So these courts in their 
Sunday rest are courts of Love Omnipotent 
(I rejoice to bethink myself), dry as they look. 
And here is Garraway's, bolted and shuttered 
hard and fast ! It is possible to imagine the 
man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in 
a hayfield ; it is possible to imagine his desk, 
like the desk of a clerk at church, without him, — 
but imagination is unable to pursue the men 
who wait at Garraway's all the week for the 
men who never come. When they are forcibly 
put out of Garraway's on Saturday night, — 
which they must be, for they never would go 
out of their own accord, — where do they van- 
ish until Monday morning ? On the first Sun- 
day that I ever stayed here, I expected to find 
them hovering about these lanes, like restless 
ghosts, and trying, to peep into Garraway's 
through chinks in the shutters, if not endeavor- 
ing to turn the lock of the door with false 
keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But the won- 
der is that they go clean away ! And, now I 
think of it, the wonder is that every working- 
day pervader of these scenes goes clean away. 
The man who sells the dogs' collars and the 
little toy coal-scuttles feels under as great an obli- 
gation to go afar off as Glyn and Co., or Smith, 
Payne, and Smith. There is an old monastery- 
crypt under Garraway's (I have been in it 
among the port wine), and perhaps Garraway's, 
taking pity on the mouldy men who wait in 
its public room all their lives, gives them cool 
house-room down there over Sundays ; but the 
catacombs of Paris would not be large enough 
to hold the rest of the missing. This charac- 
teristic of London City greatly helps its being 
the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of 
business, and greatly helps my Sunday sensation 
in it of being the Last Man. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 21. 

SUNDAYS-In cMldhood. 

" Heaven forgive me," said he, " and those 
who trained me. How I have hated this day ! " 

There was the dreary Sunday of his child- 
hood, when he sat with his hands before him, 
scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which 
commenced business with the poor child by ask- 
ing him in its title. Why he was going to Perdi- 
tion ? — a piece of curiosity that he really, in a 
frock and drawers, v/as not in a condition to sat- 
isfy — and which, for the further attraction of his 
infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other 
line with some such hiccupping reference as 
2 Ep. Thess. c. iii. v. 6 & 7. There was the 
sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when, like a mili- 
tary deserter, he was marched to chapel by a 



picquet of teachers three times a day, morally 
handcuffed to another boy ; and when he would 
willingly have bartered two meals of indigesti- 
ble sermon for another ounce or two of inferior 
mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh. There 
was the interminable Sunday of his nonage, when 
his mother, stern of face and unrelenting of 
heart, would sit all day behind a bible — bound, 
like her own construction of it, in the hardest, 
barest, and straightest boards, with one dinted 
ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain, 
and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges 
of the leaves — as if it, of all books ! were a fortifi- 
cation against sweetness of temper, natural affec- 
tion, and gentle intercourse. There was the re- 
sentful Sunday of a little later, when he sat 
glowering and glooming through the tardy 
length of the day, with a sullen sense of injury 
in his heart, and no more real knowledge of the 
beneficent history of the New Testament, than 
if he had been bred among idolaters. There was 
a legion of Sundays, all days of unserviceable 
bitterness and mortification, slowly passing be- 
fore him. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 3. 

SUNDAY-EVENINGK-In liOndon. 

It was Sunday evening in London, gloomy, 
close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all 
degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked 
and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and 
mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets, in a 
penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the 
people who were condemned to look at them 
out of windows, in dire despondency. In every 
thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down 
almost every turning, some doleful bell was 
throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were 
in the city and the dead-carts were going round. 
Everything was bolted and barred that could by 
possibility furnish relief to an overworked peo- 
ple. No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare 
plants or flowers, no natural or artificial won- 
ders of the ancient world — all taboo with that 
enlightened strictness that the ugly South Sea 
gods in the British Museum might have sup- 
posed themselves at home again. Nothing to 
see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to 
breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to 
change the brooding mind, or raise it up. No- 
thing for the spent toiler to do, but to compare 
the monotony of his seventh day with the mo- 
notony of his six days, think what a weary life he 
led, and make the best of it — or the worst, ac- 
cording to the probabilities. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., Chap. 3. 

SUN. 

" This brigand of a sun." 

Little Dorrit, Chap. i. 

SUN— A punctual servant. 

That punctual servant of all work, the sun, 
had just risen, and begun to strike a light on 
the morning of the thirteenth of May, one 
thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, when 
Mr. Samuel Pickwick burst like another sun 
from his slumbers, threw open his chamber win- 
dow, and looked out upon the world beneath. 
Goswell Street was at his feet, Goswell Street 
was on his right hand — as far as the eye could 
reach, Goswell Street extended on his left ; and 
the opposite side of Goswell Street was over 
the way. " Such," thought Mr. Pickwick, 



SUN 



471 



SUNSHINE 



*' are the narrow views of those philosophers 
who, content with examining the things that 
lie before them, look not to the truths which 
are hidden beyond. As well might I be con- 
tent to gaze on Goswell Street forever, without 
one effort to penetrate to the hidden countries 
which on every side surround it." And having 
given vent to this beautiful reflection, Mr. Pick- 
wick proceeded to put himself into his clothes, 
and his clothes into his portmanteau. 

Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

SUN— In tlie city. 

There was a tiny blink of sun peeping in 
from the great street round the corner, and the 
smoky sparrows hopped over it and back again, 
brightening as they passed : or bathed in it, like 
a stream, and became glorified sparrows, uncon- 
nected with chimneys. 

Dombey <5r* Son, Chap. ic^. 

SUN— Its influence on Bag-stock. 

" Sit down," said Cleopatra, listlessly waving 
her fan, " a long way off. Don't come too near 
me, for I am frightfully faint and sensitive this 
morning, and you smell of the Sun. You are 
absolutely tropical." 

" By George, Ma'am," said the Major, " the 
time has been when Joseph Bagstock has been 
grilled and blistered by the Sun ; the time was, 
when he was forced. Ma'am, into such full blow, 
by high hothouse heat in the West Indies, that 
he was known as the Flower. A man never 
heard of Bagstock, Ma'am, in those days ; he 
heard of the Flower — the Flower of Ours. The 
Flower may have faded, more or less. Ma'am," 
observed the Major, dropping into a much nearer 
chair than had been indicated by his cruel Di- 
vinity, " but it is a tough plant yet, and constant 
as the evergreen." — Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 26. 

SUNRISE— Ita associations. 

He turned to where the sun was rising, and 
beheld it, in its glory, as it broke upon the 
scene. 

So awful, so transcendent in its beauty, so 
divinely solemn. As he cast his faded eyes upon 
it, where it rose, tranquil and serene, unmoved 
by all the wrong and wickedness on which its 
beams had shone since the beginning of the 
world, who shall say that some weak sense of 
virtue upon Earth, and its reward in Heaven, 
did not manifest itself, even to him? If ever 
he remembered sister or brother with a touch of 
tenderness and remorse, who shall say it was 
not then? 

He needed some such touch then. Death 
was on him. He was marked off from the living 
world, and going down into his grave. 

Dombey <5r» Son, Chap. 55. 

SUN— A blazing* stunmer's. 

Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in 
the sun, one day. 

A blazing sun upon a fierce August day was 
no greater rarity in southern France then, than 
at any other time, before or since. Everything 
in Marseilles, and about Marseilles, had stared at 
the fervid sky, and been stared at in return, un- 
til a staring habit had become universal there. 
Strangers were stared out of countenance by star- 
ing white houses, staring white walls, staring 
white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring 



hills from which verdure was burnt away. The 
only things to be seen not fixedly staring and 
glaring were the vines, drooping under their load 
of grapes. These did occasionally wink a little, 
as the hot air barely moved their faint leaves. 

There was no wind to make a ripple on the 
foul water within the harbor, or on the beautiful 
sea without. The line of demarcation between 
the two colors, black and blue, showed the 
point which the pure sea would not pass ; but it 
lay as quiet as the abominable pool, with which 
it never mixed. Boats without awnings were 
too hot to touch ; ships blistered at their moor- 
ings ; the stones of quays had not cooled, night 
or day, for months. Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, 
Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, 
Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, 
descendants from all the builders of Babel, come 
to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike- 
taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too 
intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of pur- 
ple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire. 

The universal stare made the eyes ache. 
Towards the distant line of Italian coast, in- 
deed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of 
mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the 
sea ; but it softened nowhere else. Far away, 
the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the 
hill-side, stared from the hollow, stared from 
the interminable plain. Far away, the dusty 
vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the 
monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees 
without shade, drooped beneath the stare of 
earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy 
bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly to- 
wards the interior ; so did their recumbent dri- 
vers, when they were awake, which rarely hap- 
pened ; so did the exhausted laborers in the 
fields. Everything that lived or grew, was op- 
pressed by the glare ; except the lizard, passing 
swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, 
chirping his dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The 
very dust was scorched brown, and something 
quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself 
were panting. 

Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, were all 
closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant 
it but a chink or keyhole, and it shot in like a 
white-hot arrow. The churches were the freest 
from it. To come out of the twilight of pillars 
and arches — dreamily dotted with winking 
lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows, 
piously dozing, spitting, and begging — was to 
plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to 
the nearest strip of shade. So, with people 
lounging and lying wherever shade was, with 
but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, 
with occasional jangling of discordant church 
bells, and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, 
a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broil- 
ing in the sun one day. 

Little Dorrit, Book /., CIuip. i. 

SUNSHINE. 

The clear cold sunshine glances into the 
brittle woods, and approvingly beholds the 
sharp wind scattering the leaves and drying the 
moss. It glides over the park after the mov- 
ing shadows of the clouds, and chases them, 
and never catches them, all day. It looks in at 
the windows, and touches the ancestral por- 
traits with bars and patches of brightness, nev- 
er contemplated by the painters. Athwart tht 



SUNSET 



472 



SUSAN NIPPER 



picture of my Lady, over the great chimney- 
piece, it throws a broad bend-sinister of light, 
that strikes down crookedly into the hearth, 
and seems to rend it. 

Bleak HomCy Chap, 12. 

SUNSET— A STimmer. 

A tranquil summer sunset shone upon him as 
he approached the end of his walk, and passed 
through the meadows by the river-side. He 
had that sense of peace, and of being lightened 
of a weight of care, which country quiet awak- 
ens in the breasts of dwellers in towns. Every- 
thing within his view was lovely and placid. 
The rich foliage of the trees, the luxuriant 
grass diversified with wild flowers, the little 
green islands in the river, the beds of rushes, 
the water-lilies floating on the surface of the 
stream, the distant voices in boats, borne music- 
ally towards him on the ripple of the water and 
the evening air, were all expressive of rest. In 
the occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an oar, 
or twittering of a bird not yet at roost, or dis- 
tant barking of a dog, or lowing of a cow — in 
all such sounds there was the prevailing breath 
of rest, which seemed to encompass him in 
every scent that sweetened the fragrant air. 
The long lines of red and gold in the sky, and 
the glorious track of the descending sun, were 
all divinely calm. Upon the purple tree-tops 
far away, and on the green height near at 
hand, up which the shades were slowly creep- 
ing, there was an equal hush. Between the 
real landscape and its shadow in the water, 
there was no division ; both were so untroubled 
and clear, and, while so fraught with solemn 
mystery of life and death, so hopefully reas- 
suring to the gazer's soothed heart, because so 
tenderly and mercifully beautiful. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 28. 

SUNSET— In a Cathedral. 

" Dear me," said Mr. Grewgious, peeping in, 
"it's like looking down the throat of Old 
Time." 

Old Time heaved a mouldy sigh from tomb 
and arch and vault ; and gloomy shadows be- 
gan to deepen in corners ; and damps began 
to rise from green patches of stone ; and jewels, 
cast upon the pavement of the nave from stain- 
ed glass by the declining sun, began to perish. 
Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the 
steps surmounted loomingly by the fast-dark- 
ening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, 
and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a 
cracked, monotonous mutter, could at intervals 
be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the 
river, the green pastures, and the brown arable 
lands, the teeming hills and dales, were 
reddened by the sunset ; while the distant little 
windows in windmills and farm homesteads, 
shone, patches of bright, beaten gold. In the 
Cathedral, all became gray, murky, and sepul- 
chral, and the cracked, monotonous mutter 
went on like a dying voice, until the organ and 
the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea 
of music. Then the sea fell, and the dying 
voice made another feeble eff"ort, and then the 
sea rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the 
roof, and surged among the arches, and pierced 
the heights of the great tower ; and then the 
sea was dry, and all was still. 

Edwin Droody Chap. 9. 



SUNSET. 

The sun was getting low in the west, and, 
glancing out of a red mist, pierced with its rays 
opposite loop-holes and pieces of fret-work in 
the spires of city churches, as if with golden ar- 
rows that struck through and through them — 
and far away, athwart the river and its flat 
banks, it was gleaming like a path of fire — and 
out at sea it was irradiating sails of ships — and, 
looked towards, from quiet churchyards, upon 
hill-tops in the country, it was steeping distant 
prospects in a flush and glow that seemed to 
mingle earth and sky together in one glorious 
suffusion. — Dombey <5r* Son^ Chap. 49. 

SUNSET— Its effect on pictures. 

Through some of the fiery windows, beautiful 
from without, and set, at this sunset hour, not in 
dull gray stone but in a glorious house of gold, 
the light excluded at other windows pours in, 
rich, lavish, overflowing like the summer plenty 
in the land. Then do the frozen Dedlocks thaw. 
Strange movements come upon their features, 
as the shadows of leaves play there. A dense 
Justice in a corner is beguiled into a wink. A 
staring Baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple 
in his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony 
shepherdess there steals a fleck of light and 
warmth, that would have done it good a hun- 
dred years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, 
in high-heeled shoes, very like her — casting the 
shadow of that virgin event before her full two 
centuries — shoots out into a halo and becomes a 
saint. A maid of honor of the court of Charles 
the Second, with large round eyes (and other 
charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glow- 
ing water, and it ripples as it glows. 

But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now 
the floor is dusky, and shadow slowly mounts 
the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age 
and death. And now, upon my Lady's picture 
over the great chimney-piece, a weird shade 
falls from some old tree, that turns it pale, and 
flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a 
veil or hood, watching an opportunity to 
draw it over her. Higher and darker rises the 
shadow on the wall — now a red gloom on the 
ceiling — now the fire is out. 

Bleak House, Chap. 40. 

SUNSET— On the Mississippi. 

The decline of day here was very gorgeous, 
tingeing the firmament deeply with red and 
gold up to the very keystone of the arch 
above us. As the sun went down behind the 
bank, the slightest blades of grass upon it 
seemed to become as distinctly visible as the 
arteries in the skeleton of a leaf, and when, as 
it slowly sank, the red and golden bars upon 
the water grew dimmer and dimmer yet, as if 
they were sinking too, and all the glowing 
colors of departing day paled, inch by inch, 
before the sombre night, the scene became a 
thousand times more lonesome and more dreary 
than before, and all its influences darkened with 
the sky. — American Notes, Chap. 12. 

SUSAN NIPPER.— Her sayings. 

" Oh well, Miss Floy ! And won't your Pa 
be angry neither ! " cried a quick voice at the 
door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly 
girl of fourteen, with a little snub nose, and 
black eyes like jet beads. " When it was *tick-_ 



SUSAN NIPPEB 



473 



SUSAN NIPPER 



erlerly given out that yo\i wasn't to go and wor- 
rit the wet nurse." 

"She don't worry me," was the surprised 
rejoinder of Polly. " I am very fond of chil- 
dren." 

" Oh ! but begging your pardon, Mrs. Rich- 
ards, that don't matter, you know," returned the 
black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp 
and biting that she seemed to make one's eyes 
water. " I may be very fond of pennywinkles, 
Mrs. Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to 
have 'em for tea." 

***** 

" This house ain't so exactly ringing with 
merry-making," said Miss Nipper, "that one 
need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes 
and your Chickses may draw out my two front 
double teeth, Mrs. Richards, but that's no rea- 
son why I need offer 'em the whole set." 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 3. 

" You might keep me in a strait- waistcoat for 
six weeks," said Nipper, " and when I got it off 
I'd only be more aggravated. Who ever heard 
the like of them two Griffins, Mrs. Richards ? " 

***** 

" Oh ! bless your heart, Mrs. Richards," cried 
Susan, " temporaries always orders permanen- 
cies here, didn't you know that, why wherever 
was you born, Mrs. Richards? But wherever 
you was born, Mrs. Richards," pursued Spitfire, 
shaking her head resolutely, " and whenever, 
and however (which is best known to yourself), 
you may bear in mind, please, that it's one thing 
to give orders, and quite another thing to take 
'em. A person may tell a person to dive off a 
bridge head foremost into five-and-forty feet of 
water, Mrs. Richards, but a person may be very 
far from diving." — Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 5. 

" Now, Miss Floy, you come along with me, 
and don't go hanging back like a naughty 
wicked child that judgments is no example to, 
^oviV'— Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 3. 

" If I hadn't more manliness than that insipid- 
est of his sex, I'd never take pride in my hair 
again, but turn it up behind my ears, and wear 
coarse caps, without a bit of border, until death 
released me from my insignificance. I may not 
be a Amazon, Miss Floy, and wouldn't so de- 
mean myself by such disfigurement, but anyways 
I'm not a giver up, I hope." 

" Give up ! What ? " cried Florence, with a 
face of terror. 

"Why, nothing. Miss," said Susan. "Good 
gracious, nothing ! It's only that wet curl-paper 
of a man. Perch, that any one might almost make 
away with, with a touch, and really it would be 
a blessed event for all parties if some one would 
take pity on him, and would have the goodness ! " 
Dombey (Sr» Son, Chap. 23. 

" Giving consent when asked, and offering 
when unasked, Miss, is quite two things ; I may 
not have my objections to a young man's keep- 
ing company with me, and when he puts the 
question, may say ' yes,' but that's not saying 
' would you be so kind as like me.'" 

" But you can buy me the books, Susan ; and 
you will, when you know I want them." 

" Well, Miss, and why do you want 'em?" re- 
plied Nipper ; adding, in a lower voice. " If it 



was to fling at Mrs. Pipchin's head, I'd buy a 
cart-load." — Dombey (Sr* Son, Chap. 12. 

" Talk of him being a change, indeed ! " ob- 
served Miss Nipper to herself with boundless 
contempt. " If he's a change give me a con- 
stancy." — Dofnbey &* Son, Chap. 18. 

" My comfort is," said Susan, looking back at 
Mr. Dombey, " that I have told a piece of truth 
this day which ought to have been told long be- 
fore, and can't be told too often or too plain, and 
that no amount of Pipchinses — I hope the num- 
ber of 'em mayn't be great " (here Mrs. Pipchin 
uttered a very sharp " Go along with you ! " and 
Miss Nipper repeated the look) "can unsay 
what I have said, though they gave a whole year 
full of warnings beginning at ten o'clock in 
the forenoon, and never leaving off till twelve 
at night, and died of the exhaustion which 
would be a jubilee ! "—Do??ibey df Son, Chap, 44. 

As the knight- errants of old relieved their 
minds by carving their mistresses names in des- 
erts, and wildernesses, and other savage places 
where there was no probability of there ever 
being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan 
Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and 
wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement in 
cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitch- 
ers, and contradict and call names out of the 
passage. — Dombey &> Son, Chap. 5. 

" How dare you talk in this way to a gentle- 
woman who has seen better days," 

To which Miss Nipper rejoined from her 
castle, that she pitied the better days that had 
seen, Mrs. Pipchin; and that for her part she 
considered the worst days in the year to be 
about that lady's mark, except that they were 
much too good for her. 

" But you needn't trouble yourself to make a 
noise at my door," said Susan Nipper, "nor to 
contaminate the key -hole with your eye. I'm 
packing up and going you may take your affida- 
vit." — Dombey <2r» Son, Chap. 44. 

" I thought you would have been pleased," 
said Polly. 

" Oh yes, Mrs. Richards, I'm very well pleased, 
thank you," returned Susan, who had suddenly 
become so very upright that she seemed to have 
put an additional bone in her stays. 

" You don't show it," said Polly. 

"Oh ! Being only a permanency, I couldn't be 
expected to show it like a temporary," said Su- 
san Nipper. " Temporaries carries it all before 
'em here, I find, but though there's a excellent 
party-wall between this house and the next, I 
mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs. Richards, 
notwithstanding. — Dombey ^ Son, C/tap. 3. 



" Oh, it's very well to say ' don't,' Miss Floy," 
returned the Nipper, much exasperated: "but 
raly begging your pardon we're coming to such 
passes that it turns all the blood in a person's 
body into pins and needles, with their pints all 
ways." — Dombey <5r» Son, Chap. 43- 

" For though I can bear a great deal, I am not 
a camel, neither am I," added Susan, after a 
moment's consideration, " if I know myself, a 
dromedary neither." — Dombey &* Son, Chap. 33. 



ST7BPBISES 



474 



TASTE 



• Well Miss Floy," returned the Nipper, 
" when you say don't, I never do I hope, but 
Mrs. Pipchin acts like early gooseberries upon 
me Miss, and nothing less." 

Dojnbey df Son^ Chap. 43. 



*• Don't speak to me, Miss Floy, for though I'm 
pretty firm I'm not a marble doorpost, my own 
dear." — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 44. 

SURPRISES. 

Surprises, like misfortunes, rarely come alone. 
Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 6. 

SUSPICION-A maxim of life. 

" You will not have forgotten that it was a 
maxim with Foxey — our revered father, gentle- 
men — ' Always suspect everybody.' That's the 
maxim to go through life with ! " 

With deference to the better opinion of Mr. 
Brass, and more particularly to the authority of 
his Great Ancestor, it may be doubted, with 
humility, whether the elevating principle laid 
down by the latter gentleman, and acted upon 
by his descendant, is always a prudent one, or 
attended in practice with the desired results. 
This is, beyond question, a bold and presump- 
tuous doubt, inasmuch as many distinguished 
characters, called men of the world, long headed 
customers, knowing dogs, shrewd fellows, capi- 
tal hands at business, and the like, have made, 
and do daily make, this axiom their polar star 
and compass. Still, the doubt may be gently 
insinuated. And in illustration it may be ob- 
served, that if Mr. Brass, not being over-suspi- 
cious, had, without prying and listening, left his 
sister to manage the conference on their joint 
behalf, or, prying and listening, had not been in 
such a mighty hurry to anticipate her (which he 
would not have been, but for his distrust and 
jealousy), he would probably have found him- 
self much better off in the end. Thus, it will 
always happen that these men of the world, 
who go through it in armor, defend themselves 
from quite as much good as evil ; to say nothing 
of the inconvenience and absurdity of mounting 
guard with a microscope at all times, and of 
wearing a coat of mail on the most innocent 
occasions. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 66. 

SUSaUEHANNA— Crossing: the. 

The mist, wreathing itself into a hundred fan- 
tastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water ; 
and the gloom of evening gave to all an air of 
mystery and silence w^hich greatly enhanced its 
natural interest. 

We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, 
roofed and covered in on all sides, and nearly a 
mile in length. It was profoundly dark, per- 
plexed with great beams crossing and recrossing 
it at every possible angle ; and through the 
broad chinks and crevices in the floor, the rapid 
river gleamed, far down below, like a legion of 
eyes. We had no lamps ; and as the horses 
stumbled and floundered through this place, 
towards the distant speck of dying light, it 
seemed interminable. 

American Notes, Chap. 9. 

SYMPATHY. 

" What are we to live for but sympathy ? What 
else is so extremely charming ? Without that 



gleam of sunshine on our cold, cold earth," said 
Mrs. Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and 
complacently observing the effect of her bare 
lean arm, looking upward from the wrist, " how 
could we possibly bear it ? In short, obdurate 
man ! " glancing at the Major, round the screen, 
" I would have my world all heart ; and Faith 
is so excessively charming, that I won't allow 
you to disturb it, do you hear?" 

The Major replied that it was hard in Cleo- 
patra to require the world to be all heart, and 
yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the 
world. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 21. 

SYMPATHY-Silent. 

Florence, with her hand upon the Captain's 
arm, so sorrowful and timid, and the Captain, 
with his rough face and burly figure, so quietly 
protective of her, stood in the rosy light of the 
bright evening sky, without saying a word. 
However strange the form of speech into which 
he might have fashioned the feeling, if he had 
had to give it utterance, the Captain felt as 
sensibly as the most eloquent of men could 
have done, that there was something in the tran- 
quil time and in its softened beauty that would 
make the wounded heart of Florence overflow ; 
and that it was better that such tear? should 
have their way. So not a word spake Captain 
Cuttle. But when he felt his arm clasped closer, 
and when he felt the lonely head come nearer 
to it, and lay itself against his homely coarse 
blue sleeve, he pressed it gently with his rugged 
hand, and understood it, and was understood. 
Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 49. 

SYMPATHY— The influence of. 

Surrounded by unfeeling creditors, and mei- 
cenary attendants upon the sick, and meeting 
in the height of her anxiety and sorrow with 
little regard or sympathy, even from the women 
about her, it is not surprising that the affection- 
ate heart of the child should have been touched 
to the quick by one kind and generous spirit, 
however uncouth the temple in which it dwelt. 
Thank Heaven, that the temples of such spirits 
are not made with hands, and that they may be 
even more worthily hung with poor patch- 
work than with purple and fine linen ! 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. il. 



TASTE -Viewed from Chradgrind's stand- 
point. 
There was a library in Coketown, to which 
general access was easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly 
tormented his mind about what the people read 
in this library : a point whereon little rivers of 
tabular statements periodically flowed into the 
howling ocean of tabular statements, which no 
diver ever got to any depth in and came up sane. 
It was a disheartening circumstance, but a melan- 
choly fact, that even these readers persisted in 
wondering. They wondered about human nature, 
human passions, human hopes and fears, the 
struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and 



TASTES AND HABITS 



476 



TEA-DRINKLNQ 



ioys and sorrows, the lives and deaths, of com- 
mon men and women ! They sometimes, after 
fifteen hours' work, sat down to read mere fables 
about men and women, more or less like them- 
selves, and about children, more or less like 
their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms, 
instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the 
whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by 
Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working, 
in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, 
and he never could make out how it yielded 
this unaccountable product. 

Hard Times, Book /., Chap. 8. 

TASTES AND HABITS-Sodial. 

My voyages (in paper boats) among savages 
often yield me matter for reflection at home. It 
is curious to trace the savage in the civilized 
man, and to detect the hold of some savage cus- 
toms on conditions of society rather boastful of 
being high above them. 

I wonder, is the Medicine-Man of the North 
American Indians never to be got rid of, out of 
the Noith American country? He comes into 
my Wigwam on all manner of occasions, and 
with the absurdest " Medicine." I always find 
it extremely difficult, and I often find it simply 
impossible, to keep him out of my Wigwam. 
For his legal " Medicine" he sticks upon his 
head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters the 
same with fat, and dirty-white powder, and talks 
a gibberish quite unknown to the men and 
squaws of his tribe. For his religious " Medi- 
cine" he puts on puffy white sleeves, little black 
aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, 
collarless coats, with Medicine button-holes. 
Medicine stockings and gaiters and shoes, and 
tops the whole with a highly grotesque Medici- 
nal hat. In one respect, to be sure, 1 am quite 
free from him. On occasions when the Medi- 
cine-Man in general, together with a large num- 
ber of the miscellaneous inhabitants of his 
village, both male and female, are presented to 
the principal Chief, his native " Medicine" is a 
comical mixture of old odds and ends (hired of 
traders), and new things in antiquated shapes, 
and pieces of red cloth (of which he is particu- 
larly fond), and white and red and blue paint 
for the face. The irrationality of this particular 
Medicine culminates in a mock battle-rush, from 
which many of the squaws are borne out much 
dilapidated. I need not observe how unlike 
this is to a Drawing-Room at St. James's Palace. 

« 4e :)e * « 

If we submit ourselves meekly to the Medi- 
cine-Man and the Conjuror, and are not exalted 
by it, the savages may retort upon us that we 
act more unwisely than they in other matters 
wherein we fail to imitate them. It is a widely 
diffused custom among savage tribes, when they 
meet to discuss any afHair of public importance, 
to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dan- 
cing, blowing shells, and (in cases where they 
are familiar with fire-arms) flying out into open 
places and letting off guns. It is questionable 
whether our legislative assemblies might not 
take a hint from this. A shell is not a melo- 
dious wind-instrument, and it is monotonous ; 
but it is as musical as, and not more monoto- 
nous than, my Honorable friend's own trumpet, 
or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the 
Minister. The uselessness of arguing with any 
supporter of a Government or of an Opposition, 



is well known. Try dancing. It is a better ex- 
ercise, and has the unspeakable recommenda- 
tion that it couldn't be reported. The honor- 
able and savage member who has a loaded gun, 
and has grown impatient of debate, plunges out 
of doors, fires in the air, and returns calm and 
silent to the Palaver. I^et the honorable and 
civilized member similarly charged with a speech 
dart into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in 
the silence of night, let his speech off, and come 
back harmless. It is not at first sight a very 
rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe 
across one's nose and both cheeks, and a broad 
red stripe from the forehead to the chin, to attach 
a few pounds of wood to one's under lip, to 
stick fish-bones in one's ears and a brass cur- 
tain-ring in one's nose, and to rub one's body 
all over with rancid oil, as a preliminary to en- 
tering on business. But this is a question of 
taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uni- 
form. The manner of entering on the busi- 
ness itself is another question. A council of six 
hundred savage gentlemen entirely independent 
of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smok- 
ing, and occasionally grunting, seem to me, ac- 
cording to the experience I have gathered in my 
voyages and travels, somehow to do what they 
come together for ; whereas, that is not at all the 
general experience of a council of six hundred 
civilized gentlemen very dependent on tailors, 
and sitting on mechanical contrivances. It is 
better that an Assembly should do its utmost to 
envelop itself in smoke, than that it should di- 
rect its endeavors to enveloping the public in 
smoke ; and I would rather it buried half a hun- 
dred hatchets than buried one subject demanding 
attention. — Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 26. 

TEA - DRINKING — A pastoral, at Mrs. 
Weller's. 

" What do you think them women does t'other 
day," continued Mr. Weller, after a short pause, 
during which he had significantly struck the side 
of his nose with his fore-finger some half dozen 
times. " What do you think they does, t'other 
day, Sammy?" 

" Don't know," replied Sam, " what ? " 
" Goes and gets up a grand tea drinkin* for a 
feller they calls their shepherd," said Mr. Weller. 
" I was a standing starin' in at the pictur shop 
down at our place, when I sees a little bill about 
it ; ' tickets half-a-crown. All applications to 
be made to the committee. Secretary, Mrs. 
Weller ; ' and when I got home there was the 
committee a sittin' in our back parlor. Four- 
teen women ; I wish you could ha' heard 'em, 
Sammy. There they was, a passin' resolutions, 
and wotin' supplies, and all sorts o' games. 
Well, what with your mother-in-law a worrying 
me to go, and what with my looking for'ard to 
seein' some queer starts if I did, I put my name 
down for a ticket ; at six o'clock on the Friday 
evenin' I dresses myself out wery smart, and 
off I goes with the old 'ooman, and up we walks 
into a fust floor where there was tea-things for 
thirty, and a whole lot o' women as begins whis- 
perin' to one another, and lookin' at me, as if 
they'd never seen a rayther stout gen'lm'n of 
eight-and-fifty afore. By-and-bye, there comes 
a great bustle down stairs, and a lanky chap with 
a red nose and a white neckcloth rushes up, and 
sings out, ' Here's the shepherd a coming to 
wisit his faithful flock : and in comes a fat 



TEA-DBINKINa 



476 



TEABS 



I 



chap in black, vith a great white face, a 
smilin' avay like clockwork. Such goin's on, 
Sammy ! ' The kiss of peace,' says the shep- 
herd ; and then he kissed the women all round, 
and ven he'd done, the man vith the red nose 
began. I was just a thinkin' whether I hadn't 
better begin too — 'specially as there was a wery 
nice lady a sittin' next me — ven in comes the 
tea, and your mother-in-law, as had been makin' 
the kettle bile down-stairs. At it they went, 
tooth and nail. Such a precious loud hymn, 
Sammy, while the tea was a brewing ; such a 
grace ; such eatin' and drinkin' ! I wish you 
could ha' seen the shepherd walkin' into the 
ham and muffins. I never see such a chap to 
eat and drink ; never. The red-nosed man 
warn't by no means the sort of person you'd 
like to grub by contract, but he was nothin' to 
the shepherd. Well; arter the tea was over, 
they sang another hymn, and then the shepherd 
began to preach : and weiy well he did it, con- 
siderin' how heavy them muffins must have lied 
on his chest. Presently he pulls up, all of a 
sudden, and hollers out ' Where is the sinner ; 
where is the mis'rable sinner?' Upon which, 
all the women looked at me, and began to groan 
as if they was a dying. I thought it was rather 
sing'ler, but hows'ever, I says nothing. Present- 
ly he pulls up again, and lookin' wery hard at 
me, says, ' Where is the sinner ; where is the 
mis'rable sinner?' and all the women groans 
again, ten times louder than afore. I got rather 
wild at this, so I takes a step or two for'ard and 
says, * My friend,' says I, ' did you apply that 
'ere obserwation to me?' 'Stead of begging 
my pardon as any gen'lm'n would ha' done, he 
got more abusive than ever ; called me a wessel, 
Sammy — a wessel of wrath — and all sorts o' 
names. So my blood being reg'larly up, I first 
give him two or three for himself, and then two 
or three more to hand over to the man with the 
red nose, and walked off. I wish you could ha' 
heard how the women screamed, Sammy, ven 
they picked up the shepherd from under the 
table." — Pickwick, Chap, 22. 

TEA-DRINKINGt— A serious. 

On this particular occasion the women drank 
tea to a most alarming extent ; greatly to the 
horror of Mr. Weller, senior, who, utterly regard- 
less of all Sam's admonitory nudgings, stared 
about him in every direction with the most un- 
disguised astonishment. 

" Sammy," whispered Mr. Weller, " if some o' 
these here people don't want tappin' to-morrow 
mornin', I ain't your father, and that's wot it is. 
Why, this here old lady next me is a drowndin' 
herself in tea." 

" Be quiet, can't you ? " murmured Sam. 
" Sam," whispered Mr. Weller, a moment 
afterwards, in a tone of deep agitation, " mark 
my vords, my boy. If that 'ere secretary fellow 
keeps on for only five minutes more, he'll blow 
hisself up with toast and water." 

^ •• Well, let him, if he likes," replied Sam ; " it 
ain't no bis'ness o' yourn." 

'* If this here lasts much longer, Sammy," said 
Mr. Weller, in the same low voice, " I shall feel 
it my duty, as a human bein', to rise and address 
the cheer. There's a young 'ooman on the next 
form but two, as has drunk nine breakfast cups 
and a half : and she's a swellin' wisibly before 
my wery eyes." 



There is little doubt that Mr. Weller would 
have carried his benevolent intention into im- 
mediate execution, if a great noise, occasioned 
by putting up the cups and saucers, had not 
very fortunately announced that the tea-drink- 
ing was over. — Pickwick, Chap, 33. 

TEA-DRINKER— Mr. Venus as a. 

" Brother," said Wegg, when this happy un- 
derstanding was established, " I should like to 
ask you something. You remember the night 
when I first looked in here, and found you float- 
ing your powerful mind in tea ? " 

Still swilling tea, Mr. Venus nodded assent. 

" And there you sit, sir," pursued Wegg with 
an air of thoughtful admiration, " as if you had 
never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you had 
an unlimited capacity of assimilating the fragrant 
article ! There you sit, sir, in the midst of your 
works, looking as if you'd been called upon 
for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging 
the company ! " 

Our Mutual Fnend, Book III., Chap. 7. 

TEA— A Termagant at. 

There was no one with Flora but Mr. F's 
Aunt, which respectable gentlewoman, basking 
in a balmy atmosphere of tea and toast, was en- 
sconced in an easy chair by the fireside, with a 
little table at her elbow, and a clean white hand- 
kerchief spread over her lap on which two pieces 
of toast at that moment awaited consumption. 
Bending over a steaming vessel of tea, and look- 
ing through the steam, and breathing forth the 
steam, like a malignant Chinese enchantress en 
gaged in the performance of unholy rites, Mr. 
F's Aunt put down her great teacup and ex- 
claimed, " Drat him, if he an't come back 
again ! " — Little Dorrity Book Il.y Chap. 9. 

TEARS. 

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of 
our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding 
dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 19. 

TEARS— Sam Weller's opinion of. 

" Come, come," interposed Sam, who had 
witnessed Mr. Trotter's tears with considerable 
impatience, " blow this here water-cart bis'ness. 
It won't do no good, this won't." 

*' Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, reproachfully, " I 
am sorry to find that you have so little respect 
for this young man's feelings." 

" His feelins is all wery well, sir," replied 
Mr. Weller ; " and as they're so wery fine, and 
it's a pity he should lose 'em, I think he'd bet- 
ter keep 'em in his own buzzum, than let 'em 
ewaporate in hot water, 'specially as they do no 
good. Tears never yet wound up a clock, or 
worked a steam ingen'. The next time you go 
out to a smoking party, young fellow, fill your 
pipe with that 'ere reflection ; and for the pres- 
ent just put that bit of pink gingham into your 
pocket. 'T'an't so handsome that you need 
keep waving it about, as if you was a tight- 
rope dancer." — Pickwick, Chap, 16. 

TEARS— Of disappointment. 

Many a man who would have stood within 
a home dismantled, strong in his passion and 
design of vengeance, has had the firmness of 
his nature conquered by the razirg of an air- 



TEARS 



477 



TEETH 



built castle. When the log-liut received them 
for the second time, Martin lay down upon the 
ground, and wept aloud. 

" Lord love you, sir ! " cried Mr. Tapley, in 
great terror ; " Don't do that ! Don't do that, 
sir ! Anything but that ! It never helped man, 
woman, or child, over the lowest fence yet, sir, 
and it never will. Besides its being no use to 
you, it's worse than of no use to me, for the 
least sound of it will knock me flat down. I 
can't stand up agin it, sir. Anything but 
that ! " — Martin Chuzzlezvit, Chap. 23. 

TB AE.S — Pecksnifflan. 

He was not angry, he was not vindictive, he 
was not cross, he was not moody, but he was 
grieved ; he was sorely grieved. As he sat down 
by the old man's side, two tears — not tears like 
those with which recording angels blot their 
entries out, but drops so precious that they use 
them for their ink — stole down his meritorious 
cheeks. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 31. 

TEARS— The mist of. 

But Florence cannot see him plainly, in a lit- 
tle time, for there is a mist between her eyes 
and him, and her dead brother and dead mother 
shine in it like angels. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. yi. 



It was a natural emotion, not to be suppress- 
ed, and it would make way even between the 
fingers of the hands with which she covered up 
her face. The. overcharged and heavy-laden 
breast must sometimes have that vent, or the 
poor, wounded, solitary heart within it would 
have fluttered like a bird with broken wings, 
and sunk down in the dust. 

Dombey b^ Son, Chap. 18. 

TEARS— HydraTilic. 

Mr. Brownlow's heart, being large enough for 
any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane dis- 
position, forced a supply of tears into his eyes, 
by some hydraulic process which we are not 
sufficiently philosophical to be in a condition to 
explain. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 12. 

TEARS— A remedy. 

But, tears were not the things to find their 
way to Mr. Bumble's soul ; his heart was water- 
proof. Like washable beaver hats that improve 
with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and 
more vigorous by showers of tears, which, be- 
ing tokens of weakness, and so far tacit admis- 
sions of his own power, pleased and exalted 
him. He eyed his good lady with looks of great 
satisfaction, and begged, in an encouragmg man- 
ner, that she should cry her hardest ; the exer- 
cise being looked upon, by the faculty, as 
strongly conducive to health. 

" It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, 
exercises the eyes, and softens down the tem- 
per," said Mr. Bumble. " So cry away ! " 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 37. 

TEARS— Not the only proofs of distress. 

" There is no deception now Mr. Weller. 
Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary sly- 
ness, " tears are not the only proofs of distress, 
nor the best ones." 

" No, they ain't," replied Sam, expressively. 

" They may be put on, Mr. Weller," said Job. 



" I know they may," said Sam ; " some peo- 
pie, indeed, has 'em always ready laid on, and 
can pull out the plug wenever they likes." 

" Yes," replied Job ; " but these sort of things 
are not so easily counterfeited, Mr. Weller, and 
it is a more painful process to get them up." 
As he spoke, he pointed to his sallow, sunken 
cheeks, and, drawing up his coat-sleeve, dis- 
closed an arm which looked as if the bone could 
be broken at a touch : so sharp and brittle did 
it appear, beneath its thin covering of flesh. 
Pickwick, Chap. 45. 

TEARS-Of Job Trotter. 

Job Trotter bowed low ; and in spite of Mi 
Weller's previous remonstrance, the tears agair 
rose to his eyes. 

" I never see such a feller," said Sam. " Bless 
ed if I don't think he's got a main in his head 
as is always turned on." — Pickwick, Chap. 16. 

TEARS-Valuable. 

" Tears ! " cried the old gentleman, with such 
an energetic jump, that he fell down two or 
three steps and grated his chin against the wall. 
" Catch the crystal globules — catch 'em — bottle 
'em up — cork 'em tight — put sealing-wax on the 
top — seal 'em with a cupid — label 'em ' Best 
quality' — and stow 'em away in the fourteen 
binn, with a bar of iron on the top to keep the 
thunder off ! " 

Issuing these commands, as if there were a 
dozen attendants all actively engaged in their 
execution, he turned his velvet cap inside out, 
put it on with great dignity so as to obscure his 
right eye and three-fourths of his nose, and 
sticking his arms a-kimbo, looked very fiercely 
at a sparrow hard by, till the bird flew away. 
He then put his cap in his pocket with an air 
of great satisfaction, and addressed himself with 
respectful demeanor to Mrs. Nickleby. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41. 

TEAR-DROP-A. 

A tear trembled on his sentimental eye-lid, 
like a rain-drop on a window-frame. 

Pickwick, Chap. II. 

TEARS-Of Migrs^. 

At this cruel rebuke, Miggs, whose tears were 
always ready for large or small parties, on the 
shortest notice and the most reasonable terms, 
fell a crying violently ; holding both her hands 
tight upon her heart meanwhile, as if nothing 
less would prevent its splitting into small frag- 
ments. — Barnaby Pudge, Chap. 7. 

TEETH— The attraction of. 

He had no power of concealing anything with 
that battery of attraction in full play. 

* ^ * * * * 

Mr. Carker the Manager did a great deal of 
business in the course of the day, and bestowed 
his teeth upon a great many people. In the 
oflice, in the court, in the street, and on 'Change, 
they glistened and bristled to a terrible extent. 
Five o'clock arriving, and with it Mr. Carker's 
bay horse, they got on horseback, and went 
gleaming up Cheapside. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 22. 

TEETH— Chattering". 

" Ugh, you disgraceful boy I " exclaimed Miss 



TELEGRAPH 



478 



THEATRE 



Wren, attracted by the sound of his chattering 
teeth, " I wish they'd all drop down your throat 
and play at dice in your stomach ! " 

Our Mutual Friend, Book III., Chap. lO. 

TELEaRAPH— Wires. 

Plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the 
electric wires which ruled a colossal strip of 
music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain 
to the dark eyes of her body ; Mrs. Sparsit saw 
her staircase, with the figure coming down. 

Hard Times, Book II., Chap. il. 

TEMPTATION-A teacher. 

"Jacques," said Defarge ; "judiciously show 
a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Ju- 
diciously show a dog his natural prey, if you 
wish him to bring it down one day." 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 15. 

TEMPER— Mrs. Joe Gargrery's. 

When I got home at night, and delivered this 
message for Joe, my sister " went on the Ram- 
page," in a more alarming degree than at any 
previous period. She asked me and Joe whether 
we supposed she was door-mats under our feet, 
and how we dared to use her so, and what com- 
pany we graciously thought she was fit for? 
When she had exhausted a torrent of such in- 
quiries, she threw a candlestick at Joe, burst 
into a loud sobbing, got out the dustpan — which 
was always a very bad sign — put on her coarse 
apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible ex- 
tent. Not satisfied with a dry cleaning, she 
took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned 
us out of house and home, so that we stood 
shivering in the back yard. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 12. 

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after 
me as the dustpan had retired before us, drew 
the back of his hand across his nose with a con- 
ciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at 
him, and, when her eyes were withdrawn, se- 
cretly crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited 
them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in 
a cross temper. This was so much her normal 
state, that Joe and I would often, for weeks to- 
gether, be, as to our fingers, like monumental 
Crusaders as to their legs. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 4. 

TEMPER-The thermometer of Mrs. Var- 
den's. 

Mrs. Varden was seldom very Protestant at 
meals, unless it happened that they were under- 
done, or over-done, or indeed that anything oc- 
curred to put her out of humor. Her spirits 
rose considerably on beholding these goodly 
preparations, and from the nothingness of good 
works, she passed to the somethingness of ham 
and toast with great cheerfulness. Nay, under 
the influence of these wholesome stimulants, she 
sharply reproved her daughter for being low 
and despondent (which she considered an unac- 
ceptable frame of mind), and remarked, as she 
held her own plate for a fresh supply, that it 
would be well for Dolly, who pined over the loss 
of a toy and a sheet of paper, if she would reflect 
upon the voluntary sacrifices of the missionaries 
in foreign parts who lived chiefly on salads. 

The proceedings of such a day occasioned 
various fluctuations in the human thermometer, 



and especially in instruments so sensitively and 
delicately constructed as Mrs. Varden. Thus, 
at dinner Mrs. V. stood at summer heat ; genial, 
smiling, and delightful. After dinner, in the 
sunshine of the wine, she went up at least half- 
a-dozen degrees, and was perfectly enchanting. 
As its eff"ect subsided, she fell rapidly, went to 
sleep for an hour or so at temperate, and woke 
at something below freezing. Now she was at 
summer heat again, in the shade ; and when tea 
was over, and old John, producing a bottle of 
cordial from one of the oaken cases, insisted on 
her sipping two glasses thereof in slow succes- 
sion, she stood steadily at ninety for one hour 
and a quarter. Profiting by experience, the 
locksmith took advantage of this genial weather 
to smoke his pipe in the porch, and in conse- 
quence of this prudent management, he was 
fully prepared, when the glass went down again, 
to start homewards directly. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 21. 

TEMPER— And devotion. 

Like some other ladies who in remote ages 
flourished upon this globe, Mrs. Varden was 
most devout when most ill-tempered. When- 
ever she and her husband were at unusual va- 
riance, then the Protestant Manual was in high 
feather. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 4. 

THEATRE— Maggy's idea of a. 

" Maggy and I have been to-night," she an- 
swered, subduing herself with the quiet effort 
that had long been natural to her, " to the thea- 
tre where my sister is engaged." 

" And oh ain't it a Ev'nly place," suddenly 
interrupted Maggy, who seemed to have the 
power of going to sleep and waking up when- 
ever she chose. " Almost as good as a hospital. 
Only there ain't no Chicking in it." 

Here she shook herself, and fell asleep again. 
Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 14. 

THEATRE— Deserted. 

Between the bridge and the two great thea- 
tres there was but the distance of a few hun- 
dred paces, so the theatres came next. Grim 
and black within, at night, those great dry 
Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows 
of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and 
the seats all empty. One would think that 
nothing in them knew itself at such a time but 
Yorick's skull. In one of my night walks, as 
the church steeples were shaking the March 
winds and rain with the strokes of Four, I 
passed the outer boundary of one of these great 
deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in 
my hand, I groped my well-known way to the 
stage, and looked over the orchestra — which 
was like a great grave dug for a time of pesti- 
lence — into the void beyond. A dismal cavern 
of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone 
dead like everything else, and nothing visible 
through mist and fog and space but tiers of 
winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where, 
when last there, I had seen the peasantry of 
Naples dancing among the vines, reckless of the 
burning mountain which threatened to over- 
whelm them, was now in possession of a strong 
serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait 
for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it 
showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a watch- 
man, carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the 



THEATRE 



479 



THOUGHT 



distant upper gallery and flitted away. Retir- 
ing within the proscenium, and holding my light 
above my head towards the rolled-up curtain — 
green no more, but black as ebony — my sight 
lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint in- 
dications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and 
cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver 
might at the bottom of the sea. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 13. 

THEATRE— An old. 

Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre, 
enhanced in the spectator's fancy by its gay in- 
tention and design, none but worms can be 
familiar with. A hundred and ten years have 
passed since any play was acted here. The sky 
shines in through the gashes in the roof; the 
boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and 
only tenanted by rats ; damp and mildew smear 
the faded colors, and make spectral maps upon 
the panels ; lean rags are dangling down where 
there were gay festoons on the proscenium ; the 
stage has rotted so, that a narrow wooden gal- 
lery is thrown across it, or it would sink be- 
neath the tread, and bury the visitor in the 
gloomy depths beneath. The desolation and 
decay impress themselves on all the senses. The 
air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste ; 
any stray outer sounds that straggle in with 
some lost sunbeam, are muffled and heavy ; and 
the worm, the maggot, and the rot have changed 
the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as 
time will seam and roughen a smooth hand. If 
ever Ghosts act plays, they act them on this 
ghostly stage. — Pictures from Italy. 

THEATRE- First impressions of a. 

It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose ; 
and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw 
Julius Csesar and the new Pantomime. To have 
all those noble Romans alive before me, and 
walking in and out for my entertainment, in- 
stead of being the stern taskmasters they had 
been at school, was a most novel and delightful 
effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of 
the whole show, the influence upon me of the 
poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the 
smooth stupendous changes of glittering and 
brilliant sceneiy, were so dazzling, and opened 
up such illimitable regions of delight, that when 
I came out into the rainy street, at twelve o'clock 
at night, I felt as if I had come from the clouds, 
where I had been leading a romantic life for 
ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, um- 
brella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, pat- 
ten-clinking, muddy, miserable world. 

David Copperfield, Chap. 19. 

THEFT— An emporitim of. 

In its filthy shops are exposed for sale, huge 
bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of 
all sizes and patterns ; for here reside the traders 
who purchase them from pickpockets. Hundreds 
of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs 
outside the windows or flaunting from the door- 
post ; and the shelves, within, are piled with 
them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, 
it has its barber, its coff"ee-shop, its beer-shop, 
and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial 
colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny : 
visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, 
by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back- 
parlors ; and who go as strangely as they come. 



Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the 
rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards 
to the petty thief ; here, stores of old iron and 
bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of wool- 
len-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy 
cellars. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 26. 

THIEF— " Stop." 

"Stop thief! Stop thief!" There is a magic 
in the sound. The tradesman leaves his coun- 
ter, and the carman his wagon ; the butcher 
throws down his tray ; the baker his basket ; 
the milk-man his pail ; the errand-boy his par- 
cels ; the school-boy his marbles ; the pavior 
his pickaxe ; the child his battledore. Away 
they run, pell-rnell, helter-skelter, slap-dash : 
tearing, yelling, and screaming : knocking down 
the passengers as they turn the corners : rousing 
up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls : and 
streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the 
sound. 

" Stop thief ! Stop thief ! " The cry is taken 
up by a hundred voices, and the crowd accumu- 
late at every turning. Away they fly : splashing 
through the mud, and rattling along the pave- 
ments : up go the windows, out run the people, 
onward bear the mob, a whole audience desert 
Punch in the very thickest of the plot, and, join- 
ing the rushing throng, swell the shout, and 
lend fresh vigor t j the cry, " Stop thief ! Stop 
thief!" 

" Stop thief ! Stop thief ! " There is a passion 
for hunting something deeply implanted in the 
human breast. One wretched, breathless child, 
panting with exhaustion, terror in his looks, 
agony in his eye, large drops of perspiration 
streaming down his face, strains every nerve to 
make head upon his pursuers ; and as they follow 
on his track, and gain upon him every instant, 
they hail his decreasing strength with still louder 
shouts, and whoop and scream with joy. " Stop 
thief ! " Ay, stop him for God's sake, were it 
only in mercy ! — Oliver Twist, Chap. 10. 

THIS AND THAT— The success of a combi- 
nation. 

According to the success with which you put 
this and that together, you get a woman and a 
fish apart, or a Mermaid in combination. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 3. 

THOTJQHTS— Depressing:. 

"Whatever thoughts he called up to his aid, 
they came upon him in depressing and discourag- 
ing shapes, and gave him no relief. Even the 
diamonds on his fingers sparkled with the 
brightness of tears, and had no ray of hope in 
all their briUiant lustre. 

Martin Chuzzleitnt, Chap. 17. 

THOTJQHT— A jumble of. 

Thinking begets, not only thought, but 
drowsiness occasionally, and the more the 
locksmith thought, the more sleepy he be- 
came. 

A man may be very sober— or at least firmly 
set upon his legs on that neutral ground which 
lies between the confines of perfect sobriety and 
slight tipsiness— and yet feel a strong tendency 
to mingle up present circumstances with others 
which have no manner of connection with them ; 
to confound all consideration of persons, 
things, times, and pkices ; and to jumble his 



THOTJQHTS 



480 



TIDE 



disjointed thoughts together in a kind of mental 
kaleidoscope, producing combinations as unex- 
pected as they are transitory. 

Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 3. 

THOTJaHTS. 

" My lad," said the Captain, whose opinion 
of Mr. Toots was much improved by this can- 
did avowal, " a man's thoughts is like the winds, 
and nobody can't answer for 'em for certain, 
any length of time together. Is it a treaty as 
to words ? " — Dombey df Son, Chap. 39. 



" My lad," gasped the Captain, in a choked 
and trembling voice, and with a curious action 
going on in the ponderous fist ; " there's a many 
words I could wish to say to you, but I don't 
rightly know where they're stowed just at 
present. My young friend, Wal'r, was drownded 
only last night, according to my reckoning, and 
it puts me out, you see. But you and me will 
come alongside o' one another again, my lad," 
said the Captain, holding up his hook, " if we 
live." — Dombey df Son, Chap. 22. 

Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common 
notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little be- 
fore they will explain themselves ; and Toots 
had long left off asking any questions of his own 
mind. Some mist there may have been, issuing 
from that leaden casket, his cranium, which, if 
it could have taken shape and form, would have 
become a genie ; but it could not ; and it only 
so far followed the example of the- smoke in the 
Arabian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud, 
and there hang and hover. But it left a little 
figure visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots 
was always staring at it. 

Dombey &> Son, Chap. \2i. 



The Captain found it difficult to unload his 
old ideas upon the subject, and to take a per- 
fectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity 
which the circumstances required, or without 
jumbling and confounding the two. 

Dombey cSr* Son, Chap. 14. 

" Dombey," said the Major, rapping him on 
the arm with his cane, "don't be thoughtful. 
It's a bad habit. Old Joe, Sir, wouldn't be as 
tough as you see him, if he had ever encouraged 
it. You are too great a man, Dombey, to be 
thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you're far 
above that kind of thing." 

Dombey &* Son, Chap. 20. 



" Polly, old 'ooman," said Mr. Toodle, " I 
don't know as I said it partickler along o' Rob, 
I'm sure. I starts light with Rob only ; I comes 
to a branch ; I takes on what I finds there ; and 
a whole train of ideas gets coupled on to him, 
afore I knows where I am, or where they comes 
from. What a junction a man's thoughts is," 
said Mr. Toodle, " to be sure ! " 

Dombey <£r» Son, Chap. 38. 

THOUGHT— A haunting topic of. 

Left alone, with the expressive looks and ges- 
tures of Mr. Baptist, otherwise Giovanni Bap- 
tista Cavalletto, vividly before him, Clennam 
entered on a weary day. It was in vain that he 
tried to control his attention, by directing it to 
any business occupation or train of thought ; it 



rode at anchor by the haunting topic, and would 
hold to no other idea. As though a criminal 
should be chained in a stationary boat on a deep, 
clear river, condemned, whatever countless 
leagues of water flowed past him, always to see 
the body of the fellow-creature he had drowned 
lying at the bottom, immovable and unchange- 
able, except as the eddies made it broad 01 
long, now expanding, now contracting its ter- 
rible lineaments ; so Arthur, below the shifting 
current of transparent thoughts and fancies 
which were gone and succeeded by others as 
soon as come, saw, steady and dark, and not to 
be stirred from its place, the one subject that he 
endeavored with all his might to rid himself of, 
and that he could not fly from. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 23. 

TIDE-Hi&h. 

But, the moment the tide begins to make, the 
Pavilionstone Harbor begins to revive. It feels 
the breeze of the rising water before the water 
comes, and begins to flutter and stir. When the 
little shallow waves creep in, barely overlapping 
one another, the vanes at the mastheads wake, 
and become agitated. As the tide rises, the 
fishing-boats get into good spirits and dance, 
the flag-staff hoists a bright red flag, the steam- 
boat smokes, cranes creak, horses and carriages 
dangle in the air, stray passengers and luggage 
appear. Now, the shipping is afloat, and comes 
up buoyantly, to look at the wharf. Now, the 
carts that have come down for coals, load away 
as hard as they can load. Now, the steamer 
smokes immensely, and occasionally blows at 
the paddle-boxes like a vaporous whale — greatly 
disturbing nervous loungers. Now, both the 
tide and the breeze have risen, and you are 
holding your hat on (if you want to see how the 
ladies hold their hats on, with a stay, passing 
over the broad brim and down the nose, come 
to Pavilionstone). Now, everything in the har- 
bor splashes, dashes, and bobs. Now, the Down 
Tidal Train is telegraphed, and you know (with- 
out knowing how you know), that two hundred 
and eighty-seven people are coming. Now, the 
fishing-boats that have been out, sail in at the 
top of the tide. Now, the bell goes, and the 
locomotive hisses and shrieks, and the train 
comes gliding in, and the two hundred and 
eighty-seven come scuffling out. Now, there is 
not only a tide of wateri but a tide of people, 
and a tide of luggage — all tumbling and flowing 
and bouncing about together. Now, after in- 
finite bustle, the steamer steams out, and we 
(on the Pier) are all delighted when she rolls as 
if she would roll her funnel out, and are all dis- 
appointed when she don't. Now, the other 
steamer is coming in, and the Custom-House 
prepares, and the wharf-laborers assemble, and 
the hawsers are made ready, and the Hotel 
Porters come rattling down with van and truck, 
eager to begin more Olympic games with more 
luggage. And this is the way in which we go 
on, down at Pavilionstone, every tide. And, if 
you want to live a life of luggage, or to see it 
lived, or to breathe sweet air which will send 
you to sleep at a moment's notice at any period 
of the day or night, or to disport yourself upon 
or in the sea, or to scamper about Kent, or to 
come out of town for the enjoyment of all or any 
of these pleasures, come to Pavilionstone. 

Out of Town. Reprinted Pieces. 



TIMBER-YARD 



481 



TOBACCO-CHEWINQ 



TIMBER-YARD. 

To go gliding to and fro among the stacks of 
timber would be a convenient kind of travelling 
in foreign countries, — among the forests of 
North America, the sodden Honduras swamps, 
the dark pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, and 
the tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunder- 
storms. The costly store of timber is stacked 
and stowed away in sequestered places, with the 
pervading avoidance of flourish or effect. It 
makes as little of itself as possible, and calls to 
no one, " Come and look at me ! " And yet it 
is picked out from the trees of the world ; picked 
out for length, picked out for breadth, picked 
out for straightness, picked out for crookedness, 
chosen with an eye to every need of ship and 
boat. Strangely twisted pieces lie about, pre- 
cious in the sight of shipwrights. Sauntering 
through these groves, I come upon an open 
glade where workmen are examining some tim- 
ber recently delivered. Quite a pastoral scene, 
with a background of river and windmill ! And 
no more like War than the American States are 
at present like a Union. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 24. 

TIME— Its progress. 

"Another Christmas come, another year 
gone ! " murmured the Chemist with a gloomy 
sigh. " More figures in the lengthening sum of 
recollection that we work and work at to our 
torment till Death idly jumbles all together, and 
rubs all out." — Haunted Man, Chap. i. 

TIME— Is money. 

" He will talk about business, and won't give 
away his time for nothing. He's very right. 
Time is money, time is money." 

'* He was one of us who made that saying, 
I should think," said Ralph. " Time is money, 
and very good money too, to those who reckon 
interest by it. Time is money ! Yes, and time 
costs money ; it's rather an expensive article to 
some people we could name, or I forget my 
trade." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47. 

TIME— A slippery animal. 

" And talk of Time slipping by you, as if it was 
an animal at rustic sports with its tail soaped." 
Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 12. 

TIME— The factory of. 

It seemed as if, first in her own fire with- 
in the house, and then in the fiery haze without, 
she tried to discover what kind of woof Old 
Time, that greatest and longest established 
Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he 
had already spun into a woman. But his factory 
is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his 
Hands are mutes. — Hard Times, Bk, I., Chap.i^. 

TIME— Its chang-es. 

Time went on in Coketown like its own 
machinery ; so much material wrought up, so 
much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, 
so much money made. But, less inexorable 
than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying 
seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and 
brick, and made the only stand that ever zvas 
made in the place, against its direful uniformity. 

" Louisa is becoming," said Mr. Gradgrind, 
"almost a young wonrian." 

Time, with his innumerable horse-power, 



worked away, not minding what anybody said, 
and presently turned out young Thomas a foot 
taller than when his father had last taken par- 
ticular notice of him. 

Hard Times, Book I., Chap. 14. 

TIME— And the havoc of suflfering'. 

We all change, but that's with Time ; Time 
does his work honestly, and I don't mind him. 
A fig for Time, sir. Use him well, and he's a 
hearty fellow, and scorns to have you at a dis- 
advantage. But care and suffering (and those 
have changed her) are devils, sir — secret, 
stealthy, undermining devils — who tread down 
the brightest flowers in Eden, and do more havoc 
in a month than Time does in a year. 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 26. 

TIME— A g-entle parent. 

The looker-on was a round red-faced, sturdy 
yeoman, with a double chin, and a voice husky 
with good living, good sleeping, good humor, 
and good health. He was past the prime of 
life, but Father Time is not always a hard pa- 
rent, and, though he tarries for none of his chil- 
dren, often lays his hand lightly upon those 
who have used him well ; making them old 
men and women inexorably enough, but leaving 
their hearts and spirits young and in full vigor. 
With such people the gray head is but the in> 
pression of the old fellow's hand in giving them 
his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in 
the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. 

Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 2. 

TIME. 

On the brow of Dombey, Time and his bro- 
ther Care had set some marks, as on a tree that 
was to come down in good time — remorseless 
twins they are for striding through their hu- 
man forests, notching as they go — while the 
countenance of Son was crossed and recrossed 
with a thousand little creases, which the same 
deceitful Time would take delight in smooth- 
ing out and wearing away with the flat part of 
his scythe, as a preparation of the surface for 
his deeper operations. — Dombey <Sr» Son,Chap. i. 



The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a 
whole year. Through a whole year the winds 
and clouds had come and gone ; the ceaseless 
work of Time had been performed, in storm 
and sunshine. Through a whole year the tides 
of human chance and change had set in their 
allotted courses. — Dombey dr» Son, Chap. 58. 

TIME— Its chang-es. 

" The world has gone past me. I don't blame 
it ; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen 
are not the same as they used to be, apprentices 
are not the same, business is not the same, 
business commodities are not the same. Seven- 
eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an 
old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a 
street that is not the same as I remember it. I 
have fallen behind the time, and am too old to 
catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way 
ahead, confuses me." — Dombey vSr* Son. Chap. 4. 

TOBAOCO-CHEWINGh-In America. 

As Washington may be called the head-quar- 
ters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come 
when I must confess, without any disguise, that 



TOBACCO 4 

the prevalence of those two odious practices of 
chewing and expectorating began about this 
time to be anything but agreeable, and soon be- 
came most offensive and sickening. In all the 
public places of America this filthy custom is 
recognized. In the courts of law the judge has 
his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and 
the prisoner his ; while the jurymen and spec- 
tators are provided for, as so many men who in the 
course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. 
In the hospitals the students of medicine are 
requested, by notices upon the wall, to eject 
their tobacco-juice into the boxes provided for 
that purpose, and not to discolor the stairs. In 
public buildings, visitors are implored, through 
the same agency, to squirt the essence of their 
qui,ds, or " plugs," as I have heard them called 
by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweet- 
meat, into the national spittoons, and not about 
the bases of the marble columns. But in some 
parts this custom is inseparably mixed up with 
every meal and morning call, and with all the 
transactions of social life. The stranger who 
follows in the track I took myself will find it in 
its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its 
alarming recklessness, at "Washington. And let 
him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my 
shame), that previous tourists have exaggerated 
its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration 
of nastiness which cannot be outdone. 

On board this steamboat there were two young 
gentlemen, with shirt-collavs reversed as usual, 
and armed with very big walking-sticks, who 
planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at 
a distance of some four paces apart, took out 
their tobacco-boxes, and sat down opposite each 
other to chew. In less than a quarter of an 
hour's time, these hopeful youths had shed about 
them on the clean boards a copious shower of 
yellow rain ; clearing, by that means, a kind of 
magic circle, within whose limits no intruders 
dared to come, and which they never failed to 
refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry. 
This, being before breakfast, rather disposed 
me, I confess, to nausea ; but looking atten- 
tively at one of the expectorators, I plainly saw 
that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly 
uneasy himself A glow of delight came over 
me at this discovery ; and as I marked his face 
turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco 
in his left cheek quiver with his suppressed 
agony, while yet he spat and chewed and spat 
again, in emulation of his older friend, I could 
have fallen on his neck and implored him to go 
on for hours. — American Notes, Chap. 8. 

TOBACCO— Its use in America. 

The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, 
and its proceedings are conducted with much 
gravity and order. Both houses are handsomely 
carpeted ; but the state to which these carpets 
are reduced by the universal disregard of the 
spittoon with M'hich every honorable member 
is accommodated, and the extraordinary im- 
provements on the patterns which are squirted 
and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not 
admit of being described. I will merely ob- 
serve, that I strongly recommend all strangers 
not to look at the floor ; and if they happen to 
drop anything, though it be their purse, not to 
pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account. 

It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say 
the least, to see so many honorable members 



\% TOILETTE 

with swelled faces ; and it is scarcely less re- 
markable to discover that this appearance is 
caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive 
to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is 
strange enough, too, to see an honorable gentle- 
man leaning back in his tilted chair, with his 
legs on the desk before him, shaping a conve- 
nient " plug" with his penknife, and when it is 
quite ready for use, shooting the old one from 
his mouth, as from a popgun, and clapping the* 
new one in in its place. 

I was surprised to observe that even steady 
old chewers of great experience are not always 
good marksmen, which has rather inclined me 
to doubt that general proficiency with the rifle 
of which we have heard so much in England. 
Several gentlemen called upon me who, in the 
course of conversation, frequently missed the 
spittoon at five paces, and one (but he was cer- 
tainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for 
the open window, at three. On another occa- 
sion, when I dined out, and was sitting with two 
ladies and some gentlemen round a fire before 
dinner, one of the company fell short of the 
fireplace, six distinct times. I am disposed to 
think, however, that this was occasioned by his 
not aiming at that object, as there was a white 
marble hearth before the fender, wliich was 
more convenient, and may have suited his pur- 
pose better. — Ameiican Notes, Chap. 8. 

***** 

Either they carry their restlessness to such a 
pitch that they never sleep at all, or they expec- 
torate in dreams, which would be a remarkable 
mingling of the real and ideal. All night long, 
and every night, on this canal, there was a per- 
fect storm and tempest of spitting ; and once, 
my coat being in the very centre of a hurricane 
sustained by five gentlemen (which moved ver- 
tically, strictly carrying out Reid's Theory of the 
Law of Storms), I was fain the next morning to 
lay it on the deck, and rub it down with fair 
water before it was in a condition to be worn 
again. — American Notes, Chap. lo. 

TOILETTE-A boy's. 

With that, she pounced on me, like an eagle 
on a lamb, and my face was squeezed into 
wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put 
under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped, 
and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, and 
harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite 
beside myself (I may here remark that I sup- 
pose myself to be better acquainted than any 
living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wed- 
ding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the 
human countenance.) 

When my ablutions were completed, I was 
put into clean linen of the stiffest character, like 
a young penitent into sack-cloth, and was truss- 
ed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I 
was then delivered over to Wt. Pumblechook, 
who formally received me as if he were the 
sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that 
I knew he had been dying to make all along : 
" Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but especi- 
ally unto them which brought you up by hand !** 

" Good-by, Joe ! " 

" God bless you, Pip, old chap ! " 

I had never parted from him before, and what 
with my feelings and what with soap-suds, I 
could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. 
Great Expectations, Chap. 7. 



TOILETTE 



TOWN AND COXJNTBY 



TOILETTE— Of Miss Tippins. 

How the fascinating Tippins gets on when 
arraying herself for the bewilderment of the 
senses of men, is known only to the Graces and 
her maid ; but perhaps even that engaging crea- 
ture, though not reduced to the self-dependence 
of Twemlow, could dispense with a good deal of 
the trouble attendant on the daily restoration of 
her charms, seeing that as to her face and neck 
this adorable divinity is, as it were, a diurnal 
species of lobster — throwing off a shell every 
forenoon, and needing to keep in a retired spot 
until the new crust hardens. 

Our Mutual Friend^ Book II., Chap. i6. 

TOLERATION. 

What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration 
should be when we are right, to be so very plea- 
sant when we are wrong, and quite unable to 
demonstrate how we came to be invested with 
the privilege of exercising it ! 

Dombey (Sr* Son, Chap. 5. 

TOMBSTONES. 

The court brought them to a churchyard ; a 
paved square court, with a raised bank of earth 
about breast high, in the middle, enclosed by 
iron rails. Here, conveniently and healthfully 
elevated above the level of the living, were the 
dead, and the tombstones ; some of the latter 
droopingly inclined from the perpendicular, as 
if they were ashamed of the lies they told. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 15. 

TOURISTS-EngUsh. 

Mr. Davis always had a snuff-colored great- 
coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in 
his hand, and had a slow curiosity constantly 
devouring him, which prompted him to do ex- 
traordinary things, such as taking the covers off 
urns in tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if 
they were pickles — and tracing out inscriptions 
with the ferule of his umbrella, and saying, 
with intense thoughtfulness, " Here's a B you 
see, and there's a R, and this is the way we goes 
on in ; is it ! " His antiquarian habits occasion- 
ed his being frequently in the rear of the rest ; 
and one of the agonies of Mrs. Davis, and the 
party in general, was an ever-present fear that 
Davis would be lost. This caused them to 
scream for him, in the strangest places, and at 
the most improper seasons. And when he came, 
slowly emerging out of some Sepulchre or other, 
like a peaceful Ghoule, saying, " Here I am ! " 
Mrs. Davis invariably replied, " You'll be buried 
alive in a foreign country, Davis, and it's no use 
trying to prevent you ! " 

Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, pro- 
bably, been brought from London in about nine 
or ten days. Eighteen hundred years ago, the 
Roman legions under Claudius protested against 
being led into Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country, 
urging that it lay beyond the limits of the 
world. — Pictures from Italy. 

TOURISTS. 

The whole body of travellers seemed to be a 
collection of voluntary human sacrifices, bound 
hand and foot, and delivered over to Mr. Eustace 
and his attendants, to have the entrails of their 
intellects arranged according to the taste of that 
sacred priesthood. Through the rugged remains 
of temples and tombs and palaces and senate 



halls and theatres and amphitheatres of ancient 
days, hosts of tongue-tied and blindfolded mo- 
derns were carefully feeling their way, inces- 
santly repeating Prunes and Prism, in the en- 
deavor to set their lips according to the received 
form. Mrs. General was in her pure element. 
Nobody had an opinion. There was a forma- 
tion of surface going on around her on an 
amazing scale, and it had not a flaw of courage 
or honest free speech in it. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 7. 

TOWN AND COUNTRY SCENERY-The 
journey of Little Nell. 

She felt that to bid farewell to anybody now, 
and most of all to him who had been so faithful 
and so true, was more than she could bear. It 
was enough to leave dumb things behind, and 
objects that were insensible both to her love 
and sorrow. To have parted from her only 
other friend upon the threshold of that wild 
journey, would have wrung her heart indeed. 

Why is it that we can better bear to part in 
spirit than in body, and while we have the for- 
titude to act farewell, have not the nerve to say 
it ? On the eve of long voyages or an absence 
of many years, friends who are tenderly attached 
will separate with the usual look, the usual press- 
ure of the hand, planning one final interview 
for the morrow, while each well knows that it is 
but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that 
one word, and that the meeting will never be. 
Should possibilities be worse to bear than cer- 
tainties ? We do not shun our dying friends ; 
the not having distinctly taken leave of one 
among them, whom we left in all kindness and 
affection, will often embitter the whole remain- 
der of a life. 

The town was glad with morning light ; places 
that had shown ugly and distrustful all night 
long, now wore a smile ; and sparkling sunbeams 
dancing on chamber windows, and twinkling 
through blind and curtain before sleepers' eyes, 
shed light even into dreams, and chased away 
the shadows of the night. Birds in hot rooms, 
covered up close and dark, felt it was morning, 
and chafed and grew restless in their little cells ; 
bright-eyed mice crept back to their tiny homes 
and nestled timidly together ; the sleek house- 
cat, forgetful of her prey, sat winking at the 
rays of sun starting through keyhole and cran- 
ny of the door, and longed for her stealthy run 
and warm sleek bask outside. The nobler 
beasts confined in dens, stood motionless be- 
hind their bars, and gazed on fluttering boughs, 
and sunshine peeping through some little win- 
dow, with eyes in which old forests gleamed — 
then trod impatiently the track their prisoned 
feet had worn — and stopped and gazed again. 
Men in their dungeons stretched their cramp 
cold limbs and cursed the stone that no bright 
sky could warm. The flowers that slept by night, 
opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the 
day. The light, creation's mind, was every- 
where, and all things owned its power. 

The two pilgrims, often pressing each other's 
hands, or exchanging a smile or cheerful look, 
pursued their way in silence. Bright and happy 
as it was, there was something solemn in the 
long, deserted streets, from which, like bodies 
without souls, all habitual character and expres- 
sion had departed, leaving but one dead uni- 
form repose, that made them all alike. All was 



TOWN AND COXTNTRY 



484 



TOWN 



so still at that early hour, that the few pale peo- 
ple whom they met seemed as much unsuited to 
the scene, as the sickly lamp which had been 
here and there left burning, was powerless and 
faint in the full glory of the sun. 

Before they had penetrated very far into the 
labyrinth of men's abodes which yet lay between 
them and the outskirts, this aspect began to melt 
away, and noise and bustle to usurp its place. 
Some straggling carts and coaches rumbling by, 
first broke the charm, then others came, then 
others yet more active, then a crowd. The won- 
der was, at first, to see a tradesman's room win- 
dow open, but it was a rare thing to see one 
closed ; then, smoke rose slowly from the chim- 
neys, and sashes were thrown up to let in air, 
and doors were opened, and servant girls, look- 
ing lazily in all directions but their brooms, 
scattered brown clouds of dust into the eyes of 
shrinking passengers, or listened disconsolately 
to milkmen who spoke of country fairs.and told of 
wagons in the mews, with awnings and all things 
complete, and gallant swains to boot, which 
another hour would see upon their journey. 

This quarter passed, they came upon the 
haunts of commerce and great traffic, where 
many people were resorting, and business was 
already rife. The old man looked about him 
with a startled and bewildered gaze, for these 
were places that he hoped to shun. He pressed 
his finger on his lip, and drew the child along 
by narrow courts and winding ways, nor did he 
seem at ease until they had left it far behind, 
often casting a backward look towards it, mur- 
muring that ruin and self-murder were crouch- 
ing in every street, and would follow if they 
scented them ; and that they could not fly too fast. 

Again, this quarter passed, they came upon a 
straggling neighborhood, where the mean houses 
parcelled off in rooms, and windows patched 
with rags and paper, told of the populous pov- 
erty that sheltered there. The shops sold goods 
that only poverty could buy, and sellers and 
buyers were pinched and griped alike. Here 
were poor streets where faded gentility essayed 
with scanty space and shipwrecked means to 
make its last feeble stand, but tax-gatherer and 
creditor came there as elsewhere, and the pov- 
erty that yet faintly struggled was hardly less 
squalid and manifest than that which had long 
ago submitted and given up the game. 

This was a wide, wide track — for the humble 
followers of the camp of wealth pitch their tents 
round about it for many a mile — but its charac- 
ter was still the same. Damp, rotten houses, 
many to Ijet, many yet building, many half-built 
and mouldering away — lodgings, where it would 
be hard to tell which needed pity most, those 
who let or those who came to take — children, 
scantily fed ai)d clothed, spread over every street, 
and sprawling in the dust — scolding mothers, 
stamping their slipshod feet with noisy threats 
upon the pavement — shabby fathers, hurrying 
with dispirited looks to the occupation which 
brought them " daily bread," and little more — 
mangling- women, washerwomen, cobblers, tai- 
lors, chandlers, driving their trades in parlors 
and kitchens and back rooms and garrets, and 
sometimes all of them under the same roof — 
brick-fields skirting gardens paled with staves 
of old casks, or timber pillaged from houses 
burned down, and blackened and blistered by 
the flames — mounds of dock-weed, nettles, coarse 



grass and oyster-shells, heaped in rank confu- 
sion — small dissenting chapels to teach, with no 
lack of illustration, the miseries of Earth, and 
plenty of new churches, erected with a little 
superfluous wealth, to show the way to Heaven. 
I At length these streets becoming more strag- 
gling yet, dwindled and dwindled away, until 
i there were only small garden-patches bordering 
the road, with many a summer-house innocent 
I of paint and built of old timber or some frag- 
ments of a boat, green as the tough cabbage- 
stalks that grew about it, and grottoed at the 
seams with toad-stools and tight sticking snails. 
To these succeeded pert cottages, two and two, 
with plots of ground in front, laid out in angu- 
lar beds with stiff box borders and narrow 
paths between, where footstep never strayed to 
make the gravel rough. Then came the public- 
house, freshly painted in green and white, 
with tea-gardens and a bowling-green, spurn- 
ing its old neighbor with the horse-trough 
where the wagons stopped ; then, fields ; and 
then, some houses, one by one, of goodly size 
with lawns, some even with a lodge where 
dwelt a porter and his wife. Then came a 
turnpike ; then, fields again with trees and hay- 
stacks ; then, a hill ; and on the top of that, 
the traveller might stop, and — looking back at 
old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke, 
its cross peeping above the cloud (if the day 
were clear), and glittering in the sun ; and 
casting his eyes upon the Babel out of which it 
grew until he traced it down to the furthest 
outposts of the invading army of bricks and 
mortar whose station lay for the present nearly 
at his feet — might feel at last that he was clear 
of London. 

Near such a spot as this, and in a pleasant 
field, the old man and his little guide (if guide 
she were, who knew not whither they were 
bound) sat down to rest. She had had the pre- 
caution to furnish her basket with some slices 
of bread and meat, and here they made their 
frugal breakfast. 

The freshness of the day, the singing of the 
birds, the beauty of the waving grass, the deep 
green leaves, the wild flowers, and the thous- 
and exquisite scents and sounds that floated in 
the air, — deep joys to most of us, but most of 
all to those whose life is in a crowd or who live 
solitarily in great cities as in the bucket of a 
human well, — sunk into their breasts and made 
them very glad. The child had repeated her 
artless prayers once that morning, more earn- 
estly perhaps than she had ever done in all 
her life, but as she felt all this, they rose to her 
lips again. The old man took off his hat — he 
had no memory for the words — but he said 
amen, and that they were very good. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 15. 

TOWN— A factory. 

A long suburb of red brick houses, — some 
with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust 
and factory-smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, 
and coarse, rank flowers, and where the strug- 
gling vegetation sickened and sank under the 
hot breath of kiln and furnace, making them by 
its presence seem yet more blighting and un- 
wholesome than in the town itself, — a long, flat, 
straggling suburb passed, they came, by slow 
degrees, upon a cheerless region, where not 
blade of grass was seen to grow, where not 



slow M 
lot a ■ 
lot a I 



TOWNS 



485 



TOWN 



bud put forth its promise in the spring, where 
notliing green could live but on the surface of 
the stagnant pools, which here and there lay 
idly sweltering by the black road-side. 

Advancing more and more into the shadow 
of this mournful place, its dark depressing in- 
fluence stole upon their spirits, and filled them 
with a dismal gloom. On eveiy side, and far as 
the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall 
chimneys, crowding on each other, and present- 
ing that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly 
form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, 
poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the 
light, and made foul the melancholy air. On 
mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only 
by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house 
roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like 
tortured creatures ; clanking their iron chains, 
shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time 
as though in torment unendurable, and making 
the ground tremble with their agonies. Dis- 
mantled houses here and there appeared, tot- 
tering to the earth, propped up by fragments of 
others that had fallen down, unroofed, window- 
less, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited. 
Men, women, children, wan in their looks and 
ragged in attire, tended the engines, fed their 
tributary fire, begged upon the road, or scowled 
half-naked from the doorless houses. Then, 
came more of the wrathful monsters, whose like 
they almost seemed to be in their wildness and 
their untamed air, screeching and turning round 
and round again ; and still, before, behind, and 
to the right and left, was the same interminable 
perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in 
their black vomit, blasting all things living or in- 
animate, shutting out the face of day, and closing 
in on all these horrors with a dense dark cloud. 

But, night-time in this dreadful spot ! — night, 
when the smoke was changed to fire ; when 
every chimney spirted up its flame ; and places 
that had been dark vaults all day, now shone 
red-hot, with figures moving to and fro within 
their blazing jaws, and calling to one another 
with hoarse cries — night, when the noise of 
every strange machine was aggravated by the 
darkness ; when the people near them looked 
wilder and more savage ; when bands of unem- 
ployed laborers paraded the roads, or clustered 
by torch-light round their leaders, who told 
them, in stern' language, of their wrongs, and 
urged them on to frightful cries and threats ; 
when maddened men, armed with sword and 
firebrand, spurning the tears and prayers of 
women who would restrain them, rushed forth 
on errands of terror and destruction, to work no 
ruin half so surely as their own — night, when 
carts came rumbling by, filled with rude coffins 
(for contagious disease and death had been busy 
with the living crops) ; when oq^hans cried, and 
distracted women shrieked and followed in their 
wake — night, when some called for bread, and 
some for drink to drown their cares, and some 
with tears, and some with staggering feet, and 
some with bloodshot eyes, went brooding home 
— night, which, unlike the night that Heaven 
sends on earth, brought with it no peace, nor 
quiet, nor signs of blessed sleep — who shall tell 
the terrors of the night to the young wandering 
child \—Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 45. 

TOWNS— Pickwick's description of. 

" The principal productions of these towijs," 



says Mr. Pickwick, " appear to be soldiers, sail- 
ors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard 
men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale 
in the public streets are marine stores, hard- 
bake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters. The streets 
present a lively and animated appearance, occa- 
sioned chiefly by the conviviality of the militaiy. 
It is truly delightful to a philanthropic mind, to 
see these gallant men staggering along under 
the influence of an overflow, both of animal 
and ardent spirits ; more especially when we 
remember that the following them about, and 
jesting with them, affords a cheap and innocent 
amusement for the boy population. Nothing 
(adds Mr. Pickwick) can exceed their good hu- 
mor. It was but the day before my arrival that 
one of them had been most grossly insulted in 
the house of a publican. The bar-maid had 
positively refused to draw him any more liquor ; 
in return for which he had (merely in playful- 
ness) drawn his bayonet, and wounded the girl 
in the shoulder. And yet this fine fellow was 
the very first to go down to the house next 
morning, and express his readiness to overlook 
the matter, and forget what had occurred. 

" The consumption of tobacco in these towns 
(continues Mr. Pickwick) must be very great ; 
and the smell which pervades the streets must 
be exceedingly delicious to those who are ex- 
tremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller 
might object to the dirt which is their leading 
characteristic ; but to those who view it as an 
indication of traffic and commercial prosperity, 
it is truly gratifying." — Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

TOWN— Approach to a mamifactiiringr. 

They had, for some time, been gradually ap- 
proaching the place for whicli they were bound. 
The M'ater had become thicker and dirtier ; 
other barges, coming from it, passed them fre- 
quently ; the paths of coal-ash and huts of star- 
ing brick, marked the vicinity of some great 
manufacturing town ; while scattered streets 
and houses, and smoke from distant furnaces, 
indicated that they were already in the out- 
skirts. Now, the clustered roofs, and piles of 
buildings, trembling with the working of en- 
gines, and dimly resounding with their shrielcs 
and throbbings ; the tall chimneys vomiting 
forth a black vapor, which hung in a dense ill- 
favored cloud above the housetops and filled the 
air with gloom ; the clank of hammers beating 
upon iron, the roar of busy streets and noisy 
crowds, gradually augmenting until all the va- 
rious sounds blended into one and none was 
distinguishable for itself, announced the termina- 
tion of their journey. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 43. 

TOWN— A lazy. 

It was a pretty large town, with an open 
square which they were crawling slowly across, 
and in the middle of which was the Town-Hall, 
with a clock-tower and a weather-cock. There 
were houses of stone, houses of red brick, 
houses of yellow brick, houses of lath and plas 
ter ; and houses of wood, many of them very 
old, with withered faces carved upon the beams, 
and staring down into the street. These had 
very little winking windows, and low-arched 
doors, and, in some of the narrower ways, quite 
overhung the pavement. The streets were 
very clean, very sunny, very empty, and very 



TOY-MAKER 



486 



TRANSCENDENTALISM 



dull. A few idle men lounged about the two 
inns, and the empty market-place, and the 
tradesmen's doors, and some old people were 
dozing in chairs outside an alms-house wall ; 
but scarcely any passengers who seemed bent 
on going anywhere, or to have any object in 
view, went by ; and if perchance some straggler 
did. his footsteps echoed on the hot bright 
pavement for minutes afterwards. Nothing 
seemed to be going on but the clocks, and they 
had such drowsy faces, such heavy lazy hands, 
and such cracked voices, that they surely must 
have been too slow. The very dogs were all 
asleep, and the flies, drunk with moist sugar in 
the grocer's shop, forgot their wings and brisk- 
ness, and baked to death in dusty comers of 
the window. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 28. 

TOY-MAKER— His home. 

Caleb and his daughter were at work togeth- 
er in their usual working-room, which served 
them for their ordinary living-room as well ; 
and a strange place it was. There were houses 
in it, finished and unfinished, for Dolls of all 
stations in life. Suburban tenements for Dolls 
of moderate means ; kitchens and single apart- 
ments for Dolls of the lower classes ; capital 
town residences for Dolls of high estate. Some 
of these establishments were already furnished 
according to estimate, with a view to the con- 
venience of Dolls of limited income ; others 
could be fitted on the most expensive scale, at a 
moment's notice, from whole shelves of chairs 
and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and upholstery. 
The nobility and gentry and public in general, 
for whose accommodation these tenements were 
designed, lay, here and there, in baskets, staring 
straight up at the ceiling ; but, in denoting their 
degrees in society, and confining them to their 
respective stations (which experience shows to 
be lamentably difficult in real life), the makers 
of these Dolls had far improved on Nature, who 
is often froward and perverse ; for they, not 
resting on such arbitrary marks as satin, -cotton- 
print, and bits of rag, had superadded striking 
personal diff"erences which allowed of no mis- 
take. Thus the Doll-lady of distinction had 
wax limbs of perfect symmetry ; but only she 
and her compeers. The next grade in the so- 
cial scale being made of leather, and the next of 
coarse linen stuff. As to the common-people, 
they had just so many matches out of tinder- 
boxes, for their arms and legs, and there they 
were — established in their sphere at once, be- 
yond the possibility of getting out of it. 

There were various other samples of his handi- 
craft besides Dolls, in Caleb Plummer's room. 
There were Noah's Arks, in which the Birds 
and Beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure 
you ; though they could be crammed in, any- 
how, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the 
smallest compass. By a bold poetical license, 
most of these Noah's Arks had knockers on the 
doors ; inconsistent appendages perhaps, as sug- 
gestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet a 
pleasant finish to the outside of the building. 
There were scores of melancholy little carts, 
which, when the wheels went round, performed 
most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, 
and other instruments of torture ; no end of 
cannon, shields, swords, spears, and guns. 
There were litlle tumblers in red breeches, in- 
cessantly swarming up high obstacles of red 



tape, and coming down, head first, on the other 
side ; and there were innumerable old gentle- 
men of respectable, not to say venerable appear- 
ance, insanely flying over horizontal pegs, in- 
serted, for the purpose, in their own street doors. 
There were beasts of all sorts ; horses, in parti- 
cular, of every breed, from the spotted barrel on 
four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to 
the thoroughbred rocker on his highest mettle. 
As it would have been hard to count the dozens 
upon dozens of grotesque figures that were ever 
ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the 
turning of a handle, so it would have been no 
easy task to mention any human folly, vice, or 
weakness, that had not its type, immediate or 
remote, in Caleb Plummer's room. And not in 
an exaggerated form, for very little handles will 
move men and women to as strange perform- 
ances as any Toy was ever made to undertake. 
Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2. 

TRADES— The eccentricity of. 

We will cite two or three cases in illustration 
of our meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epi- 
demic began to display itself among the linen- 
drapers and haberdashers. The primary symp- 
toms were an inordinate love of plate-glass, and 
a passion for gas-lights and gilding. The dis- 
ease gradually progressed, and at last attained 
a fearful height. Quiet dusty old shops in 
diflerent parts of town, were pulled down ; 
spacious premises with stuccoed fronts and gold 
letters, were erected instead ; floors were cover- 
ed with Turkey carpets ; roofs, supported by 
massive pillars ; doors, knocked into windows ; 
a dozen squares of glass into one ; one shop- 
man into a dozen ; and there is no knowing 
what would have been done, if it had not been 
fortunately discovered just in time, that the 
Commissioners of Bankrupts were as compe- 
tent to decide such cases as the Commissioners 
of Lunacy, and that a little confinement and 
gentle examination did wonders. The disease 
abated. It died away. A year or two of com- 
parative tranquillity ensued. Suddenly it burst 
out again among the chemists ; the symp- 
toms were the same, with the addition of a 
strong desire to stick the royal arms over the 
shop-door, and a great rage for mahogany, var- 
nish, and expensive floor-cloth. Then the ho- 
siers were infected, and began to pull down their 
shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The 
mania again died away, and the public began to 
congratulate themselves on its entire disappear- 
ance, when it burst forth with tenfold violence 
among the publicans, and keepers of "wine- 
vaults." From that moment it has spread among 
them with unprecedented rapidity, exhibiting a 
concatenation of all the previous symptoms ; 
onward it has rushed to every part of town, 
knocking down all the old public-houses, and 
depositing splendid mansions, stone balustrades, 
rosewood fittings, immense lamps, and illumi- 
nated clocks, at the comer of every street. 

Scenes, Chap. 22. 

TRANSCENDENTALISM-In America. 

The fruits of the earth have their growth in 
corruption. Out of the rottenness of these 
things there has sprung up in Boston a sect of 
philosophers known as Transcendentalists. On 
inquiring what this appellation might be sup- 
posed to signify, I was given to understand 



TRAVEL 



487 



TRAVEL 



that whatever was unintelligible would be cer- 
tainly transcendental. Not deriving much com- 
fort from this elucidation, I pursued the inquiry 
still further, and found that the Transcendental- 
ists are followers of my friend Mr. Carlyle, or, I 
should rather say, of a follower of his, Mr. Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has written 
a volume of Essays, in which, among much that 
is dreamy and fanciful (if he will pardon me for 
saying so), there is much more that is true and 
manly, honest and bold. Transcendentalism 
has its occasional vagaries (what school has 
not ?), but it has good healthful qualities in spite 
of them ; not least among the number a hearty 
disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to detect her 
in all the million varieties of her everlasting 
wardrobe. And therefore, if I were a Boston- 
ian, I think I would be a Transcendentalist. 
American Notes, Chap, 3. 

TRAVEL— The attractions of higliway. 

What a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of 
travelling, to lie inside that slowly-moving moun- 
tain, listening to the tinkling of the horses' bells, 
the occasional smacking of the carter's whip, the 
smooth rolling of the great broad wheels, the 
rattle of the harness, the cheery good-nights of 
passing travellers jogging past on little short- 
stepped horses — all made pleasantly indistinct 
by the thick awning, which seemed made for 
lazy listening under, till one fell asleep ! The 
very going to sleep, still with an indistinct idea, 
as the head jogged to and fro upon the pillow, 
of moving onward with no trouble or fatigue, 
and hearing all these sounds like dreamy music, 
lulling to the senses — and the slow waking up, 
and finding one's self staring out through the 
breezy curtain half-opened in the front, far up 
into the cold bright sky with its countless stars, 
and downward at the driver's lantern, dancing 
on like its namesake Jack of the swamps and 
marshes, and sideways at the dark grim trees, 
and forward at the long bare road, rising up, 
up, up, until it stopped abruptly at a sharp high 
ridge as if there were no more road, and all be- 
yond was sky — and the stopping at the inn to 
bait, and being helped out, and going into a 
room with fire and candles, and winking very 
much, and being agreeably reminded that the 
night was cold, and anxious for very comfort's 
sake to think it colder than it was ! — What a 
delicious journey was that journey in the w^agon. 

Then the going on again — so fresh at first, 
and shortly afterwards so sleepy. The waking 
from a sound nap as the mail came dashing past 
like a highway comet, with gleaming lamps and 
rattling hoofs, and visions of a guard behind, 
standing up to keep his feet warm, and of a gen- 
tleman in a fur cap opening his eyes and look- 
ing wild and stupefied — the stopping at the 
turnpike, where the man was gone to bed, and 
knocking at the door until he answered with a 
smothered shout from under the bed-clothes in 
the little room above, where the faint light was 
burning, and presently came down, night-capped 
and shivering, to throw the gate wide open, and 
wish all wagons off the road except by day. 
The cold sharp interval between night and 
morning — the distant streak of light widening 
and spreading, and turning from gray to white, 
and from white to yellow, and from yellow to 
burning red — the presence of day, with all its 
cheerfulness and life — men and horses at the 



plough — birds in the trees and hedges, and boys 
in solitary fields, frightening them away with 
rattles. The coming to a town — people busy 
in the markets ; light carts and chaises round 
the tavern yard ; tradesmen standing at their 
doors ; men running horses up and down the 
street for sale ; pigs plunging and grunting in 
the dirty distance, getting off with long strings 
at their legs, running into clean chemists' shops 
and being dislodged with brooms by 'prentices ; 
the night coach changing horses — the passen- 
gers cheerless, cold, ugly, and discontented, with 
three months' growth of hair in one night — the 
coachnian fresh as from a band-box, and exquis- 
itely beautiful by contrast : — so much bustle, 
so many things in motion, such a variety of in- 
cidents — ^when was there a journey with so many 
delights as that journey in the wagon ? 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 46 

TRAVEL— Scenes of. 

Among the day's unrealities would be roads 
where the bright red vines were looped and 
garlanded together on trees for many miles ; 
woods of olives ; white villages and towns on 
hill-sides, lovely without, but frightful in their 
dirt and poverty within ; crosses by the way ; 
deep blue lakes with fairy islands, and cluster- 
ing boats with awnings of bright colors and 
sails of beautiful forms ; vast piles of building 
mouldering to dust ; hanging-gardens where 
the weeds had grown so strong that their stems, 
like wedges driven home, had split the arch and 
rent the wall ; stone-terraced lanes, with the 
lizards running into and out of every chink ; 
beggars of all sorts everywhere : pitiful, pictur- 
esque, hungry, merry: children beggars and 
aged beggars. Often, at posting-houses, and 
other halting-places, these miserable creatures 
would appear to her the only realities of the 
day ; and many a time, when the money she 
had brought to give them was all given away, 
she would sit with her folded hands, thought- 
fully looking after some diminutive girl leading 
her gray father, as if the sight reminded her of 
something in the days that were gone. 

Again, there would be places where they 
stayed the week together, in splendid rooms, 
had banquets every day, rode out among heaps 
of wonders, walked through miles of palaces, 
and rested in dark corners of great churches ; 
where there were winking lamps of gold and 
silver among pillars and arches ; kneeling fig- 
ures dotted about at confessionals and on the 
pavements ; where there was the mist and scent 
of incense ; where there were pictures, fantas- 
tic images, gaudy altars, great heights and dis- 
tances, all softly lighted through stained glass, 
and the massive curtains that hung in the door- 
ways. From these cities they would go on 
again, by the roads of vines and olives, through 
squalid villages where there was not a hovel 
without a gap in its filthy walls, not a window 
with a whole inch of glass or paper; where 
there seemed to be nothing to support life, 
nothing to eat, nothing to make, nothing to 
grow, nothing to hope, nothing to do but die. 

Again, they would come to whole towns of 
palaces, whose proper inmates were all banish- 
ed, and which were all changed into barracks : 
troops of idle soldiers leaning out of the state- 
windows, where their accoutrements hung dry- 
ing on the marble architecture, and showing 



TRAVEL 



488 



TRAVEL 



to the mind like hosts of rats who were happily 
eating away the props of the edifices that sup- 
ported them, and must soon, with them, be 
smashed on the heads of the other swarms of 
soldiers, and the swarms of priests, and the 
swarms of spies, who were all the ill-looking 
population left to be ruined, in the streets below. 
Little DorHt, Book II., Chap. 3. 

TRAVEL— The associations of. 

When the wind is blowing and the sleet or 
rain is driving against the dark windows, I love 
to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read 
in books of voyage and travel. Such books 
have had a strong fascination for my mind 
from my earliest childhood ; and I wonder it 
should have come to pass that I never have 
been round the world, never have been ship- 
wrecked, ice-environed, tomahawked, or eaten. 

Sitting on my ruddy hearth in the twilight 
of New Year's Eve, I find incidents of travel 
rise around me from all the latitudes and longi- 
tudes of the globe. They observe no order or 
sequence, but appear and vanish as they will — 
" come like shadows, so depart." Columbus, 
alone upon the sea with his disaffected crew, 
looks over the waste of waters from his high sta- 
tion on the poop of his ship, and sees the first 
uncertain glimmer of the light, " rising and fall- 
ing with the waves, like a torch in the bark 
of some fisherman," which is the shining star of 
a new world. Bruce is caged in Abyssinia, sur- 
rounded by the gory horrors which shall often 
startle him out of his sleep at home when years 
have passed away. Franklin, come to the end 
of his unhappy overland journey — would that it 
had been his last ! — lies perishing of hunger 
with his brave companions : each emaciated 
figure stretched upon its miserable bed without 
the power to rise : all dividing the weary days 
between their prayers, their remembrances of 
the dear ones at home, and conversation on the 
pleasures of eating ; the last-named topic being 
ever present to them, likewise, in their dreams. 
All the African travellers, way-worn, solitary, 
and sad, submit themselves again to drunken, 
murderous, man-selling despots, of the lowest 
order of humanity ; and Mungo Park, fainting 
under a tree and succored by a woman, grate- 
fully remembers how his Good Samaritan has 
always come to him in woman's shape, the wide 
world over. 

The Long Voyage. Reprinted Pieces. 

TRAVEL— Experiences of. 

As I wait here on board the night packet for 
the South Eastern Train to come down with 
the Mail, Dover appears to me to be illuminated 
for some intensely aggravating festivity in my 
personal dishonor. All its noises smack of 
taunting praises of the land, and dispraises of 
the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The 
drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I 
know they would rattle taunts against me for 
having my unsteady footing on this slippery 
deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine 
Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, as if 
with derision. The distant dogs of Dover bark 
at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were 
Richard the Third. 

A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come glid- 
ing down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness 
cf motion rendered more smooth by the heaving 



of the boat. The sea makes noises against the 
pier, as !f several hippopotami were lapping at 
it, and were prevented by circumstances over 
which they had no control from drinking peace- 
ably. We, the boat, become violently agitated, 
— rumble, hum. cream, roar, and establish an 
immense family washing-day at each paddle- 
box. Bright pan nes bre^k out in the train as 
the doors of the post-office vans are opened ; 
and instantly stooing figures with sacks upon 
their backs begin •. ) be beheld among the piles, 
descending, as it would seem, in ghostly pro- 
cession to Davy J )nes's Locker. The passen- 
gers come on boa d, — a few shadowy French 
men, with hat-boj;?s, shaped like the stoppers 
of gigantic case-bot les ; a few shadowy Germans 
in immense fur coa. a and boots ; a few shadowy 
Englishmen prepaiid for the worst, and pre- 
tending not to expei ■: it. I cannot disguise from 
my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that 
we are a body of 01 toasts ; that the attendants 
on us are as scant in number as may serve to 
get rid of us with the least possible delay ; that 
there are no night-lo mgers interested in us ; 
that the unwilling lanips shiver and shudder at 
us ; that the sole objett is to commit us to the 
deep and abandon us Lo, the two red eyes 
glaring in increasing distance, and then the very 
train itself has gone to bed before we are off. 
Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 17. 

TRAVEL— Preparations for. 

Who has not experienced the miseries inevi- 
tably consequent upon a summons to under- 
take a hasty journey ? You receive an intima- 
tion from your place of business — wherever that 
may be, or whatever you may be — that it will be 
necessary to leave town without delay. You and 
your family are forthwith thrown into a state of 
tremendous excitement ; an express is immedi- 
ately despatched to the washerwoman's ; every- 
body is in a bustle ; and you, yourself, with a 
feeling of dignity which you cannot altogether 
conceal, sally forth to the booking-office to se- 
cure your place. Here a painful consciousness 
of your own unimportance first rushes on your 
mind — the people are as cool and collected as 
if nobody were going out of town, or as if a 
journey of a hundred odd miles were a mere 
nothing. You enter a mouldy-looking room, 
ornamented with large posting-bills ; the greater 
part of the place enclosed behind a huge lum- 
bering rough counter, and fitted up with recesses 
that look like the dens of the smaller animals in 
a travelling menagerie, without the bars. Some 
half-dozen people are " booking " brown-paper 
parcels, which one of the clerks flings into the 
aforesaid recesses with an air of recklessness 
which you, remembering the new carpet-bag you 
bought in the morning, feel considerably annoyed 
at ; porters, looking like so many Atlases, keep 
rushing in and out, with large packages on their 
shoulders ; and while you are waiting to make 
the necessary inquiries, you wonder what on 
earth the booking-office clerks can have been 
before they were booking-office clerks ; one of 
them, with his pen behind his ear, and his hands 
behind him, is standing in front of the fire, like 
a full-length portrait of Napoleon ; the other, 
with his hat half off his head, enters the passen- 
gers' names in the books with a coolness which 
is inexpressibly provoking ; and the villain whis- 
ties — actually whistles— while a man asks him 



TRAVELLINa 



489 



TRAVELLERS 



what the fare is outside — all the way to Holy- 
head !^in frosty weather, too ! They are clearly 
an isolated race, evidently possessing no sympa- 
thies or feelings in common with the rest of 
mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having 
paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire — " What 
time will it be necessary for me to be here in 
the morning ? " — " Six o'clock," replies the whis- 
tler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have 
just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the 
desk. " Rather before than arter," adds the man 
with the semi-roasted unmentionables, with just 
as much ease and complacency as if the whole 
world got out of bed at five. You turn into the 
street, ruminating as you bend your steps home- 
wards on the extent to which men become hard- 
ened in cruelty, by custom. — Scenes^ Chap. 15. 

TRAVELLING— In imag-ination. 

There are not many places that I find it more 
agreeable to revisit, when I am in an idle mood, 
than some places to which I have never been. 
For my acquaintance with those spots is of such 
long standing, and has ripened into an intimacy 
of so affectionate a nature, that I take a particu- 
lar interest in assuring myself that they are un- 
changed. 

I never was in Robinson Crusoe's Island, yet 
I frequently return there. The colony he estab- 
lished on it soon faded away, and it is unin- 
habited by any descendants of the grave and 
courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the 
other mutineers, and hiis relapsed into its origi- 
nal condition. Not a twig of its wicker houses 
remains, its goats have long run wild again, its 
screaming parrots would darken the sun with a 
cloud of many flaming colors if a gun were fired 
there, no face is ever reflected in the waters of 
the little creek which Friday swam across when 
pursued by his two brother cannibals with 
sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes 
with other travellers who have similarly revisit- 
ed the Island, and conscientiously inspected it, 
I have satisfied myself that it contains no ves- 
tige of Mr. Atkins's domesticity or theology ; 
though his track on the memorable evening of 
his landing to set his captain ashore, when he 
was decoyed about and round about until it was 
dark, and his boat was stove, and his strength 
and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to be traced. 
So is the hill-top on which Robinson was struck 
dumb with joy when the reinstated captain 
pointed to the ship, riding within half a mile of 
the shore, that was to bear him away, in the 
nine-and-twentieth year of his seclusion in that 
lonely place. So is the sandy beach on which 
the memorable footstep was impressed, and 
where the savages hauled up their canoes, when 
they came ashore for those dreadful public din- 
ners, which led to a dancing worse than speech- 
making. So is the cave where the flaring eyes 
of the old goat made such a goblin appearance 
in the dark. So is the site of the hut where 
Robinson lived with the dog, and the parrot, and 
the cat, and where he endured those first agonies 
of solitude, which — strange to say — never in- 
volved any ghostly fancies ; a circumstance so 
very remarkable, that perhaps he left out some- 
thing in writing his record ? Round hundreds 
of such objects, hidden in the dense tropical 
foliage, the tropical sea breaks evermore ; and 
over them the tropical sky, saving in the short 
rainy season, shines bright and cloudless. 



I was never in the robbers' cave, where Gil 
Bias lived ; but I often go back there and find 
the trap- door just as heavy to raise as it used to 
be while that wicked old disabled Black lies 
everlastingly cursing in bed. I was never in 
Don Quixote's study, where he read his books 
of chivalry until he rose and hacked at imagin- 
ary giants, and then refreshed himself with great 
draughts of water ; yet you couldn't move a 
book in it without my knowledge or with my 
consent. I was never (thank Heaven !) in com- 
pany with the little old woman who hobbled 
out of the chest, and told the merchant Abudah 
to go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes ; 
yet I make it my business to know that she is 
well preserved and as intolerable as ever. I 
was never at the school where the boy Horatio 
Nelson got out of bed to steal the pearS, not be- 
cause he wanted any, but because every other 
boy was afraid ; yet I have several times been 
back to this Academy to see him let down out 
of window with a sheet. So with Damascus, 
and Bagdad, and Brobingnag (which has the 
curious fate of being usually misspelt when 
written), and Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, 
and Abyssinia, and the Ganges, and the North 
Pole, and many hundreds of places — I was 
never at them ; yet it is an affair of my life to 
keep them intact, and I am always going 
back to them. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 15. 

TRAVELLER— Bagstock as a. 

The Native had previously packed, in all 
possible and impossible parts of Mr. Dombey's 
chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quan- 
tity of carpet-bags and small portmanteaus, no 
less apoplectic in appearance than the Major 
himself ; and having filled his own pockets with 
Seltzer water. East India sherry, sandwiches, 
shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any 
or all of which light baggage the Major might 
require at any instant of the journey, he an- 
nounced that everything was ready. To com- 
plete the equipment of this unfortunate foreigner 
(currently believed to be a prince in his own 
country), when he took his seat in the rumble 
by the side of Mr. Towlinson, a pile of the 
Major's cloaks and great-coats was hurled upon 
him by the landlord, who aimed at him from 
the pavement with those great missiles like a 
Titan, and so covered him up, that he proceeded 
in a living tomb to the railroad station. 

Dotnbey ^ Son, Chap. 20. 

TRAVELLING-By twilight. 

The savage herdsmen and the fierce- looking 
peasants, who had chequered the way while the 
light lasted, had all gone down with the sun, 
and left the wilderness blank. At some turns 
of the road, a pale flare on the horizon, like an 
exhalation from the ruin-sown land, showed that 
the city was yet far off"; but this poor relief was 
rare and short-lived. The carriage dipped down 
again into a hollow of the black, dry sea, and 
for a long time there was nothing visible save 
its petrified swell and the gloomy sky. 

LiMle DotTit, Book II., Chap. 1 9. 

TRAVELLERS— Unsociable. 

There are three meals a day. Brcikfast at 
seven, dinner at half past twelve, supper about 



TRAVELLER 



490 



TREES 



»ix. At each there are a great many small 
dishes and plates upon the table, with very little 
in them ; so that, although there is every ap- 
pearance of a mighty " spread," there is seldom 
really more than a joint ; except for those who 
fancy slices of beet-roots, shreds of dried beef, 
complicated entanglements of yellow pickle, 
maize, Indian coi-n, apple-sauce, and pumpkin. 

Some people fancy all these little dainties to- 
gether (and sweet preserves beside), by way of 
relish to their roast pig. They are generally 
those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat 
unheard-of quantities of hot corn-bread (almost 
as good for the digestion as a kneaded pin- 
cushion) for breakfast and for supper. Those 
who do not observe this custom, and who help 
themselves several times instead, usually suck 
their knives and forks meditatively, until they 
have decided what to take next ; then pull them 
out of their mouths, put them in the dish, help 
themselves, and fall to work again. At dinner 
there is nothing to drink upon the table, but 
great jugs full of cold water. Nobody says any- 
thing at any meal to anybody. All the passen- 
gers are very dismal, and seem to have tremen- 
dous secrets weighing on their minds. There is 
no conversation, no laughter, no cheerfulness, 
no sociality, except in spitting ; and that is done 
in silent fellowship round the stove when the 
meal is over. Every man sits down, dull and 
languid, swallows his fare as if breakfasts, din- 
ners, and suppers were necessities of nature 
never to be coupled with recreation or enjoy- 
ment ; and, having bolted his food in a gloomy 
silence, bolts himself in the same state. But 
for these animal observances, you might suppose 
the whole male portion of the company to be 
the melancholy ghosts of departed book-keepers, 
who had fallen dead at the desk, such is their 
weary air of business and calculation. Under- 
takers on duty would be sprightly beside them ; 
and a collation of funeral-baked meats, in com- 
parison with these meals, would be a sparkling 
festivity. 

The people are all alike, too. There is no di- 
versity of character. They travel about on the 
same errands, say and do the same things in ex- 
actly the same manner, and follow in the same 
dull, cheerless round. All down the long table 
there is scarcely a man who is in anything differ- 
ent from his neighbor. It is quite a relief to 
have sitting opposite that little girl of fifteen 
with the loquacious chin ; who, to do her justice, 
acts up to it, and fully identifies Nature's hand- 
writing ; for, of all the small chatter-boxes that 
ever invaded the repose of drowsy ladies' cabins, 
she is the first and foremost. 

American Notes ^ Chap, li. 

TRAVELLER— The uncommercial. 

Allow me to introduce myself — first, nega- 
tively. 

No landlord is my friend and brother, no 
chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, 
no boots admires and envies me. No round of 
beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for 
me, no pigeon pie is especially made for me, no 
hotel advertisement is personally addressed to 
me, no hotel-room tapestried with great coats 
and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no 
house of public entertainment in the United 
Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its 
brandy or sherry. When I go upon my j ourneys 



I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill ; 
when I come home from my journeys I never get 
any commission. I know nothing about prices, 
and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how 
to wheedle a man into ordering something he 
doesn't want. As a town traveller I am never 
to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a 
young and volatile piano-forte van, and internal- 
ly like an oven in which a number of flat boxes 
are baking in layers. As a country traveller I 
am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to 
be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on 
the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid 
in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples. 

And yet — proceeding now to introduce my- 
self positively — I am both a town traveller and 
country traveller, and am always on the road. 
Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house 
of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a 
large connection in the fancy -goods way. Liter- 
ally speaking, I am always wandering here and 
there from my rooms in Covent Garden, Lon- 
don, — now about the city streets, now about the 
country by-roads, — seeing many little things, 
and some great things, which, because they in- 
terest me, I think may interest others. 

These are are my brief credentials as the Un- 
commercial Traveller. 

Uncommercial Traveller , Chap. i. 

TREES. 

As the elms bent to one another, like giants 
who were whispering secrets, and after a few 
seconds of such repose, fell into a violent flurry, 
tossing their wild arms about, as if their late 
confidences were really too wicked for their 
peace of mind, some weather-beaten, ragged old 
rooks'-nests burdening their higher branches, 
swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea. 

David Copper field. Chap. i. 



Some ancient trees before the house were still 
cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as the 
hoops and wigs and stiff skirts ; but their own 
allotted places in the great procession of the 
dead were not far off, and they would soon drop 
into them and go the silent way of the rest. 
Great Expectations, Chap. 33. 



The river has washed away its banks, and 
stately trees have fallen down into the stream. 
Some have been there so long that they are 
mere dry, grisly skeletons. Some have just top- 
pled over, and, having earth yet about their 
roots, are bathing their green heads in the river, 
and putting forth new shoots and branches. 
Some are almost sliding down, as you look at 
them. And some were drowned so long ago 
that their bleached arms start out from the mid- 
dle of the current, and seem to try to grasp the 
boat, and drag it under water. 

American Notes, Chap. il. 



The gaunt trees, whose branches waved grim- 
ly to and fro, as if in some fantastic joy at the 
desolation of the scene. 

Oliver Twist, Chap. 21. 



The trunk of one large tree, on which the ob- 
durate bark was knotted and overlapped like 
the hide of a rhinoceros or some kindred mon- 
ster of the ancient days before the flood. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 27. 



TBEES 



491 



TWILIGHT 



The eye was pained to see the stumps of 
great trees thickly strewn in every field of 
wheat, and seldom to lose the eternal swamp 
and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks 
and twisted branches steeped in its unwhole- 
some waters. It was quite sad and oppressive 
to come upon great tracts where settlers had 
been burning down the trees, and where their 
wounded bodies lay about, like those of mur- 
dered creatures, while here and there some 
charred and blackened giant reared aloft two 
withered arms, and seemed to call down curses 
on his foes. — American Notes, Chap. lo. 

TREES— Dead American. 

These stumps of trees are a curious feature in 
American travelling. The varying illusions they 
present to the unaccustomed eye, as it grows 
dark, are quite astonishing in their number and 
reality. Now there is a Grecian urn erected in 
the centre of a lonely field ; now there is a 
woman weeping at a tomb ; now a very com- 
monplace old gentleman in a white waistcoat, 
with a thumb thrust into each armhole of his 
coat ; now a student poring on a book ; now a 
crouching negro ; now a horse, a dog, a can- 
non, an armed man, a hunchback throwing off 
his cloak and stepping forth into the light. 
They were often as entertaining to me as so 
many glasses in a magic lantern, and never took 
their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to force 
themselves upon me, whether I would or no ; 
and, strange to say, I sometimes recognized in 
them counterparts of figures once familiar to me 
in pictures attached to childish books forgotten 
long ago. — American Notes, Chap. 14. 

TREES— In a city. 

Even in the winter-time, these groups of well- 
grown trees, clustering among the busy streets 
and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint 
appearance, seeming to bring about a kind of 
compromise between town and country, as if 
each had met the other half-way, and shaken 
hands upon it, which is at once novel and pleas- 
ant. — American Notes, Chap. 5. 

TROXTBIiE— Skimpole on taking-. 

" And why should you take trouble ? Here 
am I, content to receive things childishly, as they 
fall out : and I never take trouble ! I come 
down here, for instance, and I find a mighty 
potentate, exacting homage. Very well ! I say 
' Mighty potentate, here is my homage ! It's 
easier to give it than to withhold it. Here it is. 
If you have anything of an agreeable nature to 
show me, I shall be happy to see it ; if you have 
anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I 
shall be happy to accept it.' Mighty potentate 
replies in effect, ' This is a sensible fellow. I 
find him accord with my digestion and my 
bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me 
the necessity of rolling myself up like a hedge- 
hog with my points outward. I expand, I open, 
I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's 
cloud, and it's more agreeable to both of us,' 
That's my view of such things : speaking as a 
child ! ''—Bleak House, Chap. 18. 

TRTJMPET-NOTES— Not always true. 

It may have required a stronger effort to per- 
form this simple act with a pure heart, than to 
achieve many and many a deed to which the 



doubtful trumpet blown by fame has lustily re- 
sounded. Doubtful, because from its long hov- 
ering over scenes of violence, the smoke and 
steam of death have clogged the keys of tha': 
brave instrument ; and it is not always thai its 
notes are either true or tuneful. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 12. 

TRUTH— Its sacredness. 

The bachelor, among his various occupations 
found in the old church a constant source of in- 
terest and amusement. 

As he was not one of those rough spirits who 
would strip fair Truth of every little shadowy 
vestment in which time and teeming fancies love 
to array her — and some of which become her 
pleasantly enough, serving, like the waters of 
her well, to add new graces to the charms they 
half conceal and half suggest, and to awaken 
interest and pursuit rather than languor and 
indifference — as, unlike this stern and obdurate 
class, he loved to see the goddess crowned with 
those garlands of wild-flowers which tradition 
wreaths for her gentle wearing, and which are 
often freshest in their homeliest shapes, — he 
trod with a light step and bore with a light 
hand upon the dust of centuries, unwilling to 
demolish any of the airy shrines that had been 
raised above it, if any good feeling or affec- 
tion of the human heart were hidden there- 
abouts. 

In a word, he would have had every stone 
and plate of brass, the monument only of deeds 
whose memory should survive. All others he 
was willing to forget. They might be buried in 
consecrated ground, but he would have had 
them buried deep, and never brought to light 
again. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54. 

TRUTH. 

There is no playing fast and loose with the 
truth, in any game, without growing the worse 
for \X.— Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 6. 

TRUTH— Not always welcome. 

The truth has come out, as it plainly has, in a 
manner that there's no standing up against — and 
a very sublime and grand thing is truth, gentle- 
men, in its way, though, like other sublime and 
grand things, such as thunder-storms and that, 
we're not always over and above glad to see it. 
Old Curiosity Shop, C/uip. 66. 

TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD. 

There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which 
men mount, as on bright wings, towards heaven. 
There are some truths, cold, bitter, taunting 
truths, wherein your worldly scholars are very 
apt and punctual, which bind men down to 
earth with leaden chains. Who would not 
rather have to fan him, in his dying hour, the 
lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine, 
than all the quills that have been plucked 
fr6m the sharp porcupine, reproachful truth, 
since time began. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 13. 

T W llilGHT— In Summer. 

It was one of those summer evenings when 
there is no greater darkness than a long twi- 
light. The vista of street and bridge was plain 
to see, and the sky was serene and beautiful. 



TWILIGHT 



492 



TWILI&HT 



People stood and sat at their doors, playing with 
children, and enjoying the evening ; numbers 
were walking for air : the worry of the day had 
almost worried itself out, and few but themselves 
were hurried. As they crossed the bridge, the 
clear steeples of the many churches looked as if 
they had advanced out of the murk that usually 
enshrouded them, and come much nearer. The 
smoke that rose into the sky had lost its dingy 
hue and taken a brightness upon it. The beau- 
ties of the sunset had not faded from the long, 
light films of cloud that lay at peace in the 
horizon. From a radiant centre, over the whole 
length and breadth of the tranquil firmament, 
great shoots of light streamed among the early 
stars, like signs of the blessed later covenant 
of peace and hope that changed the crown of 
thorns into a glory. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 31. 

TWILIGHT— Its scenes, shadows, and as- 
sociations. 

You should have seen him in his dwelling, 
about twilight, in the dead winter-time. 

When the wind was blowing, shrill and 
shrewd, with the going down of the blurred sun. 
When it was just so dark, as that the forms of 
things were indistinct and big — but not wholly 
lost. When sitters by the fire began to see 
wild faces and figm-es, mountains and abysses, 
ambuscades and armies, in the coals. When 
people in the streets bent down their heads and 
ran before the weather. When those who were 
obliged to meet it, were stopped at angry cor- 
ners, stung by wandering snow-flakes alighting 
on the lashes of their eyes, — which fell too 
sparingly, and were blown away too quickly, to 
leave a trace upon the frozen ground. When 
windows of private houses closed up tight and 
warm. When lighted gas began to burst forth in 
the busy and the quiet streets, fast blackening 
otherwise. When stray pedestrians, shivering 
along the latter, looked down at the glowing 
fires in kitchens, and sharpened their sharp ap- 
petites by snifling up the fragrance of whole 
miles of dinners. 

When travellers by land were bitter cold, and 
looked wearily on gloomy landscapes, rustling 
and shuddering in the blast. When mariners 
at sea, outlying upon icy yards, were tossed and 
swung above the howling ocean dreadfully. 
When light-houses, on rocks and headlands, 
showed solitary and watchful ; and benighted 
seabirds breasted on against their ponderous lan- 
terns, and fell dead. 

When little readers of story-books, by the 
fire-light, trembled to think of Cassim Baba cut 
into quarters, hanging in the Robbers' Cave, or 
had some small misgivings that the fierce little 
old woman, with the crutch, who used to start 
out of the box in the merchant Abudah's bed- 
room, might, one of these nights, be found upon 
the stairs, in the long, cold, dusky journey up to 
bed. 

When, in rustic places, the last glimmering of 
daylight died away from the ends of avenues ; 
and the trees, arching overhead, were sullen 
and black. When, in parks and woods, the 
high wet fern, and sodden moss, and beds of fall- 
en leaves, and trunks of trees, were lost to 
view, in masses of impenetrable shade. When 
mists arose from dyke, and fen, and river. 
When lights in old halls and in cottage windows 



were a cheerful sight. When the mill stopped, 
the wheelwright and the blacksmith shut their 
workshops, the turnpike-gate closed, the plough 
and harrow were left lonely in the fields, the 
laborer and team went home, and the striking 
of the church clock had a deeper sound than at 
noon, and the church-yard wicket would be 
swung no more that night. 

When twilight everywhere released the shad- 
ows, prisoned up all day, that now closed in 
and gathered like mustering swarms of ghosts. 
When they stood lowering in corners of rooms, 
and frowned out from behind half-opened doors. 
When they had full possession of unoccupied 
apartments. When they danced upon the floors, 
and walls, and ceilings of inhabited chambers 
while the fire was low, and withdrew like ebb- 
ing waters when it sprung into a blaze. When 
they fantastically mocked the shapes of house- 
hold objects, making the nurse an ogress, the 
rocking-horse a monster, the wondering child, 
half-scared and half-amused, a stranger to itself, 
— the very tongs upon the hearth a straddling 
giant with his arms a-kimbo, evidently smelling 
the blood of Englishmen, and wanting to grind 
people's bones to make his bread. 

When these shadows brought into the minds 
of older people other thoughts, and showed them 
different images. When they stole from their 
retreats, in the likenesses of forms and faces 
from the past, from the grave, from the deep, 
deep gulf, where the things that might have 
been, and never were, are always wandering. 

When he sat, as already mentioned, gazing at 
the fire. When, as it rose and fell, the shadows 
went and came. When he took no heed of them, 
with his bodily eyes ; but, let them come or let 
them go, looked fixedly at the fire. You should 
have seen him, then. 

When the sounds that had arisen with the 
shadows, and come out of their lurking-places 
at the twilight summons, seemed to make a 
deeper stillness all about him. When the wind 
was rumbling in the chimney, and sometimes 
crooning, sometimes howling, in the house. 
When the old trees outward were so shaken 
and beaten, that one querulous old rook, unable 
to sleep, protested now and then, in a feeble, 
dozy, high-up, " Caw ! " When, at intervals, the 
window trembled, the rusty vane upon the tur- 
ret-top complained, the clock beneath it recorded 
that another quarter of an hour was gone, or the 
fire collapsed and fell in with a rattle. 

Haunted Man ^ Chap. I. 

TWILIGHT. 

The shudder of the dying day. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 5, 

TWILIGHT— A winter. 

It is now twilight. The iire glows brightly 
on the panelled wall, and palely on the win- 
dow-glass, where, through the cold reflection of 
the blaze, the colder landscape shudders in 
the wind, and a gray mist creeps along — the 
only traveller besides the waste of clouds. 

Bleak House, Chap. 12. 

TWILIGHT— Evening scenes. 

There were many little knots and groups of 
persons in Westminster Hall : some few look- 
ing upward at its noble ceiling, and at the rays 
of evening light, tinted by the setting sun, 



TYRANNY 



493 



UNDERTAKER 



which streamed in aslant through its small win- 
dows, and growing dimmer by degrees, were 
quenched in the gathering gloom below ; some, 
noisy passengers, mechanics going home from 
work, and otherwise, who hurried quickly 
through, waking the echoes with their voices, 
and soon darkening the small door in the dis- 
tance, as they passed into the street beyond ; 
some, in busy conference together on political 
or private matters, pacing slowly up and down, 
with eyes that sought the ground, and seeming, 
by their attitudes, to listen earnestly from head 
to foot. Here, a dozen squabbling urchins 
made a very Babel in the air ; there, a solitary 
man, half clerk, half mendicant, paced up and 
down with hungry dejection in his look and 
gait : at his elbow passed an errand-lad, swing- 
ing his basket round and round, and with his 
shrill whistle riving the very timbers of the 
roof ; while a more observant schoolboy, half- 
way through, pocketed his ball, and eyed the 
distant beadle as he came looming on. It was 
that time of evening when, if you shut your 
eyes and open them again, the darkness of an 
hour appears to have gathered in a second. 
The smooth-worn pavement, dusty with foot- 
steps, still called upon the lofty walls to reit- 
erate the shuffle and the tread of feet unceas- 
ingly, save when the closing of some heavy 
door resounded through the building like a 
clap of thunder, and drowned all other noises 
in its rolling sound. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 43. 

TYRANNY-Domestic. 

A homely proverb recognizes the existence 
of a troublesome class of persons, who, having 
an inch conceded them, will take an ell. Not 
to quote the illustrious examples of those heroic 
scourges of mankind, whose amiable path in 
life has been from birth to death through 
blood, and fire, and ruin, and who would seem 
to have existed for no better purpose than to 
teach mankind that as the absence of pain is 
pleasure, so the earth, purged of their presence, 
may be deemed a blessed place — not to quote 
such mighty instances, it will be sufficient to 
refer to old John Willet. 

Old John having long encroached a good 
standard inch, full measure, on the liberty of 
Joe, and having snipped off a Flemish ell in 
the matter of the parole, grew so despotic and so 
great that his thirst for conquest knew no 
bounds. The more young Joe submitted, the 
more absolute old John became. The ell soon 
faded into nothing. Yards, furlongs, miles, 
arose ; and on went old John in the pleasantest 
manner possible, trimming off an exuberance 
in this place, shearing away some liberty of 
speech or action in that, and conducting him- 
self in his small way with as much high mighti- 
ness and majesty, as the most glorious tyrant 
that ever had his statue reared in the public 
ways, of ancient or of modern times. 

Barnaby Rtidge^ Chap. 30. 



u 



TTNCONGENIAIilTY— In marriage. 

Standing together, arm in arm, they had the 
appearance of being more divided than if seas 
had rolled between them. There was a differ- 
ence even in the pride of the two, that removed 
them farther from each other, than if one had been 
the proudest, and the other the humblest spe- 
cimen of humanity in all creation. He, self- 
important, unbending, formal, austere. She, 
lovely and graceful in an uncommon degree, 
but totally regardless of herself and him and 
everything around, and spurning her own at- 
tractions with her haughty brow and lip, as if 
they were a badge or livery she hated. So un- 
matched were they, and opposed ; so forced and 
linked together by a chain which adverse haz- 
ard and mischance had forged ; that fancy might 
have imagined the pictures on the walls around 
them, startled by the unnatural conjunction, 
and observant of it in their several expressions. 
Grim knights and warriors looked scowling on 
them. A churchman, with his hand upraised, 
denounced the mockery of such a couple com- 
ing to God's altar. Quiet waters in landscapes, 
with the sun reflected in their depths, asked, 
if better means of escape were not at hand, 
was there no drowning left? Ruins cried, 
" Look here, and see what We are, wedded 
to uncongenial Time ! " Animals, opposed 
by nature, worried one another as a moral to 
them. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, 
and Martyrdom had no such torment in its 
painted history of suffering. 

Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 27. 

UNDERTAKER-The. 

The African magician I find it very difficult 
to exclude from my Wigwam, too. This crea- 
ture takes cases of death and mourning under 
his supervision, and will frequently impoverish 
a whole family by his preposterous enchant- 
ments. He is a great eater and drinker, and 
always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a 
grieving exterior. His charms consist of an in- 
finite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he 
charges very high. He impresses on the poor, 
bereaved natives, that the more of his followers 
they pay to exhibit such scraps on their persons 
for an hour or two (though they never saw the 
deceased in their lives, and are put in high 
spirits by his decease), the more honorably and 
piously they grieve for the dead. The poor 
people submitting themselves to this conjuror, 
an expressive procession is formed, in which 
bits of stick, feathers of birds, and a quantity 
of other unmeaning objects besmeared with 
black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly 
order of which no one understands the mean- 
ing, if it ever had any, to the brink of the grave, 
and are then brought back again. 

In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed 
to have a soul, so that, when a liatchet is irre- 
parably broken, they say, " Ilis immortal part 
has departed ; he is gone to the happy hunting- 
plains. This belief leads to the logical sequence 
that, when a man is buried, some of his eating 
and drinking vessels, and some of his warlike 
implements, must be broken, and buried with 
him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a 
more respectable superstition than the hire of 



UNDERTAKER 



494 



UNDERTAKER 



antic scraps for a show that has no meaning 
based on any sincere belief. 

Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 26. 

UNDERTAKER-Mr. Mould, the. 

In the passage they encountered Mr. Mould, 
the undertaker : a little, elderly gentleman, bald, 
and in a suit of black ; with a note-book in his 
hand, a massive gold watch-chain dangling from 
his fob, and a face in which a queer attempt at 
melancholy was at odds with a smirk of satis- 
faction ; so that he looked as a man might, who, 
in the very act of smacking his lips over choice 
old wine, tried to make believe it was physic. 

" Well, Mrs. Gamp, and how are you, Mrs. 
Gamp?" said this gentleman, in a voice as soft 
as his step. 

" Pretty well, I thank you, sir," dropping a 
curtsey. 

" You'll be very particular here, Mrs. Gamp. 
This is not a common case, Mrs. Gamp. Let 
everything be very nice and comfortable, Mrs. 
Gamp, if you please," said the undertaker, shak- 
ing his head with a solemn air. 

" It shall be, sir," she replied, curtseying 
again. " You knows me of old, sir, I hope." 

" I hope so, too, Mrs. Gamp," said the under- 
taker ; " and I think so, also." Mrs. Gamp 
curtseyed again. " This is one of the most im- 
pressive cases, sir," he continued, addressing 
Mr. Pecksniff, " that I have seen in the whole 
course of my professional experience." 

" Indeed, Mr. Mould ! " cried that gentleman. 

" Such affectionate regret, sir, I never saw. 
There is no limitation, there is positively no 
limitation," opening his eyes wide, and stand- 
ing on tiptoe : " in point of expense ! I have 
orders, sir ! to put on my whole establishment 
of mutes ; and mutes come very dear, Mr. Peck- 
sniff ; not to mention their drink. To provide 
silver-plated handles of the very best descrip- 
tion, ornamented with angels' heads from the 
most expensive dies. To be perfectly profuse 
in feathers. In short, sir, to turn out something 
absolutely gorgeous." 

" My friend, Mr. Jonas, is an excellent man," 
said Mr. Pecksniff. 

" I have seen a good deal of what is filial in 
my time, sir," retorted Mould, " and what is 
unfilial too. It is our lot. We come into the 
knowledge of those secrets. But anything so 
filial as this ; anything so honorable to human 
nature ; so calculated to reconcile all of us to 
the world we live in, never yet came under my 
observation. It only proves, sir, what was so 
forcibly observed by the lamented theatrical 
poet — buried at Stratford — that there is good 
in everything." 

" It is very pleasant to hear you say so, Mr. 
Mould," observed Pecksniff. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 19.. 

UNDERTAKER-Mr. Mould at home. 

The partner of his life and daughters twain 
were Mr, Mould's companions. Plump as any 
partridge was each Miss Mould, and Mrs. M. 
was plumper than the two together. So round 
and chubby were their fair proportions, that 
they might have been the bodies once belonging 
to the angels' faces in the shop below, grown 
up with other heads attached to make them 
mortal. Even their peachy cheeks were puffed 
out and distended, as though they ought of 



right to be performing on celestial trumpets. 
The bodiless cherubs in the shop, who were de- 
picted as constantly blowing those instruments 
forever and ever, without any lungs, played, it 
is to be presumed, entirely by ear. 

Mr. Mould looked lovingly at Mrs. Mould, 
who sat hard by, and was a helpmate to him in 
his punch as in all other things. Each seraph 
daughter, too, enjoyed her share of his regards, 
and smiled upon him in return. So bountiful 
were Mr. Mould's possessions, and so large his 
stock in trade, that even there, within his house- 
hold sanctuary, stood a cumbrous press, whose 
mahogany maw was filled with shrouds, and 
winding-sheets, and other furniture of funerals. 
But, though the Misses Mould had been brought 
up, as one may say, beneath his eye, it had cast 
no shadow on their timid infancy or blooming 
youth. Sporting behind the scenes of death 
and burial from cradlehood, the Misses Mould 
knew better. Hat-bands, to them, were but so 
many yards of silk or crape ; the final robe but 
such a quantity of linen. The Misses Mould 
could idealise a player's habit, or a court- 
lady's petticoat, or even an act of parliament. 
But they were not to be taken in by palls. They 
made them sometimes. 

The premises of Mr. Mould were hard of 
hearing to the boisterous noises in the great 
main streets, and nestled in a quiet corner, 
where the City strife became a drowsy hum, that 
sometimes rose, and sometimes fell, and some- 
times altogether ceased ; suggesting to a thought- 
ful mind a stoppage in Cheapside. The light 
came sparkling in among the scarlet runners, as 
if the churchyard winked at Mr. Mould, and 
said, " We understand each other ; " and from 
the distant shop a pleasant sound arose of coffin- 
making, with a low melodious hammer, rat, 
tat, tat, tat, alike promoting slumber and diges- 
tion. 

" Quite the buzz of insects," said Mr. Mould, 
closing his eyes in a perfect luxury. " It puts 
one in mind of the sound of animated nature 
in the agricultural districts. It's exactly like 
the woodpecker tapping." 

" The woodpecker tapping the hollow elm 
tree," observed Mrs, Mould, adapting the words 
of the popular melody to the description of 
wood commonly used in trade. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 25. 

UNDERTAKER— Experiences of an. 

As Oliver accompanied his master in most ot 
his adult expeditions, too, in order that he might 
acquire the equanimity of demeanor and full 
command of nerve which are so essential to a 
finished undertaker, he had many opportunities 
of observing the beautiful resignation and for- 
titude with which some strong-minded people 
bear their trials and losses. 

For instance ; when Sowerberry had an order 
for the burial of some rich old lady or gentle- 
man, who was surrounded by a great number of 
nephews and nieces, who had been perfectly in- 
consolable during the previous illness, and 
whose grief had been wholly irrepressible even 
on the most public occasions, they would be as 
happy among themselves as need be — quite 
cheerful and contented ; conversing together 
with as much freedom and gayety, as if nothing 
whatever had happened to disturb them. Hus- 
bands, too, bore the loss of their wives with the 



I 



UNDERTAKER 



495 



USURER 



most heroic calmness. Wives, again, put on 
weeds for their husbands, as if, so far from 
grieving in the garb of sorrow, they had made 
up their minds to render it as becoming and at- 
tractive as possible. It was observable, too, 
that ladies and gentlemen who were in passions 
of anguish during the ceremony of interment, 
recovered almost as soon as they reached home, 
and became quite composed before the tea- 
drinking was over. All this was very pleasant 
and improving to see ; and Oliver beheld it 
with great admiration. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 6. 

UNDERTAKER— Shop of the. 

Oliver, being left to himself in the under- 
taker's shop, set the lamp down on a workman's 
bench, and gazed timidly about him with a feel- 
ing of awe and dread, which many people a 
good deal older than he will be at no loss to 
understand. An unfinished coffin on black 
trestles, which stood in the middle of the shop, 
looked so gloomy and deathlike that a cold 
tremble came over him every time his eyes 
wandered in the direction of the dismal object ; 
from which he almost expected to see some 
frightful form slowly rear its head, to drive him 
mad with terror. Against the wall were ranged, 
in regular an-ay, a long row of elm boards cut 
into the same shape, looking, in the dim light, 
like high-shouldered ghosts with their hands in 
their breeches-pockets. Coffm-plates, elm chips, 
bright-headed nails, and shreds of black cloth, 
lay scattered on the floor : and the wall behind 
the counter was ornamented with a lively repre- 
sentation of two mutes, in very stiff neckcloths, 
on duty at a large private door, with a hearse 
drawn by four black steeds, approaching in the 
distance. The shop was close and hot ; and the 
atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of 
coffins. The recess beneath the counter, in 
which his flock mattress was thrust, looked like 
a grave. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 5. 

UNITIES— Dramatic. 

" I hope you have preserved the unities, sir ? " 
said Mr. Curdle. 

" The original piece is a French one," said 
Nicholas. " There is abundance of incident, 
sprightly dialogue, strongly-marked characters-" 

" — All unavailing without a strict observance 
of the unities, sir," returned Mr. Curdle. " The 
unities of the drama, before everything." 

" Might I ask you," said Nicholas, hesitating 
between the respect he ought to assume, and 
his love of the whimsical, " might I ask you 
what the unities are ? " 

Mr. Curdle coughed and considered. " The 
unities, sir," he said, " are a completeness — a 
kind of a universal dovetailedness with regard 
to place and time — a sort of a general oneness, if 
I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. 
I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as 
I have been enabled to bestow attention upon 
them, and I have read much upon the subject, 
and thought much. I find, running through the 
performances of this child," said Mr. Curdle, 
turning to the phenomenon, " a unity of feeling, 
a breadth, a light and shade, a warmth of color- 
ing, a tone, a harmony, a glow, an artistical de- 
velopment of original conceptions, which I 
look for in vain among older performers. I 
don't know whether I make myself under- 
stood ? " — Nicholas Nickkby, Chap. 24. 



UNIVERSITIES— American. 

There is no doubt that much of the intellect- 
ual refinement and superiority of Boston is re- 
ferable to the quiet influence of the University 
of Cambridge, which is within three or four 
miles of the city. The resident professors at 
that University are gentlemen of learning and 
varied attainments ; and are, without one excep- 
tion that I can call to mind, men who would 
shed a grace upon, and do honor to, any society 
in the civilized world. Many of the resident 
gentry in Boston and its neighborhood, and I 
think I am not mistaken in adding, a large ma- 
jority of those who are attached to the liberal 
professions there, have been educated at this 
same school. Whatever the defects of American 
universities may be, they disseminate no pre- 
judices ; rear no bigots ; dig up the buried ashes 
of no old superstitions ; never interpose between 
the people and their improvement ; exclude no 
m.an because of his religious opinions ; above all, 
in their whole course of study and instruction, 
recognize a world, and a broad one, too, lying 
beyond the college walls. 

It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to 
me to observe the almost imperceptible, but not 
less certain, effect, wrought by th's institution 
among the small community of Boston : and to 
note at every turn the humanizing tastes and de- 
sires it has engendered ; the affectionate friend- 
ships to which it has given rise ; the amount of 
vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The 
golden calf they worship at Boston is a pigmy 
compared with the giant effigies set up in other 
parts of that vast counting-house which lies be- 
yond the Atlantic ; and the almighty dollar 
sinks into something comparatively insignificant, 
amidst a whole Pantheon of better gods. 

American Notes, CIuip. 3. 

UPS AND DOWNS— The philosophy of 
Plomish. 

Mr. Plomish amiably growled, in his philo- 
sophical but not lucid manner, that there was 
ups, you see, and there was downs. It was in wain 
to ask why ups, why downs ; there they was, 
you know. He had heerd it given for a truth 
that accordin' as the world went round, which 
round it did rewolve undoubted, even the best 
of gentlemen must take his turn of standing 
with his ed upside down and all his air a flying 
the wrong way into what you might call Space. 
Wery well then. What Mr. Plomish said was, 
wery well then. That gentleman's ed would 
come up'ards when his tum come, that gentle- 
man's air would be a pleasure to look upon be- 
ing all smooth again, and wery well then. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 27. 

USURER— Newman No^grs' opinion of 
Ralph Nickleby. 

" I don't believe he ever had an appetite," said 
Newman, "except for pounds, shillings, and 
pence, and with them he's as greedy as a wolf. 
I should like to have him compelled to swallow 
one of every English coin. The penny would be 
an awkward morsel — but the crown— ha ! ha !" 

His good humor being in some degree restored 
by the vision of Ralph Nickleby swallowing, 
perforce, a five-shilling piece. Newman slowly 
brought forth from his desk one of those port- 
able bottles, currently known as pocket-pistols, 
and shaking the same close to his ear so as to 



TJSTTRER 



496 



VALENTINE 



produce a rippling sound very cool and pleas- 
ant to listen to, suffered his features to relax, 
and took a gurgling drink, which relaxed them 
still more. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47. 

USURER— Ralph Nickleby, the. 4 

He appeared to have a very extraordinary 
and miscellaneous connection, and very odd 
calls he made ; some at great rich houses, and 
some at small poor houses, but all upon one 
subject, money. His face was a talisman to the 
porters and servants of his more dashing clients, 
and procured him ready admission, though he 
trudged on foot, and others, who were denied, 
rattled to the door in can-iages. Here, he was 
all softness and cringing civility ; his step so 
light, that it scarcely produced a sound upon 
the thick carpets ; his voice so soft that it was 
not audible beyond the person to whom it was 
addressed. But in the poorer habitations Ralph 
was another man ; his boots creaked on the pas- 
sage-floor as he walked boldly in ; his voice was 
harsh and loud as he demanded the money that 
was overdue ; his threats were coarse and angry. 
With another class of customers, Ralph was 
again another man. These were attorneys of 
more than doubtful reputation, who helped him 
to new business, or raised fresh profits upon old. 
With them Ralph was familiar and jocose, hu- 
morous upon the topics of the day, and es- 
pecially pleasant upon bankruptcies and pecu- 
niary difficulties that made good for trade. In 
short, it would have been difficult to have recog- 
nized the same man under these various aspects, 
but for the bulky leather case, full of bills and 
notes, which he drew from his pocket at eveiy 
house, and the constant repetition of the same 
complaint (varied only in tone and style of de- 
livery), that the world thought him rich, 
and that perhaps he might be if he had his 
own ; but that there was no getting money in 
when it was once out, either principal or 
interest, and it was a hard matter to live; 
even to live from day to day. 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap, 44. 



VAaABOND-" Not of th« mean sort." 

" Thank you. You wouldn't object to say, 
perhaps, that although an undoubted vagabond, 
I am a vagabond of the harum scarum order, 
and not of the mean sort." 

Bleak House ^ Chap. 63. 

VALENTINE-Sam "WeUer's. 

" Veil, Sammy," said the father. 

"Veil, my Prooshan Blue," responded the 
son, laying down his pen. " What's the last 
bulletin about mother-in-law ? " 

" Mrs. Veller passed a very good night, but 
is uncommon perv/erse and unpleasant this 
mornin'. Signed upon oath, S. Veller, Esquire, 
Senior. That's the last vun as was issued, 
Sammy," replied Mr. Weller, untying his shawl. 

" No better yet ? " inquired Sam. 

" All the symptoms aggerawated," replied Mr. 



Weller, shaking his head. " But wot's that 
you're a doin' of ? Pursuit of knowledge under 
difficulties, Sammy." 

" I've done now," said Sam, with slight em- 
barrassment ; " I've been a writin'." 

" So I see," replied Mr. Weller. " Not to 
any young 'ooman, I hope, Sammy?" 

" Why, it's no use a say in' it ain't," replied 
Sam ; " it's a walentine." 

" A what !" exclaimed Mr. Weller, apparent- 
ly horror-stricken by the word. 

" A walentine," replied Sam. 

" Samivel, Samivel," said Mr. Weller, in re- 
proachful accents, " I did'nt think you'd ha' 
done it. Arter the warnin' you've had o' your 
father's wicious propensities ; arter all I've said 
to you upon this here wery subject ; arter acti- 
wally seein' and bein' in the company o' your 
own mother-in-law, vich I should ha' thought 
was a moral lesson as no man could never ha' 
forgotten to his dyin' day ! I didn't think you'd 
ha' done it, Sammy, I didn't think you'd ha' 
done it ! " These reflections were too much for 
the good old man. He raised Sam's tumbler to 
his lips and drank off its contents. 

" Wot's the matter now? " said Sam. 

" Nev'r mind, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller, 
" it'll be a wery agonizin' trial to me at my 
time of life, but I'm pretty tough, that's vun con- 
solation, as the wery old turkey remarked wen 
the farmer said he wos afeerd he should be 
obliged to kill him for the London market." 

" Wot'll be a trial?" inquired Sam. 

" To see you married, Sammy, to see you a 
dilluded wictim, and thinkin' in your innocence 
that it's all wery capital," replied Mr. Weller. 
" It's a dreadful trial to a father's feelin's that 
'ere, Sammy." 

" Nonsense," said Sam. " I ain't a goin' to 
get married, don't you fret yourself about that. 
I know you're a judge of these things ; order 
in your pipe, and I'll read you the letter. 
There ! " 

* * * * * 

Sam dipped his pen into the ink to be ready 
for any corrections, and began with a very the- 
atrical air. 

•"Lovely '" 

" Stop," said Mr. Weller, ringing the bell. 
"A double glass o' the inwariable, my dear." 

" Very well, sir," replied the girl ; who with 
great quickness appeared, vanished, returned, 
and disappeared. 

" They seem to know your ways here," ob- 
served Sam. 

" Yes," replied his father, " I've been here 
before, in my time. Go on, Sammy." 

" ' Lovely creetur,' " repeated Sam. 

•' 'Tain't in poetry, is it ? " interposed his 
father. 

" No, no," replied Sam. 

" Wery glad to hear it," said Mr. Weller. 
" Poetry's unnat'ral : no man ever talked po- 
etry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day, or Warren's 
blackin', or Rowland's oil, or some o' them low 
fellows ; never you let yourself down to talk 
poetry, my boy. Begin agin, Sammy." 

Mr. Weller resumed his pipe with a critical 
solemnity, and Sam once more commenced, and 
read as follows : 
" ' Lovely creetur i feel myself a dammed - 

" That ain't proper," said Mr. Weller, takin 
his pipe from his mouth. 






J 




Sam Wkli.kr's Valkntfnk. 



496 



VALENTINE 



497 



VAXJXHALI4 GARDENS 



" No ; it ain't ' dammed,' " observed Sam, 
holding the letter up to the light, " it's ' shamed,' 
there's a blot there — ' I feel myself asham- 
ed.' " 

" Wery good," said Mr. Weller. " Go on." 

" 'Feel myself ashamed, and completely cir — * 
I forget what this here word is," said Sam, 
scratching his head with the pen, in vain at- 
tempts to remember. 

"Why don't you look at it, then?" inquired 
Mr. Weller. 

" So I am a lookin' at it," replied Sam, " but 
there's another blot. Here's a ' c,' and a ' i,' 
and a ' d.' " 

" Circumwented, p'haps," suggested Mr. Wel- 
ler. 

" No, it ain't that," said Sam, " circumscrib- 
ed ; that's it." 

'• That ain't as good a word as circumwented, 
Sammy," said Mr. Weller, gravely. 

" Think not ? " said Sam. 

" Nothin' like it," replied his father. 

"But don't you think it means more?" in- 
quired Sam. 

"Veil, p'raps it is a more tenderer word," 
said Mr. Weller, after a few moments' reflection. 
" Go on, Sammy." 

" ' Feel myself ashamed and completely cir- 
cumscribed in a dressin' of you, for you are a 
nice gal and nothin' but it.' " 

" That's a wery pretty sentiment," said the 
elder Mr. Weller, removing his pipe to make 
way for the remark. 

" Yes, I think it is rayther good," observed 
Sam, highly flattered. 

" Wot I like in that 'ere style of writin'," 
said the elder Mr. Weller, " is, that there ain't 
no callin' names in it, — no Wenuses, nor no- 
thin' o' that kind. Wot's the good o' callin' a 
young 'ooman a Wenus or a angel, Sammy ? " 

*• Ah ! what, indeed ? " replied Sam. 

" You might jist as well call her a griflin, or a 
unicorn, or a king's arms at once, which is 
wery well known to be a col-lection o' fabulous 
animals," added Mr. Weller. 

" Just as well," replied Sam. 

" Drive on, Sammy," said Mr. Weller. 

Sam complied with the request, and pro- 
ceeded as follows : — his father continuing to 
smoke, with a mixed expression of wisdom 
and complacency, which was particularly edify- 
ing. 

" ' Afore I see you, I thought all women was 
alike.' " 

•' So they are," observed the elder Mr. Wel- 
ler, parenthetically. 

" * But now,' " continued Sam, " ' now I find 
what a reg'lar soft-headed, ink-red'lous turnip I 
must ha' been : for there ain't nobody like you, 
though / like you better than nothin' at all.' I 
thought it best to make that rayther strong," 
said Sam, looking up. 

Mr. Weller nodded approvingly, and Sam re- 
sumed. 

" ' So I take the privilidge of the day, Mary, 
my dear — as the gen'l'm'n in difficulties did, 
ven he valked out of a Sunday, — to tell you 
that the first and only time I see you, your like- 
ness was took on my hart in much quicker time 
and brighter colors than ever a likeness was 
took by the profeel macheen (wich p'raps you 
may have heerd on Mary my dear) allho it 
does finish a portrait and put the frame and 



glass on complete, with a hook at the end 
to hang it up by, and all in two minutes and a 
quarter.' " 

" I am afeerd that werges on the poetical, 
Sammy," said Mr. Weller, dubiously. 

" No it don't," replied Sam, reading on very 
quickly, to avoid contesting the point : 

" ' Except of me Mary my dear as your wal- 
entine and think over what I've said. My dear 
Mary, I will now conclude.' That's all," said 
Sam. 

" That's rather a sudden pull up, ain't it, 
Sammy ? " inquired Mr. Weller. 

" Not a bit on it," said Sam ; " she'll vish 
there wos more, and that's the great art o' letter 
writin'." — Pickivick, Chap, 33. 

VALET— Bagrstock's Native. 

" Where is my scoundrel ? " said the Major, 
looking wrathfully round the room. 

The Native, who had no particular name, but 
answered to any vituperative epithet, presented 
himself instantly at the door and ventured to 
come no nearer. 

" You villain ! " said the choleric Major, 
" where's the breakfast ? " 

The dark servant disappeared in search of it, 
and was quickly heard reascending the stairs in 
such a tremulous state, that the plates and dishes 
on the tray he carried, trembling sympathetical- 
ly as he came, rattled again, all the way up. 
Dombey 6^ Son^ Chap. 20. 



The unfortunate Native, expressing no opin- 
ion, suffered dreadfully ; not merely in his 
moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed 
by the Major every hour in the day, and riddled 
through and through, but in his sensitiveness to 
bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept con- 
tinually on the stretch. For six entire weeks 
after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner 
lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks and 
brushes. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 58. 

VATTXHALL GARDENS. 

There was a time when if a man ventured to 
wonder how Vauxhall Gardens would look by 
day, he was hailed with a shout of derision at 
the absurdity of the idea. Vauxhall by day- 
light ! A porter-pot without porter, the House 
of Commons without the Speaker, a gas-lamp 
without the gas — pooh, nonsense ! the thing was 
not to be thought of. It was i-umored, too, in 
those times, that Vauxhall Gardens, by day, were 
the scene of secret and hidden experiments ; 
that there, carvers were exercised in the mystic 
art of cutting a moderate-sized ham into slices 
thin enough to pave the whole of the grounds ; 
that beneath the shade of the tall trees, studious 
men were constantly engaged in chemical ex- 
periments, with the view of discovering how 
much water a bowl of negus could possibly 
bear ; and that, in some retired nooks, appro- 
priated to the study of ornithology, other sage 
and learned men were, by a process known 
only to themselves, incessantly employed in re- 
ducing fowls to a mere combination of skin and 
bones. 

Vague rumors of this kind, together with 
many others of a similar nature, cast over Vaux- 
hall Gardens an air of deep mystery ; and as 
there is a great deal in the mysterious, there is 
no doubt that to a good niany people, at all 



VEGETABLES 4i 

events, the pleasure they afforded was not a lit- 
tle enhanced by this very circumstance. 

Of this class of people -we confess to having 
made one. We loved to wander among these 
illuminated groves, thinking of the patient and 
laborious researches which had been carried on 
there during the day, and witnessing their re- 
sults in the suppers which were served up be- 
neath the light of lamps, and to the sound of 
music, at night. The temples and saloons and 
cosmoramas and fountains glittered and spark- 
led before our eyes ; the beauty of the lady 
singers and the elegant deportment of the gen- 
tlemen, captivated our hearts ; a few hundred 
thousand of additional lamps dazzled our senses ; 
a bowl or two of reeking punch bewildered our 
brains ; and we were happy. — Scenes, Chap. 14. 

VEaETABLES— The langruage of love. 

"You know, there is no language of vegeta- 
bles, which converts a cucumber into a formal 
declaration of attachment." 

*' My dear," replied Mrs. Nickleby, tossing 
her head and looking at the ashes in the grate, 
" he has done and said all sorts of things." 

" Is there no mistake on your part ? " asked 
Nicholas. 

" Mistake ! " cried Mrs. Nickleby. *' Lord, 
Nicholas, my dear, do you suppose I don't know 
when a man's in earnest ? " 

" Well, well ! " muttered Nicholas. 

" Every time I go to the window," said Mrs. 
Nickleby, " he kisses one hand, and lays the 
other upon his heart — of course it's very foolish 
of him to do so, and I dare say you'll say its very 
wrong, but he does it very respectfully — very 
respectfully indeed — and very tenderly, extreme- 
ly tenderly. So far, he deserves the greatest 
credit ; there can be no doubt about that. Then, 
there are the presents which come pouring over 
the wall every day, and very fine they certainly 
are, very fine ; we had one of the cucumbers at 
dinner yesterday, and think of pickling the rest 
for next winter. And last evening," added Mrs, 
Nickleby, with increased confusion, " he called 
gently over the wall, as I was walking in the 
garden and proposed marriage, and an elope- 
ment. His voice is as clear as a bell or a musi- 
cal glass — very like a musical glass indeed — but 
of course I didn't listen to it. Then, the ques- 
tion is, Nicholas my dear, what am I to do ? " 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 37. 

VEBB— Mark Tapley as a. 

" Mark ! " said Tom Pinch, energetically : " if 
you don't sit down this minute, I'll swear at 
you ! " 

"Well, sir," returned Mr. Tapley, "sooner 
than you should do that, I'll com-ply. It's a 
considerable invasion of a man's jollity to be 
made so partikler welcome, but a Werb is a 
word as signifies to be, to do, or to suffer (which 
is all the grammar, and enough too, as ever I 
wos taught) ; and if there's a Werb alive, I'm it. 
For I'm always a bein', sometimes a doin', and 
continually a sufferin'." 

" Not jolly, yet?" asked Tom, with a smile. 

" Why, I was rather so, over the water, sir," 
returned Mr. Tapley ; " and not entirely with- 
out credit. But Human Natur' is in a conspir- 
acy again' me ; I can't get on. I shall have to 
leave it in my will, sir, to be wrote upon my tomb: 
* lie was a man as might have come out strong 



B VENICE 

if he could have got a chance. But it was denied 
him.' " — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 48. 

VENICE— A dream of. 

I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went 
in and out among its many arches : traversing 
its whole extent. A grand and dreamy stru^ 
ture, of immense proportions ; golden with old 
mosaics ; redolent of perfumes ; dim with the 
smoke of incense ; costly in treasures of precious 
stones and metals, glittering through iron bars ; 
holy with the bodies of deceased saints ; rain- 
bow-hued with windows of stained glass ; dark 
with carved woods and colored marbles ; ob- 
scure in its vast heights and lengthened distan- 
ces ; shining with silver lamps and winking 
lights ; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable 
throughout. I thought I entered the old palace ; 
pacing silent galleries and council-chambers, 
where the old rulers of this mistress of the 
waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from the 
walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still " 
victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as 
of old. I thought I wandered through its halls 
of state and triumph — ^bare and empty now ! — 
and musing on its pride and might, extinct — for 
that was past — all past — heard a voice say, 
" Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some 
consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced 
here yet ! " 

***** 

Sometimes alighting at the doors of churches 
and vast palaces, I wandered on, from room to 
room, from aisle to aisle, through labyrinths of 
rich altars, ancient monuments, decayed apart- 
ments, where the furniture, half awful, half gro- M 
tesque, was mouldering away. Pictures were I 
there, replete with such enduring beauty and 
expression ; with such passion, truth, and power ; 
that they seemed so many young and fresh reali- 
ties among a host of spectres. I thought these, 
often intermingled with the old days of the city : 
with its beauties, tyrants, captains, patriots, 
merchants, courtiers, priests : nay, with its very 
stones, and bricks, and public places ; all of 
which lived again, about me, on the walls. 
Then, coming down some marble staircase, 
where the water lapped and oozed against the 
lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and 
went on in my dream. 

Floating down narrow lanes, where carpen- 
ters, at work with plane and chisel in their 
shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon 
the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed 
away before me in a tangled heap. Past open 
doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in 
the wet, through which some scanty patch of 
vine shone green and bright, making unusual 
shadows on the pavement with its trembling 
leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women, 
gracefully veiled, were passing and repassing, ■ 
and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, I 
on flag-stones and on flights of steps. Past ■ 
bridges, where there were idlers too : loitering 
and looking over. Below stone balconies, erected 
at a giddy height, before the loftiest windows of 
the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden, thea- 
tres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture — 
Gothic — Saracenic — fanciful with all the fancies 
of all times and countries. Past buildings that 
were high, and low, and black, and white, and 
straight, and crooked ; mean and grand, crazy 
and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of 



I 



I 



VERONA 



499 



VISIONS 



boats and barges, and shooting out at last into 
a Grand Canal ! There, in the errant fancy of | 
my dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro 
upon a bridge, all built upon with shops, and 
humming with the tongues of men : a form I 
seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down 
through a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And, 
in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's spirit 
was abroad upon the water somewhere, stealing 
through the city. — Pictures from Italy. 

VERONA. 

Pleasant Verona ! With its beautiful old pal- 
aces, and charming country in the distance, seen 
from terrace walks, and stately, balustraded gal- 
leries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the 
fair street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day, 
the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. With 
its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich 
architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, 
where shouts of Montagues and Capulets once 
resounded, 

And made Verona's ancient citizens 

Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments, 

To wield old partizans. 

With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old 
bridge, great castle, waving cypresses, and pros- 
pect so delightful, and so cheerful ! Pleasant 
Verona ! — Pictures from Italy. 

VEXATION— A clieap commodity. 

" I had a visit from Young John today, Chiv- 
ery. And very smart he looked, I assure you." 

So Mr. Chivery had heard. Mr. Chivery must 
confess, however, that his wish was that the boy 
didn't lay out so much money upon it. For what 
did it bring him in ? It only brought him in 
Wexation. And he could get that anywhere, 
for nothing. — Little Dorrit, Book /., Ckcip. 19. 

VICTTJALS— Quarrelling: with, one's. 

" Mobbs's mother-in-law," said Squeers, " took 
to her bed on hearing that he wouldn't eat fat, 
and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to 
know, by an early post, where he expects to go 
to, if he quarrels with his vittles ; and with what 
feelings he could turn up his nose at the cow's 
liver broth, after his good master had asked a 
blessing on it." — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 8. 

VICE— Virtue in excess. 

" It would do us no harm to remember often- 
er than we do, that vices are sometimes only 
virtues carried to excess ! " 

Dombey &* Son^ Chap. 58. 

VICES— Kindred. 

That heart where self has found no place and 
raised no throne, is slow to recognize its ugly 
presence when it looks upon it. As one pos- 
- sessed of an evil spirit, was held in old time to 
be alone conscious of the lurking demon in the 
breasts of other men, so kmdred vices know 
each other in their hiding-places every day, 
when Virtue is incredulous and blind. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 14. 

VILIiAQE— The poor. 

The village had its one poor street, with its 
poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor 
stable-yards for relays of post-horses, poor foun- 
tain, all usual poor appointments. It had its 



poor people too. All its people were poor, and 
many of them were sitting at their doors, shred- 
ding spare onions and the like for supper, while 
many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and 
grasses, and any such small yieldings of the 
earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of 
what made them poor, were not wanting ; the 
tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax 
for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to 
be paid here and to be paid there, according to 
solemn inscription in the little village, until the 
wonder was, that there was any village left un- 
swallowed. 

Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. 
As to the men and Avomen, their choice on earth 
was stated in the prospect — Life on the lowest 
tei-ms that could sustain it, down in the little vil 
lage under the mill ; or captivity and Death in 
the dominant prison on the crag. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book II.. Chap. 8. 

VINES— Of Piacenza. 

In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the 
vines on trellis-work, supported on square clum- 
sy pillars, which, in themselves, are anything 
but picturesque. But here, they twine them 
around trees, and let them trail among the 
hedges ; and the vineyards are full of trees, reg- 
ularly planted for this purpose, each with its 
own vine twining and clustering about it. Their 
leaves are now of the brightest gold and deep- 
est red ; and never was anything so enchant- 
ingly graceful and full of beauty. Through 
miles of these delightful forms and colors, the 
road winds its way. The wild festoons, the ele- 
gant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all 
shapes ; the fairy nets flung over great trees, 
and making them prisoners in sport ; the tum- 
bled heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes upon 
the ground ; how rich and beautiful they are ! 
And every now and then, a long, long line of 
trees will be all bound and garlanded together ; 
as if they had taken hold of one another, and 
were coming dancing down the field ! 

Pictures from Italy. 

VIRTUES AND VICES— Of weak men. 

It is the unhappy lot of thoroughly weak 
men, that their very sympathies, affections, con- 
fidences — all the qualities which in better-con- 
stituted minds are virtues — dwindle into foibles, 
or turn into downright vices. 

Barnaby Pudge, Chap. 36. 

VISIONS— Psycholog-ical experiences of. 

I have always noticed a prevalent want of 
courage, even among persons of superior intelli- 
gence and culture, as to imparting their own 
psychological experiences when those have been 
of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid 
that what they could relate in such wise would 
find no parallel or response in a listener's internal 
life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A 
truthful traveller, who should have seen some 
extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea- 
serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it ; 
but the same traveller, having had some singu- 
lar presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, 
vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable 
mental impression, would hesitate considerably 
before he would own to it. To this reticence I 
attribute much of the obscurity in which such 
subjects are involved. We do not habitually 



VISITOR 



600 



VOICE 



communicate our experiences of these subjective 
things as we do our experiences of objective 
creation. The consequence is, that the general 
stock of experience in this regard appears ex- 
ceptional, and really is so, in respect of being 
miserably imperfect. 

Two Ghost Stories, Chap. i. 

VTSITOR— A constant (Toots) . 

Nothing seemed to do Mr. Toots so much 
good as incessantly leaving cards at Mr. Dom- 
bey's door. No tax-gatherer in the British do- 
minions — that wide-spread territory on which 
the sun never sets, and where the tax-gatherer 
never goes to bed — was more regular and per- 
severing in his calls than Mr. Toots. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 22. 



* * * Called regularly every other 
day, and left a perfect pack of cards at the hall- 
door ; so many, indeed, that the ceremony was 
quite a deal on the part of Mr. Toots, and a 
hand at whist on the part of the servant. 

Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 28. 

VOICE— Its expressions. 

" No, I will not." This was said with a most 
determined air, and in a voice which might have 
been taken for an imitation of anything ; it was 
quite as much like a Guinea-pig as a bassoon. 
Tales, Chap. 7. 

" As pleasant a singer, Mr. Chuzzlewit, as ever 
you heerd, with a voice like a Jew's-harp in the 
bass-notes, that it took six men to hold at sech 
times, foaming frightful." 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 46. 

A loud, well-sustained, and continuous roar — 
something between a mad bull and a speaking- 
trumpet. — Oliver Twist, Chap. 13. 



•* T called in consequence of an advertise- 
ment," said the stranger, in a voice as^if she had 
been playing a set of Pan's pipes for a fortnight 
without leaving off. — Tales, Chap. i. 

" No,," returned Dumps, diving first into one 
pocket and then into the other, and speaking in 
a voice like Desdemona with the pillow over her 
mouth. — Tales, Chap. 11. 

VOICE— Little Dorrit's blessing-. 

Little Dorrit turned at the door to say " God 
bless you ! " She said it very softly, but per- 
haps she may have been as audible above — who 
knows? — as a whole cathedral choir. 

Little Dorrit, Book I., Chap. 14. 

VOICE-A faint. 

The faintness of the voice was pitiable and 
dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical 
weakness, though confinement and hard fare 
no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable 
peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of 
solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble 
echo of a sound made long and long ago. So 
entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the 
human voice, that it affected the senses like a 
once beautiful color, faded away into a poor 
weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, 
that it was like a voice underground. So ex- 
pressive it was of a hopeless and lost creature, 



that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely 
wandering in a wilderness, would have remem- 
bered home and friends in such a tone before 
lying down to die. — Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 6. 

VOICE— A disagreeable. 

If an iron door could be supposed to quarrel 
with its hinges, and to make a firm resolution 
to open with slow obstinacy, and grind them to 
powder in the process, it would emit a pleas- 
anter sound in so doing, than did these words 
in the rough and bitter voice in which they were 
uttered by Ralph. Even Mr. Mantalini felt 
their influence, and turning affrighted round, 
exclaimed. " What a demd horrid croaking ! " 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 10. 

VOICE— And eyes, of Mrs. Pardiggle. 

" Mrs. Jellyby," pursued the lady, always 
speaking in the same demonstrative, loud, hard 
tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy as if it 
had a sort of spectacles on too — and I may take 
the opportunity of remarking that her spectacles 
were made the less engaging by her eyes being 
what Ada called " choking eyes," meaning very 
prominent. — Bleak House, Chap. 8. 

VOICE-A bass. 

After a great deal of preparatory crowing and 
humming, the captain began the duet from the 
opera of " Paul and Virginia," in that grunting 
tone in which a man gets down. Heaven knows 
where, without the remotest chance of ever get- 
ting up again. This, in private circles, is fre- 
quently designated " a bass voice." 

Tales, Chap. 7 

VOICE— A buttoned up. 

Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat, 
who is patiently watching a mouse's hole, fixes 
his charmed gaze again on his young client, and 
proceeds in his buttoned-up half-audible voice, 
as if there were an unclean spirit in him that 
will neither come out nor speak out. 

Bleak House, Chap. 39. 

VOICE-Not of Toby. 

When he had found his voice — ^which it took! 
him some time to do, for it was a long way ofFJ 
and hidden under a load of meat — ^he said, in a] 
whisper. — Chimes, id Quarter. 



I 



He couldn't finish her name. The final letter ' 
swelled in his throat, to the size of the whole 
alphabet. — Chimes, 2d Quarter. 

VOICE— Sam Weller's signals. 

As soon as she came nearly below the tree, 
Sam began, by way of gently indicating his 
presence, to make sundry diabolical noises simi- 
lar to those which would probably be natural to 1 
a person of middle age who had been afflicted I 
with a combination of inflammatory sore throat, 
croup, and hooping-cough, from his earliest in- 
fancy. — Pickwick, Chap. 39. 

VOICE— Like a hurricane. 

The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long 
one — and a stormy one too, I should think ; for 
although his room was at some distance, I heard 
his loud voice rising every now and then like a 
high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broad- 
sides of denunciation. — Bleak House, Chap. 9. 



I 



VOICE 



601 



WAITERS 



VOICE. 

Her pleasant voice — O what a voice it was, for 
making household music at the fireside of an 
honest man ! — Cricket on the Hearth^ Chap. 3. 

VOICE— A muffled. 

" Well, sir," said Doctor Parker Peps in a 
round, deep, sonorous voice, muffled for the oc- 
casion, like the knocker ; " do you find that 
your dear lady is at all roused by your visit?" 
Donibey 6^ Son, Chap. i. 

VOICE— A sharp. 

Pitched her voice for the upper windows in of- 
fering these remarks, and cracked off each clause 
sharply by itself as if from a rifle possessing an 
infinity of barrels. — Do77ibey 6^ Son, Chap. 23. 



But Edith stopped him, in a voice which, al- 
though not raised in the least, was so cleai", em- 
phatic, and distinct, that it might have been 
heard in a whirlwind. — Donibey 6^ Son, Chap. 47. 

VOICE— Of an old friend. 

" His wery woice," said the Captain, looking 
round with an exultation to which even his face 
could hardly render justice — " his wery woice, 
as chock full o' science as ever it was ! Sol 
Gills, lay to, my lad, upon your own wines and 
fig-trees, like a taut ould patriark as you are, 
and overhaul them there adwentures o' yourn, 
in your own foi-milior woice. 'Tis the woice," 
said the Captain, impressively, and announcing 
a quotation with his hook, "of the sluggard, 
I heerd him complain, you have woke me too 
soon, I must slumber again. Scatter his ene- 
mies, and make 'em fall ! " 

Dombey <2r» Son, Chap. 56. 

VOICE— Oppressed . 

Nor did the Major improve it at the Royal 
Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been or- 
dered, and where he so oppressed his organs of 
speech by eating and drinking, that when he 
retired to bed he had no voice at all, except to 
cough with, and could only make himself intel- 
ligible to the dark servant by gasping at him. 
Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 21. 



W. 

WAITERS— Their traits. 

The writer of these humble lines being a 
Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters, 
and owning at the present time five brothers 
who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sis- 
ter who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a 
few words respecting his calling ; first, having 
the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner of- 
fering the Dedication of the same unto Joseph, 
much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjain 
Coffee-House, London, E. C, than which a in- 
dividual more eminently deserving of the name 
of man, or a more amenable honor to his own 
head and heart, whether considered in the light 
of a Waiter, or regarded as a human being, do 
not exist. 



In case confusion should arise in the public 
mind (which it is open to confusion on many 
subjects) respecting what is meant or implied 
by the term Waiter, the present humble lines 
would wish to offer an explanation. It may 
not be generally known that the person as goes 
out to wait is not a Waiter. It may not be gen- 
erally known that the hand as is called in ex- 
tra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the London, 
or the Albion, or otherwise, is not a Waiter. 
Such hands may be took on for Public Din- 
ners by the bushel (and you may know them 
by their breathing with difficulty when in at- 
tendance, and taking away the bottle ere yet it 
is half out) ; but such are not Waiters. For you 
cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemak- 
ing, or the brokering, or the green-grocering, 
or the pictorial-periodicalling, or the second- 
hand wardrobe, or the small fancy businesses, — 
you cannot lay down those lines of life at your 
will and pleasure by the half-day or evening, 
and take up Waitering. You may suppose you 
can, but you cannot ; or you may go so far as to 
say you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you 
lay down the gentleman's-service when stimula- 
ted by prolonged incompatibility on ihe part of 
Cooks (and here it may be remarked that Cook- 
ing and incompatibility will be mostly found 
united), and take up Waitering. It has been 
ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek 
under, at home, he will not bear out of doors, 
at the Slamjam or any similar establishment. 
Then, what is the inference to be drawn re- 
specting true Waitering ? You must be bred to 
it. You must be born to it. 

Would you know how born to it, Fair Read- 
er, — if of the adorable female sex ? Then learn 
from the biographical experience of one that 
is a Waiter in the sixty-first year of his age. 

You were conveyed, — ere yet your dawning 
powers were otherwise developed than to harbor 
vacancy in your inside, — you were conveyed, by 
surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the 
Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining- 
Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful 
sustenance which is the pride and boast of the 
British female constitution. Your mother was 
married to your father (himself a distant Waiter) 
in the profoundest secrecy ; for a Waitress known 
to be married would ruin the best of businesses, 
— it is the same as on the stage. Hence your 
being smuggled into the pantry, and that — to add 
to the infliction — by an unwilling grandmother. 
Under the combined influence of the smells of 
roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt 
liquors, you partook of your earliest nourish- 
ment ; your unwilling grandmother sitting pre- 
pared to catch you when your mother was called 
and dropped you; your grandmother's shawl ever 
ready to stifle your natural complainings : your 
innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, 
dirty plates, dish-covers, and cold gravy ; your 
mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, 
instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. 
Under these untoward circumstances you were 
early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever 
growing more unwilling as your food assimilated 
less, then contracted habits of shaking you till 
your system curdled, and your food would not 
assimilate at all. At length she was no longer 
spared, and could have been thankfully spared 
much sooner. When your brothers began to ap- 
pear in succession, your mother retired, left off 



WAITERS 



502 



WAITERS 



her smart dressing (she had previously been a 
smart dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had 
previously been flowing), and haunted your 
father late of nights, lying in wait for him, 
through all weathers, up the shabby court which 
led to the back door of the Royal Old Dust-Bin 
(said to have been so named by George the 
Fourth), where your father was Head. But the 
Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father 
took but little, — excepting from a liquid point 
of view. Your mother's object in those visits 
was of a housekeeping character, and you was 
set on to whistle your father out. Sometimes he 
came out, but generally not. Come or not come, 
however, all that part of his existence which was 
unconnected with open Waitering was kept a 
close secret, and was acknowledged by your 
mother to be a close secret, and you and your 
mother flitted about the court, close secrets both 
of you, and would scarcely have confessed under 
torture that you knew your father, or that your 
father had any name than Dick (which wasn't 
his name, though he was never known by any 
other), or that he had kith or kin, or chick or 
child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, 
combined with your father's having a damp com- 
partment to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at 
the Dust-Bin, — a sort of a cellar compartment, 
with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, 
and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn't 
match each other or anything else, and no day- 
light, — caused your young mind to feel convinced 
that you must grow up to be a Waiter too ; but 
you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your 
brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you 
felt convinced that you was born to the Waiter- 
ing. At this stage of your career, what was your 
feelings one day when your father came home to 
your mother in open broad daylight, — of itself 
an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter, — 
and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and 
family's bed), with the statement that his eyes 
were devilled kidneys ! Physicians being in 
vain, your father expired, after repeating at in- 
tervals for a day and a night, when gleams of 
reason and old business fitfully illuminated his 
being, " Two and two is five. And three is six- 
pence."/ Interred in the parochial department 
of the neighboring churchyard, and accompa- 
nied to the grave by as many Waiters of long 
standing as could spare the morning time from 
their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved 
form was attired in a white neckankecher, and 
you was took on from motives of benevolence 
at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and sup- 
per. Here, supporting nature on what you found 
in the plates (which was as it happened, and but 
too often thoughtlessly immersed in mustard), 
and on what you found in the glasses (which 
rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by 
night you dropped asleep standing, till you was 
cuff'ed awake, and by day was set to polishing 
every individual article in the coffee-room. Your 
couch being saw-dust ; your counterpane being 
ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy 
heart under the smart tie of your white neck- 
ankecher (or correctly speaking lower down and 
more to the left), you picked up the rudiments 
of knowledge from an extra, by the name of 
Bishops, and by calling plate-washer ; and gra- 
dually elevating your mind with chalk on the 
back of the corner-box partition, until such time 
as you used the inkstand when it was out of 



hand, attained to manhood and to be the Waiter 
that you find yourself. 

***** 

A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. 
He must be at one extremity or the other of the 
social scale. He cannot be at the waist of it, or 
anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him 
to decide which of the extremities. 

Somebody s Luggage^ Chap. i. 

WAITERS-Their habits. 

It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is 
very cold to you. Account for it how you may, 
smooth it over how you will, you cannot deny 
that he is cold to you. He is not glad to see 
you, he does not want you, he would much 
rather you hadn't come. He opposes to your 
flushed condition an immovable composure. 
As if this were not enough, another waiter, 
born, as it would seem, expressly to look at you 
in this passage of your life, stands at a little dis- 
tance, with his napkin under his arm and his 
hands folded, looking at you with all his might. 
You impress on your waiter that you have ten 
minutes for dinner, and he proposes that you 
shall begin with a bit of fish which will be ready 
in twenty. That proposal declined, he suggests 
— as a neat originality — " a weal or mutton cut- 
let." You close with either cutlet, any cutlet, 
anything. He goes leisurely behind a door, and 
calls down some unseen shaft. A ventriloquial 
dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect 
that weal only is available on the spur of the 
moment. You anxiously call out, " Veal, then ! " 
Your waiter, having settled that point, returns 
to array your tablecloth with a table napkin 
folded cocked-hat wise (slowly, for something out 
of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, 
a green wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tum- 
bler, and a powerful field battery of fourteen 
castors with nothing in them, or, at all events, 
— which is enough for your purpose, — with 
nothing in them that will come out. All this 
time the other waiter looks at you, — with an air 
of mental comparison and curiosity now, as if 
it had occurred to him that you are rather like 
his brother. Half your time gone, and nothing 
come but the jug of ale and the bread, you im- 
plore your waiter to " see after that cutlet, waiter ; 
pray do ! " He cannot go at once, for he is car- 
rying in seventeen pounds of American cheese 
for you to finish with, and a small landed estate 
of celery and water-cresses. The other waiter 
changes his leg, and takes a new view of you, 
doubtfully now, as if he had rejected the resem- 
blance to his brother, and had begun to think 
you more like his aunt or his grandmother. 
Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic in- 
dignation, to " see after that cutlet ! " He steps 
out to see after it, and by-and-bye, when you are 
going away without it, comes back with it. Even 
then he will not take the sham silver cover off 
without a pause for a flourish, and a look at the 
musty cutlet, as if he were surprised to see it, — 
which cannot possibly be the case, he must have 
seen it so often before. A sort of fur has been 
produced upon its surface by the cook's art, 
and, in a sham silver vessel staggering on two 
feet instead of three, is a cutaneous kind of 
sauce, of brown pimples and pickled cucumber. 
You order the bill, but your waiter cannot bring 
your bill yet, because he is bringing, instead, 
three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim heads 




The friendly Waiter. 



503 



WAITEB 



608 



WAITING 



of broccoli, like the occasional ornaments on 
area railings, badly boiled. You know that you 
will never come to this pass, any more than to 
the cheese and celery, and you imperatively de- 
mand your bill ; but it takes time to get, even 
when gone for, because your waiter has to com- 
municate with a lady who lives behind a sash- 
window in a corner, and who appears to have 
to refer to several Ledgers before she can make 
it out — as if you had been staying there a year. 
You become distracted to get away, and the 
other waiter, once more changing his leg, still 
looks at you, — but suspiciously, now, as if you 
had begun to remind him of the party who took 
the great-coats last winter. Your bill at last 
brought and paid, at the rate of sixpence a 
mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds 
you that " attendance is not charged for a single 
meal," and you have to search in all your pock- 
ets for sixpence more. He has a worse opinion 
of you than ever, when you have given it to him, 
and lets you out into the street with the air of 
one saying to himself, as you cannot doubt he 
is, "I hope we shall never see}/ou here again !" 
Uncommercial Traveller^ Chap. 6. 

WAITER— His misfortunes. 

" If I didn't support a aged pairint, and a 
lovely sister," — here the waiter was greatly agi- 
tated — " I wouldn't take a farthing. If I had a 
good place, and was treated well here, I should 
beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of 
it. But I live on broken wittles — and I sleep 
on the coals " — here the waiter burst into tears. 
Great Expectations, Chap. 27. 

WAITER— The wrong-s of a. 

"Well!" cried Mr. Bailey, "Wot if I am? 
There's something gamey in it, young ladies, an't 
there? I'd sooner be hit with a cannon-ball 
than a rolling-pin, and she's always a catching up 
something of that sort, and throwing it at me, 
wen the gentlemen's appetites is good. Wot," 
said Mr. Bailey, stung by the recollection of his 
wrongs, " wot if they do con-sume the per- 
vishuns. It an't my fault, is it ? " 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. II. 

WAITER— A dignified. 

The Chief Butler, the Avenging Spirit of this 
great man's life, relaxed nothing of his severity. 
He looked on at these'dinners when the bosom 
was not there, as he looked on at other dinners 
when the bosom was there ; and his eye was a 
basilisk to Mr. Merdle. He was a hard man, 
and would never abate an ounce of plate or a 
bottle of wine. He would not allow a dinner 
to be given, unless it was up to his mark. He 
set forth the table for his own dignity. If the 
guests chose to partake of what was served, he 
saw no objection : but it was served for the main- 
tenance of his rank. As he stood by the side- 
board he seemed to announce, " I have accept- 
ed office to look at this which is now before me, 
and to look at nothing less than this." If he 
missed the presiding bosom, it was as a part of his 
own state of which he was, from unavoidable 
circumstances, temporarily deprived. Just as 
he might have missed a centrepiece, or a choice 
wine-cooler, which had been sent to the Bank- 
er's.— ZiV//^? Dorrit, Book 11. , Chap. 12. 

WAITER-The Chief Butler. 

Only one thing sat otherwise than auriferous- 



ly, and at the same time lightly, on Mr. Dorrit'a 
mind. It was the Chief Butler. That stupen- 
dous character looked at him in the course of 
his official looking at the dinners, in a manner 
that Mr. Dorrit considered questionable. He 
looked at him, as he passed through the hall and 
up the staircase, going to dinner, with a glazed 
fixedness that Mr. Dorrit did not like. Seated 
at table in the act of drinking, Mr. Dorrit still 
saw him through his wine-glass, regarding him 
with a cold and ghostly eye. It misgave him 
that the Chief Butler must have known a Col- 
legian, and must have seen him in the College — 
perhaps had been presented to him. He looked 
as closely at the Chief Butler as such a man 
could be looked at, and yet he did not recall 
that he had ever seen him elsewhere. Ultimate- 
ly he was inclined to think that there was no 
reverence in the man, no sentiment in the great 
creature. But he was not relieved by that ; 
for, let him think what he would, the Chief But- 
ler had him in his supercilious eye, even when 
that eye was on the plate and other table-garni- 
ture ; and he never let him out of it. To hint 
to him that this confinernent in his eye was dis- 
agreeable, or to ask him what he meant, was an 
act too daring to venture upon ; his severity 
with his employers and their visitors being ter- 
rific, and he never permitting himself to be ap- 
proached with the slightest liberty. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 16. 

WAITER— The model. 

Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he 
stepped backward from the table, the waiter 
shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, 
dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood 
surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as 
from an observatory or watch-tower. Accord- 
ing to the immemorial usage of waiters in all 
ages. — Tale of Two Cities, Chap, 4. 

WAITERS— Their characteristics. 

" Soda water, sir? Yes, sir." With his mind 
apparently relieved from an overwhelming 
weight, by having at last got an order for some- 
thing, the waiter imperceptibly melted away. 
Waiters never walk or run. They have a pe- 
culiar and mysterious power of skimming out of 
rooms, which other mortals possess not. 

Pickiuick, Chap. 30. 

WAITING— The misery of. 

There are few things more worrying than 
sitting up for somebody, especially if that some- 
body be at a party. You cannot help thinking 
how quickly the time passes with them, which 
drags so heavily with you ; and the more you think 
of this, the moreyourhopesof their speedy arrival 
decline. Clocks tick so loud, too, when you are 
sitting up alone, and you seem as if you had an 
under garment of cobwebs on. First, some- 
thing tickles your right knee, and tlien the 
same sensation irritates your left. You have 
no sooner changed your position, than it comes 
again in the arms : when you have fidgeted 
your limbs into all sorts of odd shapes, you 
have a sudden relapse in the nose, which you 
rub as if to rub it off— as tliere is no doubt you 
would, if you could. Eyes, too, are mere per- 
sonal inconveniences, and the wick of one 
candle gets an inch and a half long, while you 
are snuffing the other. These, and various 



WALKINa 



504 



WALK 



other little nervous annoyances, render sitting 
up for a length of time after everybody else 
has gone to bed, anything but a cheerful amuse- 
ment. — Pickwick, Chap. 36. 

WAIiKINGh— Better than riding. 

Better ! A rare, strong, hearty, healthy walk 
— four statute miles an hour — preferable to 
that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, scrap- 
ing, creaking, villanous old gig? Why, the 
two things will not admit of comparison. It is 
an insult to the walk, to set them side by side. 
Where is an instance of a gig having ever circu- 
lated a man's blood, unless when, putting him 
in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins 
and in his ears, and all along his spine, a ting- 
ling heat, much more peculiar than agreeable ? 
When did a gig ever sharpen anybody's wits 
and energies, unless it was when the horse bolt- 
ed, and, crashing madly down a steep hill with 
a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate cir- 
cumstances suggested to the only gentleman 
left inside, some novel and unheard-of mode 
of dropping out behind ? Better than the gig ! 

The air was cold, Tom ; so it was, there was 
no denying it ; but would it have been more 
genial in the gig? The blacksmith's fire 
burned very bright, and leaped up high, as 
though it wanted men to warm ; but would it 
have been less tempting, looked at from the 
clammy cushions of a gig? The wind blew 
keenly, nipping the features of the hardy wight 
who fought his way along ; blinding him with 
his own hair if he had enough of it, and wintry 
dust if he hadn't ; stopping his breath as though 
he had been soused in a cold bath ; tearing 
aside his wrappings-up, and whistling in the 
very marrow of his bones ; but it would have 
done all this a hundred times more fiercely to 
a man in a gig, wouldn't it ? A fig for gigs ! 

Better than the gig ! When were travellers 
by wheels and hoofs seen with such red-hot 
cheeks as those ? when were they so good-hu- 
moredly and merrily bloused ? when did their 
laughter ring upon the air, as they turned them 
round, what time the stronger gusts came 
sweeping up ; and, facing round again as they 
passed by, dashed on, in such a glow of ruddy 
health as nothing could keep pace with, but 
the high spirits it engendered ? Better than 
the gig ! Why, here is a man in a gig coming 
the same way now. Look at him as he passes 
his whip into his left hand, chafes his numbed 
right fingers on his granite leg, and beats those 
marble toes of his upon the foot-board. Ha, 
ha, ha ! Who would exchange this rapid hur- 
ry of the blood for yonder stagnant misery, 
though its pace were twenty miles for one ? 

Better than the gig ! No man in a gig could 
have such interest in the milestones. No man in 
a gig could see, or feel, or think, like merry users 
of their legs. How, as the wind sweeps on, upon 
these breezy downs, it tracks its flight in dark- 
ening ripples on the grass, and smoothest shadows 
on the hills ! Look round and round upon this 
bare bleak plain, and see, even here, upon a win- 
ter's day, how beautiful the shadows are ! Alas ! 
it is the nature of their kind to be so. The 
loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows ; 
and they come and go, and change and fade 
away, as rapidly as these ! 

Another mile, and then begins a fall of snow, 
making the crow, who skims away so close above 



the ground to shirk the wind, a blot of ink upon 
the landscape. But though it drives and drifts 
against them as they walk, stiffening on their 
skirts, and freezing in the lashes of their eyes, 
they wouldn't have it fall morg sparingly, no, 
not so much as by a single flake, although they 
had to go a score of miles. And, lo ! the towers 
of the Old Cathedral rise before them, even 
now ! and by-and-bye they come into the shel- 
tered streets, made strangely silent by their white 
carpet ; and so to the Inn for which they are 
bound ; where they present such flushed and 
burning faces to the cold waiter, and are so 
brimful of vigor, that he almost feels assaulted 
by their presence ; and having nothing to op- 
pose to the attack (being fresh, or rather stale, 
from the blazing fire in the coffee-room), is quite 
put out of his pale countenance. 

A famous Inn ! . the hall a very grove of dead 
game, and dangling joints of mutton ; and in 
one corner an illustrious larder, with glass doors 
developing cold fowls, and noble joints, and tarts, 
wherein the raspberry jam coyly withdrew itself, 
as such a precious creature should.behind a lattice 
work of pastry. — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 12. 

WALK— An egotistic. 

The Doctor's walk was stately, and calculated 
to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feel- 
ings. It was a sort of march ; but when the 
Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned 
upon his axis, with a semicircular sweep towards 
the left ; and when he put out his left foot, he 
turned in the same manner towards the right. 
So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to 
look about him, as though he were saying, "Can 
anybody have the goodness to indicate any 
subject, in any direction, on which I am unin- 
formed ? I rather think not," 

Dombey &> Son, Chap. 12. 

The Major, more blue-faced and staring — 
more over-ripe, as it were, than ever — and giv- 
ing vent, every now and then, to one of the 
horse's coughs, not so much of necessity as in 
a spontaneous explosion of importance, walked 
arm-in-arm with Mr. Dombey up the sunny side 
of the way, with his cheeks swelling over his 
tight stock, his legs majestically wide apart, and 
his great head wagging from side to side, as if he 
were remonstrating within himself for being such 
a captivating object. — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 21. 

WALK-A fast. 

"Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad," returned the 
Captain, mending his pace ; " and walk the 
same all the days of your life. Overhaul the 
catechism for that advice, and keep it ! " 

Dombey (5r» Son, Chap. 9. 

WALK— A dignified. 

" What's the matter, what's the matter ? " said 
the gentleman for whom the door was opened ; 
coming out of the house at that kind of light- 
heavy pace — that peculiar compromise between 
a walk and a jog-trot — with which a gentleman 
upon the smooth down-hill of life, wearing 
creaking boots, a watch-chain, and clean linen, 
may come out of his house ; not only without 
any abatement of his dignity, but with an ex- 
pression of having important and wealthy en- 
gagements elsewhere. " What's the matter? " 
Christmas Chimes, ist Quartert 



WASHINGTON 



605 



WATER-PIPES 



WASHINGTON. 

Take the worst parts of the City Road and 
Pentonville, or the straggling outskirts of Paris, 
where the houses are smallest, preserving all 
their oddities, but especially the small shops and 
dwellings, occupied in Pentonville (but not in 
Washington) by furniture brokers, keepers of 
poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn 
the whole down ; build it up again in wood and 
plaster : widen it a little ; throw in part of St. 
John's Wood ; put green blinds outside all 
the private houses, with a red curtain and a 
white one in every window ; plough up all the 
roads ; plant a great deal of coarse turf in every 
place where it ought not to be ; erect three 
handsome buildings in stone and marble any- 
where, but the more entirely out of everybody's 
way the better ; call one the Post Office, one 
the Patent Office, and one the Treasury ; make 
it scorching hot in the morning, and freezing 
cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado 
of wind and dust ; leave a brick-field without 
the bricks, in all central places where a street 
may naturally be expected ; and that's Washing- 
ton. 

***** 

I walk to the front window, and look across 
the road upon a long, straggling row of houses, 
one-story high, terminating nearly opposite, 
but a little to the left, in a melancholy piece of 
waste ground, with frowzy grass, which looks 
like a small piece of country that has taken to 
drinking, and has quite lost itself. Standing 
anyhow and all wrong, upon this open space, 
like something meteoric that has fallen down 
from the moon, is an odd, lop-sided, one-eyed 
kind of wooden building, that looks like a 
church, with a flag-staff as long as itself stick- 
ing out of a steeple something larger than a tea- 
chest. 

It is sometimes called the City of Magnifi- 
cent Distances, but it might with greater pro- 
priety be termed the City of Magnificent Inten- 
tions ; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of 
it from the top of the Capitol, that one can at 
all comprehend the vast designs of its pro- 
jector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious ave- 
nues, that begin in nothing and lead nowhere ; 
streets, mile long, that only want houses, roads, 
and inhabitants ; public buildings that need but 
a public to be complete ; and ornaments of great 
thoroughfares which only lack great thorough- 
fares to ornament, — are its leading features. 
One might fancy the season over, and most of 
the houses gone out of town forever with their 
masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Bar- 
mecide Feast ; a pleasant field for the imagina- 
tion to rove in ; a monument raised to a deceased 
project, with not even a legible inscription to 
record its departed greatness. 

American Notes ^ Chap. 8. 

WASHINGTON IRVING— At the White 
House. 

That these visitors, too, whatever their sta- 
tion, were not without some refinement of taste 
and appreciation of intellectual gifts, and grati- 
tude to those men who by the peaceful exercise 
of great abilities shed new charms and associa- 
tions upon the homes of their countrymen, and 
elevate their character in other lands, was most 
earnestly testified by their reception of Wash- 



ington Irving, my dear friend, who had recentl) 
been appointed Minister at the court of Spain 
and who was among them that night, in his new 
character, for the first and last time before go- 
ing abroad. I sincerely believe that, in all the 
madness of American politics, few public men 
would have been so earnestly, devotedly, and 
affectionately caressed as this most charming 
writer ; and I have seldom respected a public 
assembly more than I did this eager throng, 
when I saw them turning with one mind from 
noisy orators and officers of state, and flocking 
with a generous and honest impulse round the 
man of quiet pursuits ; proud in his promotion, 
as reflecting back upon their countr}', and grate- 
ful to him with their whole hearts for the store 
of graceful fancies he had poured out among 
them. Long may he dispense such treasures 
with unsparing hand ; and long may they re- 
member him as worthily ! 

American Notes, Chap. 8. 

WATCH— A model. 

The Captain immediately drew Walter into a 
corner, and with a great effort, that made his 
face very red, pulled up the silver watch, which 
was so big, and so tight in his pocket, that it 
came out like a bung. 

" Wal'r," said the Captain, handing it over 
and shaking him heartily by the hand, " a part- 
ing gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour everj 
morning, and about another quarter towards 
the arternoon, and it's a watch that'll do yoi 
credit." — Dombey df Son, Chap. 20. 

WATCH-Of Sol Gills. 

He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and carried 
a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead, 
and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather 
than doubt which precious possession, he would 
have believed in a conspiracy against it on the 
part of all the clocks and watches in the City, 
and even of the very sun itself. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 4. 



If Uncle Sol had been going to be hanged 
by his own time, he never would have allowed 
that the chronometer was too fast by the least 
fraction of a second. — Dombey iSr* Son, Chap. 19. 

WATCH— Of Captain Cuttle. 

" You've done her some good, my lad, I be- 
lieve," said the Captain, under his breath, and 
throwing an approving glance upon his watch. 
" Put you back half an hour every morning, and 
about another quarter towards the arternoon, 
and you're a watch as can be ekalled by few 
and excelled by none." 

Dombey »5r» Son, Chap. 48. 

WATCH— Like an anchor. 

There was nothing about him in the way of 
decoration but a watch, which was lowered into 
the depths of its proper pocket by an old black 
ribbon, and had a tarnished copper key moored 
above it, to show where it was sunk. 

Little Doirit, Book /., Chap. 3. 

WATER-PIPES. 

All the water-pipes in the neighborhood 
seemed to have Macbeth's Amen sticking in 
their throats, and to be trying to get it out. 
Uncommercial TravclUr, Chap. 14. 



WATER 



606 



WEALTH 



WATER. 

Close about the quays and churches, palaces 
and prisons ; sucking at their walls, and well- 
ing up into the secret places of the town — crept 
the water always. Noiseless and watchful : 
coiled round and round it, in its many folds, 
like an old serpent : waiting for the time, I 
thought, when people should look down into its 
depths for any stone of the old city that had 
claimed to be its mistress. — Pictures from Italy. 

WATERING-PLACE - Mr. Pickwick at 
Bath. 

As Mr. Pickwick contemplated a stay of at 
least two months in Bath, he deemed it advisa- 
ble to take private lodgings for himself and 
friends for that period ; and as a favorable op- 
portunity offered for their securing, on moder- 
ate terms, the upper portion of a house in the 
Royal Crescent, which was larger than they re- 
quired, Mr. and Mrs. Dowler offered to relieve 
them of a bed-room and sitting-room. This 
proposition was at once accepted, and in three 
days' time they were all located in their new 
abode, when Mr. Pickwick began to drink the 
waters with the utmost assiduity. Mr. Pick- 
wick took them systematically. He drank a 
quart-er of a pint before breakfast, and then 
walked up a hill ; and another quarter of a pint 
after breakfast, and then walked down a hill ; 
and after every fresh quarter of a pint, Mr. Pick- 
wick declared, in the most solemn and emphatic 
terms, that he felt a great deal better ; whereat 
his friends were very much delighted, though 
they had not been previously aware that there 
was anything the matter with him. 

The great pump-room is a spacious saloon, 
ornamented with Corinthian pillars, and a mu- 
sic-gallery, and a Tompion clock, and a statue 
of Nash, and a golden inscription, to which all 
the water-drinkers should attend, for it appeals 
to them in the cause of a deserving charity. 
There is a large bar with a marble vase, out of 
which the pumper gets the water ; and there are 
a number of yellow-looking tumblers, out of 
which the company get it : and it is a most edi- 
fying and satisfactory sight to behold the perse- 
verance and gravity with which they swallow it. 
There are baths near at hand, in which a part 
of the company wash themselves ; and a band 
plays afterwards, to congratulate the remainder 
on their having done so. There is another 
pump-room, into which infirm ladies and gen- 
tlemen are wheeled, in such an astonishing 
variety of chairs and- chaises, that any adven- 
turous individual who goes in with the regular 
number of toes, is in imminent danger of com- 
ing out without them ; and there is a third, into 
which the quiet people go, for it is less noisy 
than either. There is an immensity of prom- 
enading, on crutches and off, with sticks and 
without, and a great deal of conversation, and 
liveliness, and pleasantry. — Pickwick, Chap, 36. 

WAX-WORK— Mrs. Jarley's. 

When she had brought all these testimonials 
of her important position in society to bear upon 
her young companion, Mrs. Jarley rolled them 
up, and having put them carefully away, sat 
down again, and looked at the child in tri- 
umph. 

"Never go into the company of a filthy 
Punch any more," said Mrs. Jarley, " after this." 



" I never saw any wax- work, ma'am," said 
Nell. '• Is it funnier than Punch ? " 

" Funnier ! " said Mrs. Jarley in a shrill voice. 
" It is not funny at all." 

" Oh 1 " said Nell, with all possible humility. 

" It isn't funny at all," repeated Mrs. Jarley. 
" It's calm and — what's that word again — criti- 
cal ? — no — classical, that's it — it's calm and clas- 
sical. No low beatings and knockings about, 
no jokings and squeakings like your precious 
Punches, but always the same, with a constantly 
unchanging air of coldness and gentility ; and 
so like life, that if wax-work only spoke and 
walked about, you'd hardly know the difference. 
I won't go so far as to say, that, as it is, I've 
seen wax-work quite like life, but I've certainly 
seen some life that was exactly like wax- work." 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 27. 

These audiences were of a very superior de- 
scription, including 2 great many young ladies' 
boarding-schools, whose favor Mrs. Jarley had 
been at great pains to conciliate, by altering the 
face and costume of Mr, Grimaldi as clown to 
represent Mr. Lindley Murray as he appeared 
when engaged in the composition of his English 
Grammar, and turning a murderess of great re- 
nown into Mrs. Hannah More — both of which 
likenesses were admitted by Miss Monflathers, 
who was at the head of the head Boarding and 
Day Establishment in the town, and who con- 
descended to take a Private View with eight 
chosen young ladies, to be quite startling from 
their extreme correctness. Mr. Pitt, in a night- 
cap and bedgown, and without his boots, repre- 
sented the poet Cowper with perfect exactness ; 
and Mary, Queen of Scots, in a dark wig, white 
shirt-collar, and male attire, was such a complete 
image of Lord Byron that the young ladies quite 
screamed when they saw it. Miss Monflathers, 
however, rebuked this enthusiasm, and took oc- 
casion to reprove Mrs. Jarley for not keeping 
her collection more select : observing that His 
Lordship had held certain opinions quite incom- 
patible with wax- work honors, and adding some- 
thing about a Dean and Chapter, which Mrs. 
Jarley did not understand. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 29. 

WEAKNESS— Hxunan. 

Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and 
meannesses are usually committed for the sake 
of the people whom we most despise. 

Great Expectations. Chap. 27. 

WEALTH— Ignorant men of. 

Mr. Malderton was a man whose whole scope 
of ideas was limited to Lloyd's, the Exchange, 
the India House, and the Bank. A few success- 
ful speculations had raised him from a situation 
of obscurity and comparative poverty, to a state 
of affluence. As frequently happens in such 
cases, the ideas of himself and his family be- 
came elevated to an extraordinary pitch as their 
means increased ; they affected fashion, taste, 
and many other fooleries, in imitation of their 
bettex's, and had a very decided and becoming 
horror of anything which could, by possibility, 
be considered low. He was hospitable from 
ostentation, illiberal from ignorance, and preju- 
diced from conceit. Egotism and the love of 
display induced him to keep an excellent table ; 
convenience, and a love of good things of this 



WEALTH 



507 



WEATHER 



life, ensured him plenty of guests. He liked 
to have clever men, or what he considered such, 
at his table, because it was a great thing to talk 
about ; but he never could endure what he 
called " sharp fellows." Probably, he cherished 
tills feeling out of compliment to his two sons, 
who gave their respected parent no uneasiness in 
that particular. The family were ambitious of 
forming acquaintances and connections in some 
sphere of society superior to that in which they 
themselves moved ; and one of the necessary con- 
sequences of this desire, added to their utter ig- 
norance of the world beyond their own small 
circle, was, that any one who could lay claim to 
an acquaintance with people of rank and title, 
had a sure passport to the table at Oak Lodge, 
Camberwell. — Tales, Chap,^. 

WEALTH— The conceit, intolerance, and 
igTiorance of Podsnap. 

Mr. Podsnap could tolerate taste in a mush- 
room man who stood in need of that sort of 
thing, but was far above it himself. Hideous 
solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap 
plate. Everything was made to look as heavy 
as it could, and to take up as much room as 
possible. Everything said boastfully, " Here 
you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I 
were only lead ; but I am so many ounces of 
precious metal, worth so much an ounce : — 
wouldn't you like to melt me down ? " A cor- 
pulent, straddling epergne, blotched all over as 
if it had broken out in an eruption rather than 
been ornamented, delivered this address from 
an unsightly silver platform in the centre of the 
table. Four silver wine-coolers, each furnished 
with four staring heads, each head obtrusively 
carrying a big silver ring in each of its ears, 
conveyed the sentiment up and down the table, 
and handed it on to the pot-bellied silver salt- 
cellars. All the big silver spoons and forks 
widened the mouths of the company expressly 
for the purpose of thrusting the sentiment 
down their throats with every morsel they ate. 

The majority of the guests were like the 
plate, and included several heavy articles weigh- 
ing ever so much. But there was a foreign gen- 
tleman among them, whom Mr. Podsnap had 
invited after much debate with himself — be- 
lieving the whole European continent to be in 
mortal alliance against the young person — and 
there was a droll disposition, not only on the 
part of Mr. Podsnap, but of everybody else, to 
treat him as if he were a child who was hard 
of hearing. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book L, Chap. il. 

WEALTH- The world's tribute to. 

Tradesmen's books hunger, and Tradesmen's 
mouths water, for the gold dust of the Golden 
Dustman. As Mrs. Boffin and Miss Wilfer 
drive out, or as Mr. Boffin walks out at his jog- 
trot pace, the fishmonger pulls oft" his hat with 
an air of reverence founded on conviction. 
His men cleanse their fingers on their woollen 
aprons before presuming to touch their fore- 
heads to Mr. Boffin or Lady. The gaping 
salmon and the golden mullet lying on the slab 
seem to turn up their eyes sideways, as they 
would turn up their hands, if they had any, in 
worshipping admiration. The butcher, though a 
portly and a prosperous man, doesn't know what 
to do with himself, so anxious is he to e-xpress 



humility when discovered by the passing Bof- 
fins taking the air in a mutton grove. Presents 
are made to the Boffin servants, and bland 
strangers with business-cards, meeting said ser- 
vants in the street, offer hypothetical corruption. 
Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 17. 

WEALTH— The rich man. 

Mr. Dombey was one of those close-shaved, 
close-cut, moneyed gentlemen who are glossy 
and crisp like new bank-notes, and who seem 
to be artificially braced and tightened as by the 
stimulating action of golden shower-baths. 

Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 2. 

WEALTH— Without station. 

The minion of fortune and the worm of the 
hour, or in less cutting language, Nicodemus 
Boffin, Esquire, the Golden Dustman, had be- 
come as much at home in his eminently aristo- 
cratic family mansion as he was likely ever to 
be. He could not but feel that, like an eminent- 
ly aristocratic family cheese, it was much too 
large for his wants, and bred an infinite amount 
of parasites ; but he was content to regard 
this drawback on his property as a sort of per- 
petual Legacy Duty. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 8. 

WEATHER— Stormy— The Maypole. 

One wintry evening, early in the year of 
our Lord one thousand seven hundred and 
eighty, a keen north wind arose as it grew dark, 
and night came on with black and dismal 
looks. A bitter storm of sleet, sharp, dense, 
and icy-cold, swept the wet streets, and rattled 
on the trembling windows. Sign-boards, sha- 
ken past endurance in their creaking frames, fell 
crashing on the pavement ; old tottering chim- 
neys reeled and staggered in the blast ; and 
many a steeple rocked again that night, as 
though the earth were troubled. 

It was not a time for those who could by any 
means get light and warmth, to brave the fury 
of the weather. In coffee-houses of the better 
sort, guests crowded round the fire, forgot to be 
political, and told each other with a secret glad- 
ness that the blast grew fiercer every minute. 
Each humble tavern by the water-side had its 
group of uncouth figures round the hearth ; 
who talked of vessels foundering at sea, and all 
hands lost, related many a dismal tale of ship- 
wreck and drowned men, and hoped that some 
they knew were safe, and shook their heads in 
doubt. In private dwellings, children clustered 
near the blaze ; listening with timid pleasure to 
tales of ghosts and goblins and tall figures clad 
in white standing by bedsides, and people who 
had gone to sleep in old churches and being 
overlooked had found themselves alone there at 
the dead hour of the night : until they shud- 
dered at the thought of the dark rooms uji-stairs ; 
yet loved to hear thewijui moan, too, and hoped 
it would continue bravely. From time to time 
these happy in-door people stopped to listen, or 
one held up his finger and cried "Hark!" and 
then, above the rumbling in the chimney, and the 
fast pattering on the glass, was heanl a wailing, 
rushing sound, which shook the walls as though 
a giant's hand were on them ; then a hoarse 
roar as if the sea had risen ; then such a whirl 
and tumult that the air seemed mad ; and 
then, with a lengthened howl, the waves of 



WEATHEB 



508 



WEATHEB 



wind swept on, and left a moment's interval of 
rest. 

Cheerily, though there were none abroad to 
see it, shone the Maypole light that evening. 
Blessings on the red — deep, ruby, glowing red 
— old curtain of the window ; blending into 
one rich stream of brightness, fire and candle, 
meat, drink, and company, and gleaming like 
a jovial eye upon the bleak waste out of doors ! 
Within, what carpet like its crunching sand, 
what music merry as its crackling logs, what 
perfume like its kitchen's dainty breath, what 
weather genial as its hearty warmth ! Blessings 
on the old house, how sturdily it stood ! How 
did the vexed wind chafe and roar about its 
stalwart roof ; how did it pant and strive with 
its wide chimneys, which still poured forth from 
their hospitable throats great clouds of smoke, 
and puffed defiance in its face ; how, above all, 
did it drive and rattle at the casement, emulous 
to extinguish that cheerful glow, which would 
not be put down and seemed the brighter for 
the conflict. 

The profusion, too, the rich and lavish bounty, 
of that goodly tavern ! It was not enough that 
one fire roared and sparkled on its spacious 
hearth ; in the tiles which paved and compassed 
it, five hundred flickering fires burnt brightly 
also. It was not enough that one red curtain 
shut the wild night out, and shed its cheerful 
influence on the room. In every saucepan lid, 
and candlestick, and vessel of copper, brass, or 
tin that hung upon the walls, were countless 
ruddy hangings, flashing and gleaming with 
every motion of the blaze, and offering, let the 
eye wander where it might, interminable vistas 
of the same rich color. The old oak wainscot- 
ing, the beams, the chairs, the seats, reflected it 
in a deep, dull glimmer. There were fires and 
red curtains in the very eyes of the drinkers, in 
their buttons, in their liquor, in the pipes they 
smoked. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 33. 

WEATHER— The snow. 

There is no improvement in the weather. 
From the portico, from the eaves, from the para- 
pet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips 
the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, 
into the lintels of the great door — imder it, into 
the corners of the windows, into every chink 
and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. 
It is falling still ; upon the roof, upon the sky- 
light ; even through the skylight, and drip, drip, 
drip, with the regularity of the Ghost's Walk, 
on the stone floor below. 

Bkak House, Chap. 58. 

WEATHER— Wintry. 

A thaw, by all that is miserable ! The frost is 
completely broken up. You look down the 
long perspective of Oxford Street, the gas-lights 
mournfully reflected on the wet pavement, and 
can discern no speck in the road to encourage 
the belief that there is a cab or a coach to be 
had — the very coachmen have gone home in 
despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with 
that gentle regularity which betokens a dura- 
tion of four-and-twenty hours at least ; the 
damp hangs upon the house-tops, and lamp- 
posts, and clings to you like an invisible cloak. 
The water is " coming in " in every area, the 
pipes have burst, the water-butts are running 
over, the kennels seem to be doing matches 



against time, pump-handles descend of their 
own accord, horses in market-carts fall down, 
and there's no one to help them up again, police- 
men look as if they had been carefully sprinkled 
with powdered glass ; here and there a milk- 
woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list 
round each foot to keep her from slipping ; boys 
who ** don't sleep in the house," and are not al- 
lowed much sleep out of it, can't wake their 
masters by thundering at the shop-door, and 
cry with the cold — the compound of ice, snow, 
and water on the pavement is a couple of inches 
thick — nobody ventures to walk fast to keep 
himself warm, and nobody could succeed in 
keeping himself warm if he did. 

Scenes, Chap. 15. 

WEATHER— Erosty. 

You couldn't see very far in the fog, of course ; 
but you could see a great deal ! It's astonish- 
ing how much you may see, in a thicker fog 
than that, if you will only take the trouble to 
look for it. Why, even to sit watching for the 
Fairy-rings in the fields, and for the patches of 
hoar-frost still lingering in the shade, near 
hedges and by trees, was a pleasant occupation, 
to make no mention of the unexpected shapes 
in which the trees themselves came starting out 
of the mist, and glided into it again. The 
edges were tangled and bare, and waved a mul- 
titude of blighted garlands in the wind ; but 
there was no discouragement in this. It was 
agreeable to contemplate ; for it made the fire- 
side warmer in possession, and the summer 
greener in expectancy. The river looked chil- 
ly ; but it was in motion, and moving at a good 
pace — which was a great point. The canal was 
rather slow and torpid ; that must be admitted. 
Never mind. It would freeze the sooner when 
the frost set fairly in, and then there would be 
skating, and sliding ; and the heavy old barges, 
frozen up somewhere near a wharf, would smoke 
their rusty iron chimney pipes all day, and 
have a lazy time of it. 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2. 

WEATHER— A November fog. 

Implacable November weather. As much 
mud in the streets as if the waters had but 
newly retired from the face of the earth, and it 
would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, 
forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephan- 
tine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering 
down from chimney-pots, making a soft black 
drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full- 
grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one 
might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, 
undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely 
better ; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot 
passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in 
a general infection of ill-temper, and losing theii 
foothold at street-corners, where tens of thous- 
ands of other foot-passengers have been slipping 
and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever 
broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon 
crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously 
to the pavement, and accumulating at compound 
interest. 

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it 
flows among green aits and meadows ; fog down 
the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers 
of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a 
great (and dirty) city. Fog in the Essex marshes, 



WEATHER 



609 



WEATHEB 



fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into 
the cabooses of collier-brigs ; fog lying out on 
the yards and hovering in the rigging of great 
ships ; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges 
and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats 
of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by 
the firesides of their wards ; fog in the stem and 
bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful 
skipper, down in his close cabin ; fog cruelly 
pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering 
little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on 
the bridges peeping over the parapets into a 
nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as 
if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the 
misty clouds. — Bleak House, Chap, i. 

WEATHER-Cold. 

" Well, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, as that 
favored servitor entered his bedchamber with 
his warm water, on the morning of Christmas 
Day, " still frosty ? " 

" Water in the wash-hand basin 's a mask o' 
ice, sir," responded Sam. 

" Severe weather, Sam," observed Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

" Fine time for them as is well wropped up, 
as the Polar Bear said to himself, ven he was 
practising his skating," replied Mr. Weller. 

Pickwick, Chap. 30. 

WEATHER— Beautiful. 

The sky was serene and bright, the air clear, 
perfumed with the fresh scent of newly-fallen 
leaves, and grateful to every sense. The neigh- 
boring stream sparkled, and rolled onward with 
a tuneful sound ; the dew glistened on the green 
mounds, like tears shed by Good Spirits over 
the dead. — Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53. 

WEATHER— Toby Veck in stormy. 

Wet weather was the worst ; the cold, damp, 
clammy wet, that wrapped him up like a moist 
great-coat — the only kind of great-coat Toby 
owned, or could have added to his comfort by 
dispensing with. Wet days, when the rain came 
slowly, thickly, obstinately down ; when the 
street's throat, like his own, was choked with 
mist ; when smoking umbrellas passed and re- 
passed, spinning round and round like so many 
teetotums, as they knocked against each other 
on the crowded footway, throwing off a little 
whirlpool of uncomfortable sprinklings ; when 
gutters brawled and water-spouts were full and 
noisy ; when the wet from the projecting stones 
and ledges of the church fell drip, drip, drip, on 
Toby, making the wisp of straw on which he 
stood mere mud in no time ; those were the 
days that tried him. Then, indeed, you might 
see Toby looking anxiously out from his shelter 
in an angle of the church wall — such a meagre 
shelter that in summer-time it never cast a 
shadow thicker than a good-sized walking-stick 
upon the sunny pavement — with a disconsolate 
and lengthened face. But coming out a minute 
afterwards, to warm himself by exercise, and 
trotting up and down some dozen times, he 
would Isrighten even then, and go back more 
brightly to his niche. 

Christinas Chimes, 1st quarter. 

WEATHER- A anow-storm. 

It was still dark when we left the Peacock. 
For a little while, pale, uncertain ghosts of 



houses and trees appeared and vanished, and 
then it was hard, black, frozen day. People 
were lighting their fires ; smoke was mounting 
straight up high into the rarefied air ; and we 
were rattling for Highgate Archway over the 
hardest ground I have ever heard the ring of 
iron shoes on. As we got into the country, 
everything seemed to have grown old and gray. 
The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages 
and homesteads, the ricks in farmers' yards. 
Out-door work was abandoned, horse-troughs 
at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers 
lounged about, doors were close shut, little turn- 
pike houses had blazing fires inside, and chil- 
dren (even turnpike people have children, and 
seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the 
little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that 
their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the 
solitary coach going by. I don't know when the 
snow began to set in ; but I know that we were 
changing horses somewhere when I heard the 
guard remark, "That the old lady up in the sky 
was picking her geese pretty hard to-day." 
Then, indeed, I found the white down falling 
fast and thick. 

The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, 
as a lonely traveller does. I was warm and 
valiant after eating and drinking — particularly 
after dinner ; cold and depressed at all other 
times. I was always bewildered as to time 
and place, and always more or less out of my 
senses. The coach and horses seemed to exe- 
cute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a 
moment's intermission. They kept the time 
and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose 
into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, 
with a precision that worried me to death. 
While we changed horses, the guard and 
coachman went stumping up and down the road, 
printing off their shoes in the snow, and poured 
so much liquid consolation into themselves with- 
out being any the worse for it, that I began to 
confound them, as it darkened again, with two 
great white casks standing on end. Our horses 
tumbled down in solitary places, and we got 
them up — which was the pleasantest variety / 
had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and 
snowed, and still it snowed, and never left ofF 
snowing. 

4c ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

When we came in sight of a town, it looked, 
to my fancy, like a large drawing on a slate, 
with abundance of slate-pencil expended on the 
churches' and houses where the snow lay thick- 
est. When we came within a town, and found 
the church-clocks all stopped, the dial-faces 
choked with snow, and the Inn-signs blotted 
out, it seemed as if the whole place were over- 
grown with white moss. As to the coach, it 
was a mere snow-ball ; similarly, the men and 
boys who ran along beside us to the town's end, 
turning our clogged wheels and encouraging 
our horses, were men and boys of snow ; and 
the bleak, wild solitude to which they at last 
dismissed us was a snowy Sahara. One would 
have thought this enough ; notwithstanding 
which, I pledge my word that it snowed and 
snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off 
snowing. — The Holly Tree. 

WEATHER-Dlsmal. 

We wore soon equipped, and went out. It 
was a sombre day, and drops of chill rain fell 



WEATHER 



510 



WEDDING 



at intervals. It was one of those colorless days 
when everything looks heavy and harsh. The 
houses frowned at \\s, the dust rose at us, the 
smoke swooped at us, nothing made any com- 
promise about itself, or wore a softened aspect. 
I fancied my beautiful girl quite out of place in 
the rugged streets ; and I thought there were 
more ftinerals passing along the dismal pave- 
ments, than I had ever seen before. 

Bleak House, Chap. 51. 

WEATHER -Sugrgrestive of roast pig. 

" Kate, my dear," said Mrs. Nickleby ; " I 
don't know how it is, but a fine warm summer 
day like this, with the birds singing in every 
direction, always puts me in mind of roast pig, 
with sage and onion sauce, and made gravy." 
Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41. 

WEATHER— Rainy. 

It was a rainy morning, and very damp. I 
had seen the damp lying on the outside of my 
little window, as if some goblin had been crying 
there all night, and using the window for a 
pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp 
lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a 
coarser sort of spiders' webs ; hanging itself 
from twig to twig, and blade to blade. On 
every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the 
marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger 
on the post directing people to our village — a 
direction which they never accepted, for they 
never came there — was invisible to me until I 
was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up 
at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed 
conscience like a phantom devoting me to the 
Hulks. — Great Expectations, Chap. 3. 

WEATHER— Foggy. 

The fog came pouring in at every chink and 
keyhole, and was so dense without, that although 
the court was of the narrowest, the houses op- 
posite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy 
cloud come drooping down, obscuring every- 
thing, one might have thought that Nature 
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale. 
Christmas Carol, Stave i, 

WEATHER— Misty. 

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, 
and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, 
like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. 
A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its 
slow way through the air in ripples that visibly 
followed and overspread one another, as the 
waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It 
was dense enough to shut out everything from 
the light of the coach-lamps but these its own 
workings, and a few yards of road ; and the 
reek of the laboring horses steamed into it, as 
if they had made it all. 

Tale of Two Cities^ Chap. i. 

WEATHER— Mournful. 

Fog and frost so hung about the black old 
gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the 
Genius of the Weather sat in mournful medita- 
tion on the threshold. — Christmas Carol, Stave i. 

WEATHER — And muffins — (Mr. Tugby's 
opinion). 

" What sort of a night is it, Anne? " inquired 
the former porter of S'r Joseph Bowley, stretch- 



ing out his legs before the fire, and rubbing as 
much of them as his short arms could reach ; 
with an air that added, " Here I am if it's bad, 
and I don't want to go out if it's good." 

" Blowing and sleeting hard," returned his 
wife ; " and threatening snow. Dark. And very 
cold." 

" I'm glad to think we had muffins," said the 
former porter, in a tone of one who had set his 
conscience at rest. " It's a sort of night that's 
meant for muffins. Likewise crumpets. Also 
Sally Lunns." 

The former porter mentioned each successive 
kind of eatable, as if he were musingly summing 
up his good actions. After which, he rubbed 
his fat legs as before, and jerking them at the 
knees to get the fire upon the yet unroasted 
parts, laughed as if somebody had tickled him. 

" You're in spirits, Tugby, my dear," observed 
his wife. 

The firm was Tugby, late Chickenstalker. 

" No," said Tugby. " No. Not particular. 
I'm a little elewated. The muffins came so 
pat!" 

With that he chuckled until he was black in 
the face ; and had so much ado to become any 
other color, that his fat legs took the strangest 
excursions into the air. Nor were they reduced 
to anything like decorum until Mrs. Tugby had 
thumped him violently on the back, and shaken 
him as if he were a great bottle. 

" Good gracious, goodness, lord-a-mercy bless 
and save the man ! " cried Mrs. Tugby, in great 
terror. " What's he doing ? " 

Mr. Tugby wiped his eyes,' and faintly re- 
peated that he found himself a little elewated. 

" Then don't be so again, that's a dear good 
soul," said Mrs. Tugby, " if you don't want to 
frighten me to death, with your struggling and 
fighting ! " 

Mr. Tugby said he wouldn't ; but his whole 
existence was a fight, in which, if any judgment 
might be founded on the constantly increasing 
shortness of his breath and the deepening purple 
of his face, he was always getting the worst of it. 
Chimes, i\th Quarter, 

WEDDINCJ— The regrets of a. 

A wedding is a licensed subject to joke upon, 
but there really is no great joke in the matter 
after all ; — we speak merely of the ceremony, 
and beg it to be distinctly understood that we 
indulge in no hidden sarcasm upon a married 
life. Mixed up with the pleasure and joy of the 
occasion, are the many regrets at quitting home, 
the tears of parting between parent and child, 
the consciousness of leaving the dearest and 
kindest friends of the happiest portion of human 
life, to encounter its cares and troubles with 
others still untried and little known : natural 
feelings which we would not render this chapter 
mournful by describing, and which we should 
be still more unwilling to be supposed to ridi- 
cule. — Pickwick, Chap. 28. 

WEDDING, CHRISTENING, AND FIT- 
NERAIi— Pleasant Riderhood's views 
of a. 

Show Pleasant Riderhood a Wedding in the 
street, and she only saw two people taking out 
a regular license to quarrel and fight. Show her 
a Christening, and she saw a little heathen per- 
sonage having a quite superfluous name bestowed 




Sam Weller as ''Boots.' 



511 



WELLER 



511 



WELLER 



upon it, inasmuch as it would be commonly ad- 
dressed by some abusive epithet : which little 
personage was not in the least wanted by any- 
body, and would be shoved and banged out of 
everybody's way, until it should grow big enough 
to shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and 
she saw an unremunerative ceremony in the 
nature of a black masquerade, conferring a tem- 
porary gentility on the performers, at an immense 
expense, and representing the only formal party 
ever given by the deceased. Show her a live 
father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own 
father, who from her infancy had been taken 
with fits and starts of discharging his duty to 
her, which duty was always incorporated in the 
form of a fist or a leathern strap, and being dis- 
charged, hurt her. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book Il.y Chap. 12. 

WELIiER— Sam, personal appearance of. 

It was in the yard of one of these inns — of 
no less celebrated a one than the White Hart — 
that a man was busily employed in brushing the 
dirt off a pair of boots, early on the morning 
succeeding the events narrated in the last chap- 
ter. He was habited in a coarse, striped waist- 
coat, with black calico sleeves, and blue glass 
buttons ; drab breeches and leggings. A bright 
red handkerchief was wound in a very loose and 
unstudied style round his neck, and an old white 
hat was carelessly thrown on one side of his 
head. There were two rows of boots before 
him, one cleaned and the other dirty, and at 
every addition he made to the clean row, he 
paused from his work, and contemplated its 
results with evident satisfaction. 

Pickwick, Chap. lo. 

"WEIiLER— Sam, as " Boots." 

Mr. Samuel Weller happened to be at that 
moment engaged in burnishing a pair of painted 
tops, the personal property of a farmer who was 
refreshing himself with a slight lunch of two or 
three pounds of cold beef and a pot or two of 
porter, after the fatigues of the Borough mar- 
ket ; and to him the thin gentleman straightway 
advanced. 

" My friend," said the thin gentleman. 

" You're one o' the adwice gratis order," 
thought Sam, "or you wouldn't be so werry 
fond o' me all at once," But he only said — 
" Well, sir." 

" My friend," said the thin gentleman, with a 
conciliatory hem — " Have you got many peo- 
ple stopping here, now? Pretty busy? Eh?" 

Sam stole a look at the inquirer. He was a 
little, high-dried man, with a dark, squeezed-up 
face, and small, restless, black eyes, that kept 
winking and twinkling on each side of his lit- 
tle, inquisitive nose, as if they were playing a 
perpetual game of peep-bo with that feature. 
He was dressed all in black, with boots as shiny 
as his eyes, a low white neckcloth, and a clean 
shirt with a frill to it. A gold watch-chain, 
and seals, depended from his fob. He carried 
his black kid gloves in his hands, not on them ; 
and as he spoke, thrust his wrists beneath his 
coat-tails, with the air of a man who was in 
the habit of propounding some regular posers. 

" Pretty busy, eh?" said the little man. 

" Oh, werry well, sir," replied Sam, ** we 
shan't be bankrupts, and we shan't make our 
fort'ns. We eats our boiled mutton without 



capers, and don't care for horse-radish wen ve 
can get beef." 

^ " Ah," said the little man, " you're a wag, 
ain't you ? " 

" My eldest brother was troubled with that 
complaint," said Sam ; " it may be catching — I 
used to sleep with him." 

" This is a curious old house of yours," said 
the little man, looking round him. 

" If you'd sent word you was a coming, we'd 
ha' had it repaired, " replied the imperturbable 
Sam. 

***** 

" We want to know," said the little man, sol- 
emnly ; " and we ask the question of you, in 
order that we may not awaken apprehensions 
inside — we want to know who you've got in this 
house, at present ? " 

" Who there is in the house ! " said Sam, in 
whose mind the inmates were always represent- 
ed by that particular article of their costume 
which came under his immediate superintend- 
ence. " There's a wooden leg in number six ; 
there's a pair of Hessians in thirteen ; there's 
two pair of halves in the commercial ; there's 
these here painted tops in the snuggery inside 
the bar ; and five more tops in the coffee- 
room." 

" Nothing more ? " said the little man. 

"Stop a bit," replied Sam, suddenly recol- 
lecting himself. " Yes ; there's a pair of Wel- 
lington's a good deal worn, and a pair o' lady's 
shoes, in number five." 

***** 

A loud ringing of one of the bells was fol- 
lowed by the appearance of a smart chamber- 
maia in the upper sleeping gallery, who, after 
tapping at one of the doors, and receiving a 
request from within, called over the balus- 
trades — 

" Sam ! " 

" Hallo," replied the man with the white hat. 

" Number twenty-two wants his boots." 

" Ask number twenty-two whether he'll have 
*em now, or wait till he gets 'em," was the re- 
ply. 

" Come, don't be a fool, Sam," said the girl, 
coaxingly, " the gentleman wants his boots di- 
rectly." 

" Well, you are a nice young 'ooman for a 
musical party, you are," said the boot-cleaner. 
" Look at these here boots — eleven pair o' 
boots ; and one shoe as b'longs to number six, 
with the wooden leg. The eleven boots is to be 
called at half-past eight, and the shoe at nine. 
Who's number twenty-two, that's to put all the 
others out? No, no ; reg'lar rotation, as Jack 
Ketch said, when he tied the men up. Sorry 
to keep you a waitin', sir, but I'll attend to you 
directly." 

Saying which, the man in the white hat set to 
work upon a top-boot with increased assiduity. 

There was another loud ring ; and the bus- 
tling old landlady of the White Hart made her 
appearance in the opposite gallery. 

" Sam," cried the landlady ; " where is that 
lazy, idle — why, Sam^oh, there you are ; why 
don't you answer ? " 

" Wouldn't be gen-teel to answer, till you'd 
done talking," replied Sam, gruffly. 

" Here, clean them shoes for number seven- 
teen directly, and take 'em to private sitting- 
room number five, first floor." 



WELLER 



61^ 



WEIiLER 



The landlady flung a pair of lady's shoes into 
the yard, and bustled away. 

" Number five," said Sam, as he picked up 
the shoes, and taking a piece of chalk from his 
pocket, made a memorandum of their destina- 
tion on the soles — " Lady's shoes and private 
sittin'-room ! I suppose she didn't come in the 
wagin." 

" She came in early this morning," cried the 
girl, who was still leaning over the railing of the 
gallery, "with a gentleman in a hackney-coach, 
and it's him as wants his boots, and you'd bet- 
ter do 'em, that's all about it." 

" Vy didn't you say so before," said Sam, with 
great indignation, singling out the boots in 
question from the heap before him. " For all I 
know'd he vas one of the regular three- 
pennies. Private room ! and a lady too ! If 
he's anything of a gen'l'm'n, he's vorth a shil- 
lin' a day, let alone the arrands." 

Pickwick, Chap. lo. 

WELLER— Sam, engrag-ed by Pickwick. 

A sunbeam of placid benevolence played on 
Mr. Pickwick's features as he said, " I have half 
made up my mind to engage you myself." ' 

'• Have you, though ? " said Sam. ** Take the 
bill down. I'm let to a single gentleman, and 
the terms is agreed upon." 

" You accept the situation ? " inquired Mr. 
Pickwick. 

" Cert'nly," replied Sam. " If the clothes fits 
me half as well as the place, they'll do." 

Pickwick, Chap. 12. 

WELLER— Sam, recognizes "the old 'un." 
The room was one of a very homely descrip- 
tion, and was apparently under the especial pa- 
tronage of stage coachmen ; for several gentle- 
men, who had all the appearance of belonging 
to that learned profession, were drinking and 
smoking in the different boxes. Among the 
number was one stout, red-faced, elderly man 
in particular, seated in an opposite box, who at- 
tracted Mr. Pickwick's attention. The stout 
man was smoking with great vehemence, but 
between every half-dozen puffs, he took his pipe 
from his mouth, and looked first at Mr. Weller 
and then at Mr. Pickwick. Then, he would 
bury in a quart pot as much of his countenance 
as the dimensions of the quart pot admitted of 
its receiving, and take another look at Sam and 
Mr. Pickwick. Then he would take another 
half-dozen puffs with an air of profound medi- 
tation and look at them again. At last the 
stout man, putting up his legs on the seat, and 
leaning his back against the wall, began to puff 
at his pipe without leaving off at all, and to 
stare through the smoke at the new comers, as 
if he had made up his mind to see the most he 
could of them. 

At first the evolutions of the stout man had 
escaped Mr. Weller's observation, but by degrees, 
as he saw Mr. Pickwick's eyes every now and 
then turning towards him, he began to gaze in 
the same direction, at the same time shading 
his eyes with his hand, as if he partially recog- 
nized the object before him, and wished to make 
quite sure of its identity. His doubts were 
speedily dispelled, however : for the stout man, 
having blown a thick cloud from his pipe, a 
hoarse voice, like some strange effort of ven- 
triloquism, emerged from beneath the capa- 



cious shawls which muffled his throat and 
chest, and slowly uttered these sounds, — " Wy, 
Sammy ! " 

" Who'5 that, Sam ? " inquired Mr. Pickwick. 

" Why, I wouldn't ha' believed it, sir," replied 
Mr. "Weller with astonished eyes. " It's the old 
'un." 

•'Old one," said Mr. Pickwick. " What old 
one ? " 

" My father, sir," replied Mr. Weller. " How 
are you, my ancient ? " With which beautiful 
ebullition of filial affection, Mr. Weller made 
room on the seat beside him for the stout man, 
who advanced, pipe in mouth and pot in hand, 
to greet him. — Pickwick, Chap. 20. 

WELLER— And the new birth of Mrs. W. 

" How's mother-in-law this mornin' ? " 

" Queer, Sammy, queer," replied the elder 
Mr. Weller, with impressive gravity. " She's 
been gettin' rayther in the Methodistical order 
lately, Sammy ; and she is uncommon pious, 
to be sure. She's too good a cr«etur for me, 
Sammy. I feel I don't deserve her." 

*' Ah," said Mr. Samuel, " that's wery self-de- 
nyin' o' you." 

"Wery," replied his parent, with a sigh. 
" She's got hold o' some inwention for grown-up 
people being born again, Sammy ; the new birth, 
I thinks they calls it. I should wery much like 
to see that system in haction, Sammy. I should 
wery much like to see your mother-in-law born 
again. Wouldn't I put her out to nurse ! " 

Pickwick, Chap. 22. 

WELLER— Sam, his observations. 

" I never could a-bear that Job," said Mary. 

" No more you never ought to, my dear," re- 
plied Mr. Weller. ' 

" Why not ? " inquired Mary. 

"Cos ugliness and svindlin' never ought to 
be formiliar vith elegance and wirtew," replied 
Mr. Weller. " Ought they, Mr. Muzzle ? " 

" Not by no means," replied that gentleman. 

Here Mary laughed, and said the cook had 
made her, and the cook laughed, and said she 
hadn't. 

" I han't got a glass," said Mary. 

" Drink with me, my dear," said Mr. Weller. 
" Put your lips to this here tumbler, and then 
I can kiss you by deputy ? " 

" For shame, Mr. Weller ! " said Mary. 

" Wot's a shame, my dear ? " 

" Talkin' in that way." 

" Nonsense ; it ain't no harm. It's natur ; 
ain't it, cook ? " 

Mr. Trotter suffered himself to be forced into 
a chair by the fireside. He cast his small eyes, 
first on Mr. Weller, and then on Mr. Muzzle, but 
said nothing. 

" Well, now," said Sam, " afore these here 
ladies, I should jest like to ask you, as a sort of 
curiosity, wether you don't con-sider yourself 
as nice and well-behaved a young gen'l'm'n as 
ever used a pink check pocket-handkerchief, 
and the number four collection ? " 

Pickzvick, Chap. 25. 

WELLER— Sam, as a dutiful son. 

" I am very glad to see that you have so high 
a sense of your duties as a son, Sam," said Mr, 
Pickwick. 



WELLEK 



613 



WEIiLER 



•' I always had, sir," replied Mr. Weller. 

" That's a very gratifying reflection, Sam," said 
Mr. Pickwick approvingly. 

" Wery, sir," replied Mr. Weller ; " if ever I 
wanted anythin' o' my father, I always asked 
for it in a wery 'spectful and obligin' manner. 
If he didn't give it me, I took it, for fear I 
should be led to do anythin' wrong, through not 
havin' it. I saved him a world o* trouble in this 
vay, sir." 

" That's not precisely what I meant, Sam," 
said Mr. Pickwick, shaking his head, with a 
slight smile. 

" All good feelin', sir — the wery best inten- 
tions, as the gen'l'm'n said ven he run away 
from his wife 'cos she seemed unhappy with 
him," replied Mr. Weller. — Pickwick, Chap. 27. 

WELLER— Sam, on the marriag-e of his 
father. 

" Two coves in vhite aprons touches their hats 
wen you walk in — ' License, sir, license ? ' 
Queer sort, them, and their mas'rs too, sir — Old 
Bailey Proctors — and no mistake." 

" What do they do ?" inquired the gentleman. 

" Do ! You, sir ! That ain't the wost on 
it, neither. They puts things into old genTm'n's 
heads as they never dreamed of. My father, 
sir, wos a coachman. A widower he wos, and 
fat enough for anything — uncommon fat, to be 
sure. His missus dies, and leaves him four 
hundred pound. Down he goes to the Com- 
mons, to see the lawyer and draw the blunt — 
wery smart — top boots on — nosegay in his but- 
ton-hole — broad-brimmed tile — green shawl — 
quite the gen'lm'n. Goes through the archvay, 
thinking how he should inwest the money — up 
comes the touter, touches his hat — ' License, 
sir, license ? ' — ' What's that ? ' says my father. 

* License, sir,' says he. — 'What license?' says 
my father. — ' Marriage license,' says the touter. — 
' Dash my veskit,' says my father, * I never 
thought o' that.* — ' I think you wants one, sir,' 
says the touter. My father pulls up, and thinks 
a bit — ' No,' says he, ' damme, I'm too old, 
b'sides I'm a many sizes too large,' says he.- — 

• Not a bit on it, sir,' says the touter. — ' Think 
not ? ' says my father. — ' I'm sure not,' says he ; 

• we married a gen'l'm'n twice your size, last 
Monday.' — ' Did you, though ? ' said my father. 
— ' To be sure we did,' says the touter, ' you're 
a babby to him — this way, sir — this way ! ' — and 
sure enough my father walks arter him, like a 
tame monkey behind a horgan, into a little 
back office, vere a feller sat among dirty papers 
and tin boxes, making believe he was busy. 
' Pray take a seat, vile I makes out the affidavit, 
sir,' says the lawyer. — * Thankee, sir,' says my fa- 
ther, and down he sat, and stared with all his 
eyes, and his mouth vide open, at the names on 
the boxes. ' What's your name, sir?' says the 
lawyer. — ' Tony Weller,' says my father. — ' Par- 
ish ? ' says the lawyer. — ' Belle Savage,' says my 
father ; for he stopped there wen he drove up, 
and he know'd nothing about parishes, he didn't. 
— 'And what's the lady's name?' says the law- 
yer. My father was struck all of a heap. 
•Blessed if I know,' says he. — 'Not know!' 
says the lawyer. — ' No more nor you do,' says 
xtvy father ; ' can't I put that in afterwards ? ' — 

* Impossible ! ' says the lawyer. — ' Wery well,' 
says my father, after he'd thought a moment, 
' put down Mrs. Clarke.' — ' What Clarke ? ' says 



the lawyer, dippin his pen in the ink.—' Susan 
Clarke, Markis o' Granby, Dorking,' says my 
father ; ' she'll have me, if I ask, I des-say — I 
never said nothing to her, but she'll have me, I 
know.' The license was made out, and she did 
have him, and what's more she's got him now ; 
and / never had any of the four hundred pound, 
worse luck. Beg your pardon, sir," said Sam, 
when he had concluded, " but wen I gets on 
this here grievance, I runs on like a new bar- 
row vith the wheel greased." Having said 
which, and having paused for an instant to see 
whether he was wanted for anything more, Sam 
left the room. — Pickwick, Chap. 10. 

WELLER— Sam, and Job Trotter. 

Early on the ensuing morning, Mr. Weller 
was dispelling all the feverish remains of the 
previous evening's conviviality, through the in- 
strumentality of a halfpenny shower-bath (hav- 
ing induced a young gentleman attached to the 
stable department, by the offer of that coin, to 
pump over his head and face, until he was per- 
fectly restored), when he was attracted by the ap- 
pearance of a young fellow in mulberry-colored 
livery, who was sitting on a bench in the yard, 
reading what appeared to be a hymn-book, with 
an air of deep abstraction, but who occasionally 
stole a glance at the individual under the pump, 
as if he took some interest in his proceedings, 
nevertheless. 

" You're a rum 'un to look at, you are ! " 
thought Mr. Weller, the first time his eyes en- 
countered the glance of the stranger in the mul- 
berry suit : who had a large, sallow, ugly face, 
very sunken eyes, and a gigantic head, from 
which depended a quantity of lank black hair. 
" You're a rum 'un ! " thought Mr. Weller ; and 
thinking this, he went on washing himself, and 
thought no more about him. 

Still the man kept glancing from his hymn- 
book to Sam, and from Sam to his hymn-book, 
as if he wanted to open a conversation. So at 
last, Sam, by way of giving him an opportunity, 
said with a familiar nod — 

" How are you, governor?" 

" I am happy to say, I am pretty well, sir," 
said the man, speaking with great deliberation, 
and closing the book. " I hope you are the 
same, sir? " 

"Why, if I felt less like a walking brandy- 
bottle, I shouldn't be quite so staggery this 
mornin'," replied Sam. " Are you sloppin' in 
this house, old 'un ? " 

The mulberry man replied in the affirmative. 

" How was it you worn't one of us, last 
night ? " inquired Sam, scrubbing his face with 
the towel. " You seem one of the jolly sort 
— looks as conwivial as a live trout in a 
lime basket," added Mr. Weller, in an under 
tone. 

* » » ♦ » 

"Give us your hand," said Mr. Weller, ad- 
vancing ; " I should like to know you. I like 
your appearance, old fellow." 

" Well, that is very strange," said the mul- 
berry man, with great simplicity of manner. " I 
like yours so much, that I wanted to speak to 
you, from the very first moment I saw you under 
the pump." 

" Did you though ? " 

" Upon my word. Now, isn't that curious? *• 

"Wery sing'ler," said Sam, inwardly con- 



WELLER 



514 



WELLER 



gratulating himself upon the softness of the 
stranger. " What's your name, my patriarch ? " 

"Job." 

" And a wery good name it is — only one I 
know that ain't got a nickname to it. What's 
the other name ? " 

"Trotter," said the stranger. "What is 
yours ! " 

wSam bore in mind his master's caution, and 
replied — 

" My name's Walker ; my master's name's 
Wilkins. Will you take a drop o' somethin' 
this mornin', Mr. Trotter?" — Pickwick, Chap, i6. 

WELLER— Sam, and Job Trotter (Tears). 

" You must ha' been wery nicely brought 
up," said Sam. 

" Oh, very, Mr. Weller, very," replied Job. 
At the recollection of the purity of his youthful 
days, Mr. Trotter pulled forth the pink hand- 
kerchief, and wept copiously. 

" You must ha' been an uncommon nice boy 
to go to school vith," said Sam. 

" I was, sir," replied Job, heaving a deep 
sigh. " I was the idol of the place." 

" Ah," said Sam, " I don't wonder at it. 
What a comfort you must ha* been to your 
blessed mother." 

At these words, Mr. Job Trotter inserted an 
end of the pink handkerchief into the corner of 
each eye, one after the other, and began to weep 
copiously. 

" Wot's the matter vith the man ? " said Sam, 
indignantly. " Chelsea water-works is nothin' 
to you. What are you melting vith now ? The 
consciousness o' willainy ? " — Pickwick^ Chap. 23. 

WELLER— Sam, as a philosopher. 

" Delightful prospect, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Beats the chimley-pots, sir," replied Mr. 
Weller, touching his hat. 

" I suppose you have hardly seen anything 
but chimney-pots and bricks and mortar all your 
life, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, smiling. 

" I worn't always a boots, sir," said Mr. Wel- 
ler, with a shake of the head. " I wos a wag- 
giner's boy, once." 

" When was that ? " inquired Mr. Pickwick. 

" When I wos first pitched neck and crop 
into the world, to play at leap-frog with its 
troubles," replied Sam. " I wos a carrier's boy 
at startin' ; then a wagginer's, then a helper, 
then a boots. Now I'm a genTm'n's servant. 
I shall be a genTm'n myself one of these days, 
perhaps, with a pipe in my mouth, and a sum- 
mer-house in the back-garden. Who knows ? / 
shouldn't be surprised, for one." 

" You are quite a philosopher, Sam," said Mr. 
Pickwick. 

" It runs in the family, I b'lieve, sir," replied 
Mr. Weller. " My father's wery much in that 
line, now. If my mother-in-law blows him up, 
he whistles. She flies in a passion, and breaks 
his pipe ; he steps out, and gets another. Then 
she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics ; 
and he smokes wery comfortably till she comes 
to agin. That's philosophy, sir, ain't it? " 

" A very good substitute for it, at all events," 
replied Mr. Pickwick, laughing. " It must have 
been of great service to you, in the course of 
your rambling life, Sam." 

" Service, sir," exclaimed Sam. " You may 
say that. Arter I run away from the carrier, 



and afore I took up with the wagginer, I had 
unfurnished lodgin's for a fortnight." 

" Unfurnished lodgings ? " said Mr. Pick- 
wick. 

"Yes — the dry arches of Waterloo Bridge 
Fine sleeping-place — within ten minutes' walk 
of all the public offices — only if there is any ob- 
jection to it, it is that the sitivation's rayiher 
too airy. I see some queer sights there." 

" Ah, I suppose you did," said Mr. Pickwick, 
with an air of considerable interest. 

"Sights, sir," resumed Mr. Weller, "as 'ud 
penetx-ate your benevolent heart, and come out 
on the other side. You don't see the reg'lar 
wagrants there ; trust 'em, they knows better 
than that. Young beggars, male and female, as 
hasn't made a rise in their profession, takes up 
their quarters there sometimes ; but it's gener- 
ally the worn-out, starving, houseless creatures 
as rolls themselves in the dark corners o' them 
lonesome places — poor creeturs as ain't up to 
the twopenny rope." — Pickwick, Chap, 16. 

WELLER— Sam's opinion of " weal pie." 

" Weal pie," said Mr. Weller, soliloquising, as 
he arranged the eatables on the grass. " Wery 
good thing is weal pie, when you know the lady 
as made it, and is quite sure it ain't kittens ; and 
arter all though, where's the odds, when they're 
so like weal that the wery piemen themselves 
don't know the difference?" 

"Don't they, Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick. 

" Not they, sir," replied Mr. Weller, touching 
his hat. " I lodged in the same house vith a 
pieman once, sir, and a wery nice man he was 
— reg'lar clever chap, too — make pies out o' any- 
thing, he could. ' What a number o' cats you 
keep, Mr. Brooks,' says I, when I'd got intimate 
with him. ' Ah,' says he, ' I do — a good many,' 
says he. ' You must be wery fond o' cats,* says 
I. ' Other people is,' says he, a winkin' at me ; 
' they ain't in season till the winter though,' says 
he. ' Not in season ! ' says I. ' No,' says he, 
' fruits is in, cats is out.' ' Why, what do you 
mean?' says I. 'Mean?' says he. 'That I'll 
never be a party to the combination o' the 
butchers, to keep up the prices o' meat,' says he. 
' Mr. Weller,' says he, a squeezing my hand wery 
hard, and vispering in my ear — ' don't mention 
this here agin — but it's the seasonin' as does it. 
They're all made o' them noble animals,' says 
he, a pointin' to a wery nice little tabby kitten, 
' and I seasons 'em for beefsteak, weal, or kid- 
ney, 'cordin' to the demand. And more than 
that,' says he, ' I can make a weal a beefsteak, 
or a beefsteak a kidney, or any one on 'em a 
mutton, at a minute's notice, just as the market 
changes, and appetites wary ! ' " 

" He must have been a very ingenious young 
man that, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick, with a 
slight shudder. 

" Just was, sir," replied Mr. Weller, continu- 
ing his occupation of emptying the basket, 
" and the pies was beautiful. Tongue ; well, 
that's a wery good thing when it an't a woman's. 
Bread — knuckle o' ham, reg'lar picter — cold 
beef in slices, wery good. What's in them 
stone jars, young touch-and-go ? " 

Pickwick, Chap. 19. 

WELLER— Sam, and the Sawhones. 

" Wery good, sir," replied Sam. There's a 
couple o' Sawbones down-stairs." 



WELLER 



616 



WEIiliEB 



" A couple of what ? " exclaimed Mr. Pick- 
wick, sitting up in bed. 

" A couple o' Sawbones," said Sam. 

"What's a Sawbones?" inquired Mr. Pick- 
wick, not quite certain whether it was a live 
animal, or something to eat. 

" What !^ Don't you know what a Sawbones 
is, sir?" inquired Mr. Weller. "I thought 
everybody know'd as a Sawbones was a Sur- 
geon." 

***** 

"They're a smokin' cigars by the kitchen 
fire," said Sam. 

" Ah ! " observed Mr. Pickwick, rubbing his 
hands, " overflowing with kindly feelings and 
animal spirits. Just what I like to see." 

" And one on 'em," said Sam, not noticing his 
master's interruption, " one on 'em's got his legs 
on the table, and is a drinkin' brandy neat, vile 
the t'other one — ^him in the barnacles — has got a 
barrel o' oysters atween his knees, wich he's a 
openin' like steam, and as fast as he eats 'em, he 
takes a aim vith the shells at young dropsy, 
who's a sittin' down fast asleep, in the chimbley 
comer." 

" Eccentricities of genius, Sam, "said Mr. Pick- 
wick. " You may retire." — Pickwick, Chap. 30. 

WELLER— Sam, on social proprieties. 

" Now, young man, what do you want ? " 

" Is there anybody here named Sam ? " in- 
quired the youth, in a loud voice of treble 
quality. 

" What's the t'other name ? " said Sam Weller, 
looking round. 

" How should I know?" briskly replied the 
young gentleman below the hairy cap. 

" You're a sharp boy, you are," said Mr. Wel- 
ler ; " only I wouldn't show that wery fine edge 
too much, if I was you, in case anybody took it 
off. What do you mean by comin' to a hot-el, 
and asking arter Sam, vith as much politeness 
as a vild Indian ? " 

" 'Cos an old gen'l'm'n told me to," replied 
the boy. 

" Wot old gen'l'm'n ? " inquired Sam, with 
deep disdain. 

" Him as drives a Ipswich coach, and uses 
our parlor," rejoined the boy. " He told me 
yesterday mornin' to come to the George and 
Wultur this arternoon, and ask for Sam." 

" It's my father, my dear," said Mr. Weller, 
turning with an explanatory air to the young 
lady in the bar ; " blessed if I think he hardly 
knows wot my other name is. Veil, young 
brockiley sprout, wot then ? " 

Pickwick, Chap. 33. 

WELLER— Sam, amongr the fashionable 
footmen. 

" Tell the old gen'l'm'n not to put himself in 
a perspiration. No hurry, six-foot. I've had 
my dinner." 

" You dine early, sir," said the powdered- 
headed footman. 

" I find I gets on better at supper when I 
does," replied Sam. 

" Have you been long in Bath, sir ? " inquired 
the powdered-headed footman. " I have not 
had the pleasure of hearing of you before." 

" I haven't created any wery surprisin* sensa- 
tion here, as yet," rejoined Sam, *' for me and 
the other fash nables only come last night." 



" Nice place, sir," said the powdered -headed 
footman. 

" Seems so," observed Sam. 

"Pleasant society, sir," remarked the pow- 
dered-headed footman. " Very agreeable ser- 
vants, sir." 

" I should think they wos," replied Sam. 
" Affable, unaffected, say-nothin'-to-nobodv sort 
o' fellers." 

"Oh, very much so, indeed, sir," said the 
powdered-headed footman, taking Sam's remark 
as a high compliment. " Very much so, indeed. 
Do you do anything in this way, sir," inquired 
the tall footman, producing a small snuff-box 
with a fox's head on the top of it. 

" Not without sneezing," replied Sam. 

" Why, it is difficult, sir, I confess," said the 
tall footman. " It may be done by degrees, sir. 
Coffee is the best practice. I carried coffee, sir, 
for a long time. It looks very like rappee, sir." 

Here, a sharp peal at the bell reduced the 
powdered-headed footman to the ignominious 
necessity of putting the fox's head in his pocket, 
and hastening with a humble countenance to 
Mr. Bantam's " study." By-the-bye, who ever 
knew a man who never read or wrote either, 
who hadn't got some small back parlor 
which he would zzS\. a study ! 

Pickwick, Chap. 35. 

WELLER— Sam, at a footman's *' swarry." 

" How do you do, Mr. Weller ? " said Mr. 
John Smauker, raising his hat gracefully with 
one hand, while he gently waved the other in a 
condescending manner. " How do vou do. 
sir?" 

" Why, reasonably conwalescent," replied 
Sam. " How do you find yourself, my dear 
feller?" 

" Only so so," said Mr. John Smauker. 

" Ah, you've been a workin' too hard," observ- 
ed Sam. " I was fearful you would ; it won't 
do, you know ; you must not give way to that 
'ere uncompromisin' spirit o' your'n." 

" It's not so much that, Mr. Weller," replied 
Mr. John Smauker, "as bad wine; I'm afraid 
I've been dissipating." 

" Oh ! that's it, is it ? " said Sam ; " that's a 
wery bad complaint, that." 

" And yet the temptation, you see, Mr. Wel- 
ler," observed Mr. John Smauker. 

" Ah, to be sure," said Sam. 

" Plunged into the very vortex of society, you 
know, Mr. Weller," said Mr. John Smauker with 
a sigh. 

" Dreadful, indeed ! " rejoined Sam. 

" But it's always the way," said Mr. John 
Smauker ; " if your destiny leads you into public 
life, and public station, you must expect to be 
subjected to temptations which other people is 
free from, Mr. Weller." 

" Precisely what my uncle said, ven he vent 
into the public line," remarked Sam, " and wery 
right the old gen'l'm'n wos, for he drank hisself 
to death in somethin' less than a quarter." 

Mr. John Smauker looked deeply indignant 
at any parallel being drawn between himself and 
the deceased gentleman in question ; but as 
Sam's face was in the most immovable state of 
calmness, he thought better of it, and looked 
affable again. 

« * >ti * * 

" Perhaps we had better be walking," said 



WELLER 



516 



WELLER 



Mr. Smauker, consulting a copper time-piece 
which dwelt at the bottom of a deep watch- 
pocket, and was raised to the surface by means 
of a black string, with a copper key at the other 
end. 

" P'raps we had," replied Sam, " or they'll 
overdo the swarry, and that'll spile it." 

" Have you drank the waters, Mr. Weller? " 
inquired his companion, as they walked towards 
'^iigh Street. 

" Once," replied Sam. 

" What did you think of 'em, sir ? " 

" I thought they vvos particklery unpleasant," 
replied Sam. 

" Ah," said Mr. John Smauker, " you disliked 
the killibeate taste, perhaps." 

" I don't know much about that 'ere," said 
Sam. " I thought they'd a wery strong flavor 
o' warm flat irons." 

" That is the killibeate, Mr. Weller," observed 
Mr. John Smauker, contemptuously. 

" Well, if it is, it's a wery inexpressive word, 
that's all," said Sam. " It may be, but I ain't 
much in the chimical line myself, so I can't say." 
And here, to the great horror of Mr. John Smau- 
ker, Sam Weller began to whistle. 

" This way," said his new friend, apparently 
much relieved as they turned down a bye street ; 
*' we shall soon be there." 

'* Shall we ? " said Sam, quite unmoved by 
the announcement of his close vicinity to the 
select footmen of Bath. 

'* Yes," said Mr. John Smauker. " Don't be 
alarmed, Mr. Weller." 

" Oh, no," said Sam. 

" You'll see some very handsome uniforms, 
Mr. Weller," continued Mr. John Smauker ; 
"•and perhaps you'll find some of the gentlemen 
rather high at first, you know, but they'll soon 
come round." 

" That's wery kind on 'em," replied Sam. 

" And you know," resumed Mr. John Smauker, 
with an air of sublime protection ; " you know, 
as you're a stranger, perhaps they'll be rather 
hard upon you at first." 

"They won't be wery cruel, though, will 
they?" inquired Sam. 

" No, no," replied Mr. John Smauker, pull- 
ing forth the fox's head, and taking a gentle- 
manly pinch. " There are some fiinny dogs 
among us, and they will have their joke, you 
know ; but you mustn't mind 'em, you mustn't 
mind 'em." 

" I'll try and bear up agin such a reg'lar 
knock-down o' talent," replied Sam. 

" Gentlemen, my friend Mr. Weller." 

" Sorry to keep the fire off you, Weller," said 
Mr. Tuckle with a familiar nod. " Hope you're 
not cold, Weller." 

" N.pt by no means. Blazes," replied Sam. 
" It 'ud be a wery chilly subject as felt cold 
wen you stood opposit. You'd save coals if 
they put you behind the fender in the waitin' 
room at a public office, you would." 

As this retort appeared to convey rather a 
personal allusion to Mr. Tuckle's crimson livery, 
that gentleman looked majestic for a few seconds, 
but gradually edging away from the fire, broke 
into a forced smile, and said it wasn't bad. 

" Wery much obliged for your good opinion, 
sir," replied Sam. " We shall get on by degrees. 



I des-say. 
bye." 



We'll try a better one, by-and- 



At the conchision of this speech, everybody 
took a sip in honor of Sam ; and Sam having 
ladled out, and drunk, two full glasses of punch 
in honor of himself, returned thanks in a neat 
speech. 

" Wery much obliged to you, old fellers," said 
Sam, ladling away at the punch in the most un- 
embarrassed manner possible, " for this here 
compliment : wich, comin' from sich a quarter, 
is wery overvelmin'. I've heerd a good deal on 
you as a body, but I will say, that I never thought 
you was sich uncommon nice men as I find you 
air. I only hope you'll take care o' yourselves, 
and not compromise nothin' o' your dignity, 
which is a wery charmin' thing to see, when 
one's out a walkin', and has always made me 
wery happy to look at, ever since I was a boy 
about half as high as the brass-headed stick o' 
my wery respectable friend, Blazes, there. As 
to the wictim of oppression in the suit o' brim- 
stone, all I can say of him, is, that I hope he'll 
get jist as good a berth as he deserves ; in vich 
case it's wery little cold swarry as ever he'll be 
troubled with agin." 

Here Sam sat down with a pleasant smile, 
and his speech having been vociferously ap- 
plauded, the company broke up. 

Pickwick^ Chap. 37. 

WELLER— Sam, and the fat boy. 

" Your master's a wery pretty notion of keep- 
in* anythin' up, my dear," said Mr. Weller ; " I 
never see such a sensible sort of a man as he is, 
or such a reg'lar gen'l'm'n." 

" Oh, that he is ! " said the fat boy, joining 
in the conversation ; " don't he breed nice 
pork ! " The fat youth gave a semi-cannibalic 
leer at Mr. Weller, as he thought of the roast 
legs and gravy. 

"Oh, you've woke up, at last, have you?' 
said Sam. 

The fat boy nodded. 

" I'll tell you wot it is, young boa construct- 
er," said Mr. Weller, impressively ; " if you 
don't sleep a little less, and exercise a little 
more, wen you comes to be a man you'll lay 
yourself open to the same sort of personal in- 
conwenience as was inflicted on the old gen'l'- 
m'n as wore the pigtail." 

" What did they do to him ? " inquired the 
fat boy, in a faltering voice. 

" I'm a-goin' to tell you," replied Mr. Weller ; 
" he was one o' the largest patterns as was ever 
turned out — reg'lar fat man, as hadn't caught a 
glimpse of his own shoes for five-and-forty 
year." 

" Lor ! " exclaimed Emma. 

" No, that he hadn't, my dear," said Mr. Wel- 
ler ; " and if you'd put an exact model of his 
own legs on the dinin' table afore him, he 
wouldn't ha' known 'em. Well, he always 
walks to his office with a wery handsome gold 
watch-chain hanging out, about a foot and a 
quarter, and a gold watch in his fob pocket as 
was worth — I'm afraid to say how much, but as 
much as a watch can be — a large, heavy, round 
manafacter, as stout for a watch as he was for a 
man, and with a big face in proportion. * You'd 
better not carry that 'ere watch,' says the old 
gen'l'm'n's friends ; ' you'll be robbed on it,' says 



WELIiER 



617 



WELLEB 



they. ' Shall I ? ' says he. ' Yes, you will,' 
says they. ' Veil,' says he, ' I should like to see 
the thief as could get this here watch out, for 
I'm blest if /ever can, it's such a tight fit,' says 
he ; ' and venever I wants to know what's 
o'clock, I'm obliged to stare into the bakers' 
shops,' he says. Well, then he laughs as hearty 
as if he was a-goin' to pieces, and out he walks 
agin with his powdered head and pigtail, and 
rolls down the Strand vith the chain hangin' 
out furder than ever, and the great round watch 
almost bustin' through his gray kersey smalls. 
There warn't a pickpocket in all London as 
didn't take a pull at that chain, but the chain 
'ud never break, and the watch 'ud never come 
out, so they soon got tired o' dragging such a 
heavy old gen'l'm'n along the pavement, and 
he'd go home and laugh till the pigtail wibrated 
like the penderlum of a Dutch clock. At last, 
one day the old gen'l'm'n was a-rollin' along, and 
he sees a pickpocket as he know'd by sight, 
a-comin' up, arm in arm vith a little boy vith 
a wery large head. ' Here's a game,' said the 
old gen'l'm'n to himself, * they're a-goin' to have 
another try, but it won't do !' So he begins a- 
chucklin' wery hearty, wen, all of a sudden, the 
little boy leaves hold of the pickpocket's arm, 
and rushes head-foremost straight into the old 
gen'l'm'n's stomach, and for a moment doubles 
him right up vith the pain. ' Murder ! ' says 
the old gen'l'm'n. ' All right, sir,* says the 
pickpocket, a-wisperin' in his ear. And wen 
he come straight agin, the watch and chain was 
gone, and what's worse than that, the old gen'l'- 
m'n's digestion was all wrong ever arterwards, 
to the wery last day of his life ; so just you look 
about you, young feller, and take care you don't 
get too fat." — Pickwick, Chap. 28. 

WEIiLER— Sam— His compliments. 

Sam inquired, with a countenance of great 
anxiety, whether his master's name was not 
Walker. 

" No, it ain't," said the groom. 

" Nor Brown, I s'pose?" said Sam. 

" No, it ain't." 

" Nor Vilson ? " 

" No ; nor that neither," said the groom. 

" Veil," replied Sam, '* then I'm mistaken, 
and he hasn't got the honor o' my acquaintance, 
which I thought he had. Don't wait here out 
o' compliment to me," said Sam, as the groom 
wheeled in the barrow, and prepared to shut 
the gate. " Ease afore ceremony, old boy ; I'll 
excuse you." 

" I'll knock your head off for half-a-crown," 
said the surly groom, bolting one half of the gate. 

" Couldn't afford to have it done on those 
terms," rejoined Sam. " It 'ud be worth a life's 
board vages at least, to you, and 'ud be cheap at 
that. Make my compliments in-doors. Tell 
'em not to vait dinner for me, and say they 
needn't mind puttin' any by, for it'll be cold 
afore I come in." — Pickzvick, Chap. 39. 

WBLLER-Sam— At home. 

" Mother-in-law," said Sam, politely saluting 
the lady, " wery much obliged to you for this 
here wisit. Shepherd, how air you ? " 

•' Oh, Samuel ! " said Mrs. Weller, " this is 
dreadful." 

'* Not a bit on it, mum," replied Sam. " Is it, 
•hepherd." 



Mr. Stiggins raised his hands, and turned up 
his eyes, till the whites — or rather the yellows-j— 
were alone visible ; but made no reply in words. 

" Is this here gen'l'm'n troubled with any 
painful complaint?" said Sam, looking to hit; 
mother-in-law for explanation. 

" The good man is grieved to see you here, 
Samuel," replied Mrs. Weller. 

•* Oh, that's it, is it ? " said Sam. '* I was 
afeerd, from his manner, that he might ha' for- 
gotten to take pepper vith that 'ere last cowcum- 
ber he eat. Set down, sir, ve make no extra 
charge for the settin' down, as the king remarked 
wen he blowed up his minister." 

" Young man," said Mr. Stiggins, ostenta- 
tiously, " I fear you are not softened by imprison- 
ment." 

" Beg your pardon, sir," replied Sam ; " wot 
wos you graciously pleased to hobserve ? " 

" I apprehend, young man, that your nature 
is no softer for this chastening," said Mr. Stig- 
gins, in a loud voice. 

" Sir," replied Sam, " you're wery kind to say 
so. I hope my natur is not a. soft vun, sir. Wery 
much obliged to you for your good opinion, sir.' 

At this point of the conversation, a sound, in- 
decorously approaching to a laugh, was heard 
to proceed from the chair in which the elder 
Mr. Weller was seated ; upon which Mrs. Weller, 
on a hasty consideration of all the circumstances 
of the case, considered it her bounden duty to 
become gradually hysterical. 

" Weller," said Mrs. W. (the old gentleman 
was seated in a corner) : " Weller ! Come forth." 

" Wery much obleeged to you, my dear," re- 
plied Mr. Weller ; " but I'm quite comfortable 
vere I am " 

Upon this Mrs. Weller burst into tears. 

" Wot's gone wrong, mum ? " said Sam. 

" Oh, Samuel ! " replied Mrs. Weller. " your 
father makes me wretched. Will nothing do 
him good ? " 

" Do you hear this here ? " said Sam. " Lady 
wants to know vether nothin' 'uU do you good." 

" Wery much indebted to Mrs. Weller for her 
po-lite inquiries, Sammy," replied the old gen- 
tleman. " I think a pipe vould benefit me a 
good deal. Could I be accommodated, Sammy ? " 
Pickivicky Chap. 45. 

WEIiliER— Sam, and his mother-in-law. 

The appearance of the red-nosed man had in- 
duced Sam, at first sight, to more than half sus- 
pect that he was the deputy shepherd of whom 
his estimable parent had spoken. The moment 
he saw him eat, all doubt on the subject was re- 
moved, and he perceived at once that if he pur- 
posed to take up his temporary quarters where 
he was, he must make his footing good without 
delay. He therefore commenced proceedings 
by putting his arm over the half door of the 
bar, coolly unbolting it, and leisurely walking in. 

** Mother-in-law," said Sam, " how are you ? " 

"Why, I do believe he is a Weller 1" said 
Mrs. W., raising her eyes to Sam's face, with no 
very gratified expression of countenance. 

" I rayther think he is," said the imperturba- 
ble Sam ; " and I hope this here reverend gen- 
'l'm'n '11 excuse me saying that I wish I was thi 
Weller as owns you^ mother-in-law." 

This was a double-barrelled compliment. It 
implied that Mrs. Weller was a most agreeable 
female, and also that Mr. Stiggins had a clerical 



WELLER 



618 



WELLER 



appearance. It made a visible impression at 
once ; and Sam followed up his advantage by 
kissing his mother-in-law. 

•'Get along with you!" said Mrs. Weller, 
pushing him away. 

" For shame, young man ! " said the gentleman 
with the red nose. 

" No offence, sir, no offence," replied Sam ; 
" you're wery right, though ; it ain't the right 
sort o' thing, wen mothers-in-law is young and 
good-looking, is it, sir?" 

" It's all vanity," said Mr. Stiggins. 

" Ah, so it is," said Mrs. Weller, setting her 
cap to rights. 

Sam thought it was, too, but he held his peace. 
Pickwick, Chap. 27. 

WELLER— Sam, and Rev. Mr. Stigrgins. 

" I'm afeerd, mum," said Sam, " that this 
here gen'l'm'n, with the twist in his countenance, 
feels rayther thirsty, with the melancholy spec- 
tacle afore him. Is it the case, mum ? " 

The worthy lady looked at Mr. Stiggins for a 
reply ; that gentleman, with many rollings of 
the eye, clenched his throat with his right hand, 
and mimicked the act of swallowing to intimate 
that he was athirst. 

" I am afraid, Samuel, that his feelings have 
made him so, indeed," said Mrs. Weller mourn- 
fully. 

" Wot's your usual tap, sir ? " replied Sam. 

" Oh, my dear young friend," replied Mr. Stig- 
gins, " all taps is vanities ! " 

" Too true, too true, indeed," said Mrs. Wel- 
ler, murmuring a groan, and shaking her head 
assentingly. 

" Well," said Sam, " I des-say they may be, 
sir ; but which is your pertickler wanity ? Vich 
wanity do you like the flavor on best, sir ? " 

" Oh, my dear young friend," replied Mr. Stig- 
gins, " I despise them all. If," said Mr. Stig- 
gins, " if there is any one of them less odious 
than another, it is the liquid called rum. Warm, 
my dear young friend, with three lumps of sugar 
to the tumbler." 

" Wery sorry to say, sir," said Sam, " that 
they don't allow that particular wanity to be 
sold in this here establishment." 

" Oh, the hardness of heart of these inveter- 
ate men ! " ejaculated Mr. Stiggins. " Oh, the 
accursed cruelty of these inhuman persecutors ! " 

With these words, Mr. Stiggins again cast up 
his eyes, and rapped his breast with his um- 
brella ; and it is but justice to the reverend gen- 
tleman to say, that his indignation appeared 
very real and unfeigned indeed. 

After Mrs. Weller and the red-nosed gentle- 
man had commented on this inhuman usage in 
a very forcible manner, and had vented a vari- 
ety of pious and holy execrations against its 
authors, the latter recommended a bottle of port 
wine, warmed with a little water, spice, and sugar, 
as being grateful to the stomach, and savor- 
ing less of vanity than many other compounds. 
It was accordingly ordered to be prepared. 
Pending its preparation, the red-nosed man and 
Mrs. Weller looked at the elder W., and 
groaned. 

***** 

" Try an in'ard application, sir," said Sam. as 
the red-nosed gentleman rubbed his head with 
a rueful visage. " Wot do you think o' that for a 
go o' wanity warm, sir?" 



Mr. Stiggins made no verbal answer, but his 
manner was expressive. He tasted the contents 
of the glass which Sam had placed in his hand ; 
put his umbrella on the floor, and tasted it 
again, passing his hand placidly across his 
stomach twice or thrice ; he then drank the ■ 
whole at a breath, and smacking his lips, held 
out the tumbler for more. 

Nor was Mrs. Weller behind-hand in doing 
justice to the composition. The good lady be- 
gan by protesting that she could'nt touch a drop 
— then took a small drop — then a large drop — 
then a great many drops ; and her feelings being 
of the nature of those substances which are pow 
erfully affected by the application of strong 
waters, she dropped a tear with every drop of 
negus, and so got on, melting the feelings down, 
until at length she had arrived at a very pathetic 
and decent pitch of misery. 

The elder Mr. Weller observed these signs and 
tokens with many manifestations of disgust, and 
when, after a second jug of the same, Mr. Stig- 
gins began to sigh in a dismal manner, he plain- 
ly evinced his disapprobation of the whole pro- 
ceedings, by sundry incoherent ramblings of 
speech. 

" I think there must be somethin' wrong in 
your mother-in-law's inside, as veil as in that o' 
the red-nosed man." 

" Wot do you mean ? " said Sam. 

" I mean this here, Sammy, replied the old 
gentleman, " that wot they drink don't seem no 
nourishment to 'em ; it all turns to warm water, 
and comes a' pourin* out o' their eyes. 'Pend 
upon it, Sammy, its a constitootional infirmity." 
Pickwick, Chap 45. 

WELLER— Sam— Imprisoned for debt. 

" Well," said Sam, " you've been a-prophesyin' 
avay, about wot'll happen to the gov'nor, if he's 
left alone. Don't you see any vay o' takin' care 
on him ? " 

" No, I don't, Sammy," said Mr. Weller, with 
a reflective visage. 

" No vay at all ? " inquired Sam. 

" No vay," said Mr. Weller, " unless " — and a 
gleam of intelligence lighted up his countenance 
as he sunk his voice to a whisper, and applied 
his mouth to the ear of his offspring : " unless 
it is getting him out in a turn-up bedstead, 
unbeknown to the turnkeys, Sammy, or dressin' 
him up like a old 'ooman with a green wail." 

Sam Weller received both of these sugges- 
tions virith unexpected contempt, and again pro- 
pounded his question. 

" No," said the old gentleman ; " if he von't 
let you stop there, I see no vay at all. It's no 
thoroughfare, Sammy, no thoroughfare." 

" Well, then, I'll tell you wot it is," said Sam, 
" I'll trouble you for the loan of five-and-twenty 
pound." 

" Wot good 'uU that do ? " inquired Mr. 
Weller. 

" Never mind," replied Sam. " P'raps you may 
ask for it, five minits artervards ; p'raps I may 
say I von't pay, and cut up rough. You von't 
think o' arrestin' your own son for the money, 
and send him off to the Fleet, will you, you 
unnat'ral wagabone ? " 

At this reply of Sam's, the father and son ex- 
changed a complete code of telegraphic nods 
and gestures, after which, the elder Mr. Weller 



WEI^LER 



619 



WELLER 



sat himself down on a stone step, and laughed 
till he was purple. 

•' Wot a old image it is ! " exclaimed Sam, in- 
dignant at this loss of time. " Wot are you 
a-settin' down there for, con-wertin' your face 
into a street-door knocker, wen there's so much 
to be done. Where's the money ? " 

•' In the boot, Sammy, in the boot," replied 
Mr. Weller, composing his features. " Hold my 
hat, Sammy." 

Having divested himself of this incumbrance, 
Mr. Weller gave his body a sudden wrench to 
one side, and, by a dexterous twist, contrived to 
get his right hand into a most capacious pocket, 
from whence, after a great deal of panting and 
exertion, he extricated a pocket-book of the 
large octavo size, fastened by a huge leathern 
strap. From this ledger he drew forth a couple 
of whip-lashes, three or four buckles, a little 
sample-bag of corn, and finally a small roll of 
very dirty bank-notes : from which he selected the 
required amount, which he handed over to Sam. 

*' And now, Sammy," said the old gentleman, 
when the whip lashes, and the buckles, and the 
samples, had been all put back, and the book 
once more deposited at the bottom of the same 
pocket, " Now, Sammy, I know a gen'l'm'n here, 
as'U do the rest o' the bizness for us in no time 
— a limb o' the law, Sammy, as has got brains, 
like the frogs, dispersed all over his body, and 
reachin' to the wery tips of his fingers ; a friend 
of the Lord Chancellorship's, Sammy, who'd 
only have to tell him what he wanted, and he'd 
lock you up for life, if that wos all." 

" I say," said Sam, " none o' that." 

" None o' wot ? " inquired Mr. Weller. 

" Why, none o' them unconstitootional ways 
o* doing it," retorted Sam. " The have-his-car- 
case, next to the perpetual motion, is vun of the 
blessedest things as wos ever made. I've read 
that 'ere in the newspapers, wery ofen." 

" Well, wot's that got to do vith it ? " inquired 
Mr. Weller. 

" Just this here," said Sam, " that I'll patron- 
ize the inwention, and go in, that vay. No vis- 
perin's to the Chancellorship, I don't like the 
notion. It mayn't be altogether safe, vith ref- 
erence to gettin' out agin." 

Deferring to his son's feeling upon this point, 
Mr. Weller at once sought the erudite Solomon 
Pell, and acquainted him with his desire to is- 
sue a writ, instantly, for the sum of twenty-five 
pounds, and costs of process ; to be executed 
without delay upon the body of one Samuel Wel- 
ler ; the charges thereby incurred, to be paid in 
advance to Solomon Pell. — Pickwicky Chap. 43. 

" Wot a game it is ! " said the elder Mr. Wel- 
ler, with a chuckle. " A reg'lar prodigy son ! " 

" Prodigal, prodigal son, sir," suggested Mr. 
Pell, mildly. 

" Never mind, sir," said Mr. Weller, with dig- 
nity. " I know wot's o'clock, sir. Wen I don't, 

I'll ask you, sir." 

* * * * * 

" Yes, gen'l'm'n," said Sam, " I'm a — stand 
steady, sir, if you please — I'm a pris'ner, 
gen'l'm'n. Con-fined, as the lady said." 

Pickwick, Chap. 44. 

WELLER— Sam in prison. 

He had hardly composed himself into the 
needful state of abstraction, when he thought he 



heard his own name proclaimed in some distant 
passage. Nor was he mistaken, for it quickly 
passed from mouth to mouth, and in a few 
seconds the air teemed with shouts of " Weller," 

"Here!" roared Sam, in a stentorian voice. 
"Wot's the matter? Who wants him? Has 
an express come to say that his country-house 
is a-fire ? " 

•' Somebody wants you in the hall," said a 
man who was standing by. 

" Just mind that 'ere paper and the pot, old 
feller, will you?" said Sam. "I'm a comin'. 
Blessed, if they was a callin' me to the bar, they 
couldn't make more noise about it ! " 

Accompanying these words with a gentle rap 
on the head of the young gentleman before 
noticed, who, unconscious of his close vicinity 
to the person in request, was screaming " Wel- 
ler ! " with all his might, Sam hastened across 
the ground, and ran up the steps into the hall. 
Here, the first object that met his eyes was his 
beloved father sitting on a bottom stair, with 
his hat in his hand, shouting out " Weller ! " in 
his very loudest tone, at half-minute intervals. 

" Wot are you a roarin' at ? " said Sam impet- 
uously, when the old gentleman had discharg- 
ed himself of another shout ; " makin' yourself 
so precious hot that you looks like a aggrawated 
glass-blower. Wot's the matter ? " 

" Aha ! " replied the old gentleman, " I began 
to be afeerd that you'd gone for a walk round 
the Regency Park, Sammy." 

" Come," said Sam, " none o* them taunts 
agin the wictims o' avarice, and come off that 
'ere step. Wot are you a sittin' down there 
for ? I don't live there." 

" I've got such a game for you, Sammy," said 
the elder Mr. Weller, rising. 

" Stop a minit," said Sam, " you're all vite 
behind." 

" That's right, Sammy, rub it off," said Mr. 
Weller, as his son dusted him. " It might look 
personal here, if a man walked about with 
whitevash on his clothes, eh, Sammy ? " 

As Mr. Weller exhibited in this place une- 
quivocal symptoms of an approaching fit of 
chuckling, Sam interposed to stop it. 

" Keep quiet, do," said Sam, " there never vos 
such a old picter-card born. What are you 
bustin' vith, now ? " 

" Sammy," said Mr. Weller, wiping his fore- 
head, " I'm afeerd that vun o' these days I shall 
laugh myself into a appleplexy, my boy." 

" Veil then, wot do you do it for ? " said Sam. 
" Now ; wot have you got to say ? " 

" Who do you think's come here with me, 
Samivel?" said Mr, Weller, drawing back a 
pace or two, pursing up his mouth, and extend- 
ing his eyebrows. 

"Pell?" said Sam. 

Mr. Weller shook his head, and his red cheeks 
expanded with the laughter that was endeav- 
oring to find a vent. 

" Mottled faced man, p'r'aps ? " suggested Sam. 

Again Mr. Weller shook his head. 

" Who then ? " asked Sam. 

" Your mother-in-law," said Mr, Weller ; and 
it was lucky he did say it, or his cheeks must in- 
evitably have cracked, from their most unnatu* 
ral distension. 

"Your mother-in-law, Sammy," said Mr. Wel- 
ler, " and the red-nosed man, my boy ; and the 
red-nosed man. Ho ! ho ! ho ! " 



WELIiER 



520 



WELIiER 



With this, Mr. Weller launched into convul- 
sions of laughter, while Sam regarded him with 
a broad grin gradually overspreading his whole 
countenance. 

" They've come to have a little serious talk 
with you, Samivel," said Mr. Weller, wiping his 
eyes. " Don't let out nothin' about the un- 
nat'ral creditor, Sammy." — Pickwick, Chap. 45. 

WEIiLEE,— Sam, and his father. 

" Well," said Sam, " good bye." 

" Tar, tar, Sammy," replied his father. 

" I've only got to say this here," said Sam, 
stopping short, " that if /was the properiator o' 
the Markis o' Granby, and that 'ere Stiggins 
came and made toast in my bar, I'd — " 

" What ? " interposed Mr. Weller, with great 
anxiety. " What ? " 

" — Pison his rum and water," said Sam. 

" No ! " said Mr. Weller, shaking his son ea- 
gerly by the hand, " would you raly, Sammy ; 
would you, though ? " 

" I would," said Sam. " I wouldn't be too 
hard upon him at first. I'd drop him in the 
water-butt, and put the lid on ; and if I found 
he was insensible to kindness, I'd try the other 
persvasion." 

The elder Mr. Weller bestowed a look of 
deep, unspeakable admiration on his son ; and, 
having once more grasped his hand, walked 
slowly away, revolving in his mind the numer- 
ous reflections to which his advice had given 
rise. — Pickwick, Chap. 27. 

WELLER— Father and son. 

"Werry glad to see you, Sammy," said the 
elder Mr. Weller, " though how you've managed 
to get over your mother-in-law, is a mystery to 
me. I only vish you'd write me out the re- 
ceipt, that's all." 

" Hush I " said Sam, " she's at home, old feller." 

" She ain't vithin hearin'," replied Mr. Weller ; 
** she always goes and blows up, down-stairs, for 
a couple of hours arter tea ; so we'll just give 
oursc'lves a damp, Sammy." 

Saying this, Mr. Weller mixed two glasses of 
spirits and water, and produced a couple of 
pipes. The father and son sitting down oppo- 
site each other ; Sam on one side of the fire, in 
the high-backed chair, and Mr. Weller senior 
on the other, in an easy ditto : they proceeded 
to enjoy themselves with all due gravity. 

"Anybody been here, Sammy?" asked Mr. 
Weller senior, drily, after a long silence. 

Sam nodded an expressive assent. 

" Red-nosed chap ? " inquired Mr. Weller. 

Sam nodded again. 

"Amiable man that 'ere, Sammy," said Mr. 
Weller, smoking violently. 

" Seems so," observed Sam. 

" Good hand at accounts," said Mr. Weller. 

" Is he ? " said Sam. 

" Borrows eighteenpence on Monday, and 
comes on Tuesday for a shillin' to make it up 
half-a-crown ; calls again on Vensday for another 
half-crown to make it five shillin's ; and goes 
on doubling, till he gets it up to a five pound 
note in no time, like them sums in the 'rithme- 
tic book 'bout the nails in the horse's shoes, 
Sammy." 

Sam intimated by a nod that he recollected 
the problem alluded to by his parent. 

Pickwick, Chap. 27. 



WELLER, Mrs.— And Mr. Stig-g-ins. 

" Leave off rattlin' that 'ere nob o' youm, if 
you don't want it to come off the springs alto- 
gether," said Sam impatiently, " and behave 
reasonable. I vent all the vay down to the 
Markis o' Granby, arter you, last night." 

" Did you see the Marchioness o' Granby, 
Sammy ? " inquired Mr. Weller, with a sigh. 

" Yes, I did," replied Sam. 

" How was the dear creetur a lookin' ? " 

" Wery queer," said Sam. " I think she's a 
injurin' herself gradivally vith too much o' that 
ere pine-apple rum, and other strong medicines 
o' the same natur." 

"You don't mean that, Sammy," said the 
senior, earnestly. 

" I do, indeed," replied the junior. Mr. Wel- 
ler seized his son's hand, clasped it, and let it 
fall. There was an expression on his counte- 
nance in doing so — not of dismay or apprehen- 
sion, but partaking more of the sweet and gen- 
tle character of hope. A gleam of resignation, 
and even of cheerfulness, passed over his face 
too, as he slowly said, " I ain't quite certain, 
Sammy ; I wouldn't like to say I wos altogether 
positive, in case of any subsekent disappint- 
ment, but I rayther think, my boy, I rayther 
think, that the shepherd's got the liver com- 
plaint ! " 

" Does he look bad ? " inquired Sam. 

" He's uncommon pale," replied his father, 
" 'cept about the nose, which is redder than ever. 
His appetite is wery so-so, but he imbibes wun- 
derful." 

Some thoughts of the rum appeared to obtrude 
themselves on Mr. Weller's mind, as he said 
this ; for he looked gloomy and thoughtful ; but 
he very shortly recovered, as was testified by 
a perfect alphabet of winks, in which he was 
only wont to indulge when particularly pleased. 
Pickwick, Chap. 43. 

WELLER, MR.— And ''the Gentle Shep- 
herd." 

" That's a pint o* domestic policy, Sammy," 
said Mr. Weller. " This here Stiggins — " 

" Red-nosed man ? " inquired Sam. 

" The wery same," replied Mr. Weller. 
" This here red-nosed man, Sammy, wisits your 
mother-in-law vith a kindness and constancy as 
I never see equalled. He's sitch a friend o' the 
family, Sammy, that wen he's avay from us, he 
can't be comfortable unless he has somethin' to 
remember us by." 

" And I'd give him somethin' as 'ud turpen 
tine and bees'-vax his memory for the next ten 
years or so, if I wos you," interposed Sam. 

" Stop a minute," said Mr. Weller ; " I wos 
a-going to say, he always brings now, a flat 
bottle as holds about a pint and a-half, and 
fills it vith the pine-apple rum afore he goes 
avay." 

" And empties it afore he comes back, 1 
s'pose ? " said Sam. 

" Clean ! " replied Mr. Weller ; " never leaves 
nothin' in it but the cork and the smell ; trust 
him for that, Sammy." — Pickwick, Chap. 33. 

WELLER— The elder drives Mr. Stigrgins. 

" Vere are they ? " said Sam, reciprocating all 
the old gentleman's grins. 

" In the snuggery," rejoined Mr. Weller. 
" Catch the red-nosed man a goin' anyvere but 



WEIiLEB 



521 



WELLER 



▼ere the liquors is ; not he, Samivel, not he. Ve'd 
a wery pleasant ride along the road from the 
Markis this mornin', Sammy," said Mr. Weller, 
when he felt himself equal to the task of speak- 
ing in an articulate manner. " I drove the old 
piebald in that 'ere little shay-cart as belonged 
to your mother-in-law's first wenter, into vich 
a harm-cheer vvos lifted for the shepherd ; and 
I'm blest," said Mr. Weller, with a look of deep 
scorn ; " I'm blest if they didn't bring a portable 
flight o* steps out into the road a front o' our 
door, for him to get up by." 

" You don't mean that?'" said Sara. 

" I do mean that, Sammy," replied his father, 
" and I vish you could ha' seen how tight he 
held on by the sides wen he did get up, as if he 
wos afeerd o' being precipitayted down full six 
foot, and dashed into a million o* hatoms. He 
tumbled in at last, however, and avay ve vent ; 
and I rayther think, I say I rayther think, Sam- 
ivel, that he found hisself a little jolted wen ve 
turned the corners." 

" Wot, I s'pose you happened to drive up agin 
a post or two ? " said Sam. 

" I'm afeered," replied Mr. Weller in a rapture 
of winks, " I'm afeered I took vun or two on 'em, 
Sammy ; he wos a flyin' out o' the harm-cheer 
all the way." 

Here the old gentleman shook his head from 
side to side, and was seized with a hoarse inter- 
nal rumbling, accompanied with a violent swell- 
ing of the countenance, and a sudden increase 
in the breadth of all his features ; symptoms 
which alarmed his son not a little. 

" Don't be frightened, Sammy, don't be fright- 
ened," said the old gentleman, when, by dint of 
much struggling, and various convulsive stamps 
upon the ground, he had recovered his voice. 
" It's only a kind o' quiet laugh as I'm a tryin' to 
come, Sammy." 

" Well, if that's wot it is," said Sam, " you'd 
better not try to come it agin. You'll find it 
rayther a dangerous inwention." 

" Don't you like it, Sammy ? " inquired the 
old gentleman. 

" Not at all," replied Sam. 

*' Well," said Mr. Weller, with the tears still 
running down his cheeks, " it 'ud ha' been a 
wery great accommodation to me if I could ha' 
done it, and 'ud ha' saved a good many vords 
atween your mother-in-law and me, sometimes ; 
but I am afeerd you're right, Sammy ; it's too 
much in the appleplexy line — a deal too much, 
Samivel." — Pickwick, Chap. 45. 

WELIiER— The elder, on married life. 

" Goin', Sammy ? " inquired Mr. Weller. 

" Off at once," replied Sam. 

" I vish you could muffle that 'ere Stiggins, 
and take him with you," said Mr. Weller. 

" I am ashamed on you ! " said Sam, reproach- 
fully : " what do you let him show his red nose 
in the Markis o' Granby at all, for ? " 

Mr. Weller the elder fixed on his son an 
earnest look, and replied, " 'Cause I'm a mar- 
ried man, Samivel, 'cause I'm a married man. 
Wen you're a married man, Samivel, you'll un- 
derstand a good many things as you don't under- 
stand now ; but vether it's worth while goin' 
through so much to learn so little, as the charity- 
boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, 
is a matter o' taste. / rayther think it isn't." 
Pickwick, Chap. 27. 



WEIiliER— The elder, at dinner. 

We have said that Mr. Weller was engaged 
in preparing for his journey to London — he was 
taking sustenance, in fact. On the table be- 
fore him stood a pot of ale, a cold round of 
beef, and a very respectable-looking loaf, to 
each of which he distributed his favors in turn, 
with the most rigid impartiality. He had just 
cut a mighty slice from the latter, when the 
footsteps of somebody entering the room, 
caused him to raise his head ; and he beheld 
his son. 

" Mornin', Sammy ! " said the father. 

The son walked up to the pot of ale, and 
nodding significantly to his parent, took a 
long draught by way of reply. 

" Wery good power o' suction, Sammy," said 
Mr. Weller the elder, looking into the pot, when 
his first-born had set it down half empty, 
"You'd ha' made an uncommon fine oyster, 
Sammy, if you'd been born in that station o' 
life." 

" Yes, I des-say I should ha' managed to pick 
up a respectable livin'," replied Sam, applying 
himself to the cold beef with considerable vigor. 
Pickwick, Chap. 23. 

WELIiER— His opinion of widows. 

" I'm wery sorry, Sammy," said the elder 
Mr. Weller, shaking up the ale, by describing 
small circles with the pot, preparatory to drink- 
ing. " I'm wery sorry, Sammy, to hear from 
your lips, as you let yourself be gammoned by 
that 'ere mulberry man. I always thought, up 
to three days ago, that the names of Veller 
and gammon could never come into contract, 
Sammy, never." 

" Always exceptin' the case of a widder, of 
course," said Sam. 

" Widders, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller, 
slightly changing color, "widders are 'cep- 
tions to ev'ry rule. I have heerd how many 
ord'nary women one widder's equal to, in pint 
o' comin' over you. I think it's five- and-twen- 
ty, but I don't rightly know vether it an't 
more." 

" Well ; that's pretty well," said Sam. 

" Besides," continued Mr. Weller, not noti- 
cing the interruption, " that's a wery difi"erent 
thing. You know what the counsel said, Sam- 
my, as defended the gen'lem'n as beat his wife 
with the poker, venever he got jolly. ' And 
arter all, my Lord,' says he, ' it's a amable 
weakness.' So I says respectin' widders, Sam- 
my, and so you'll say, ven you gets as old as me." 

" I ought to ha' know'd better. I know," said 
Sam. 

" Ought to ha' know'd better ! " repeated Mr. 
Weller, striking the table with his fist. "Ought 
to ha' know'd better ! why, I know a young 
'un as hasn't had half nor quarter your eddica- 
tion — as hasn't slept about the markets, no, not 
six months — who'd ha' scorned to be let in, in 
such a vay ; scorned it, Sammy." In the ex- 
citement of feeling produced by this agonizing 
reflection, Mr. Weller rang the bell, and order 
ed an additional pint of ale. 

Pickwick, CJuip. 23. 

WELLEB— The elder, in a quandary. 

" I wanted to have a little bit o' conwersa- 
tion with you, sir," said Mr. Weller; "if you 
could spare me five minils or so, sir." 



WELLER 



522 



WEIiLER 



" Certainly," replied Mr. Pickwick. " Sam, 
give your father a chair." 

" Thankee, Samivel, I've got a cheer here," 
said Mr. Weller, bringing one forward as he 
spoke ; " uncommon fine day it's been, sir," 
added the old gentleman, laying his hat on the 
floor as he sat himself down. 

" Remarkably so, indeed," replied Mr. Pick- 
wick. " Very seasonable." 

" Seasonablest veather I ever see, sir," re- 
joined Mr. Weller, Here, the old gentleman 
was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which 
being terminated, he nodded his head and 
winked and made several supplicatory and 
threatening gestures to his son, all of which 
Sam Weller steadily abstained from seeing. 

Mr. Pickwick, perceiving that there was some 
embarrassment on the old gentleman's part, 
affected to be engaged in cutting the leaves of 
a book that lay beside him, and waited patient- 
ly until Mr. Weller should arrive at the object 
of his visit. 

" I never see sich a aggerawatin' boy as you 
are, Samivel," said Mr. Weller, looking in- 
dignantly at his son ; " never in all my bom 
days." 

" What is he doing, Mr. Weller ? " inquired 
Mr. Pickwick. 

" He von't begin, sir," rejoined Mr. Weller ; 
'* he knows I ain't ekal to ex-pressin' myself ven 
there's anythin' partickler to be done, and yet 
he'll stand and see me a settin' here takin' up 
your walable time, and makin' a reg'lar spec- 
tacle o' myself, rayther than help me out vith a 
syllable. It ain't filial conduct, Samivel," said 
Mr. Weller, wiping his forehead ; " wery far 
from it." 

" You said you'd speak," replied Sam ; "how 
should I know you wos done up at the wery be- 
ginnin' ? " 

" You might ha' seen I warn't able to start," 
rejoined his father ; " I'm on the wrong side of 
the road, and backin' into the palins, and all 
manner of unpleasantness, and yet you von't 
put out a hand to help me. I'm ashamed on 
you, Samivel." 

'* The fact is, sir," said Sam, with a slight 
bow, " the gov'ner's been a drawin' his money." 

" Wery good, Samivel, wery good," said Mr. 
Weller, nodding his head with a satisfied air. 
" I didn't mean to speak harsh to you, Sammy. 
Wery good. That's the vay to begin. Come 
to the pint at once. Wery good, indeed, Sam- 
ivel." 

" This here money," said Sam, with a little 
hesitation, " he's anxious to put someveres, vere 
he knows it'll be safe, and I'm wery anxious 
too, for if he keeps it, he'll go a lendin' it to 
somebody, or inwestin' property in horses, or 
droppin' his pocket-book down a airy, or makin' 
a Egyptian mummy of his-self in some vay or 
another." 

" Wery good, Samivel," observed Mr. Weller, 
in as complacent a manner as if Sam had been 
passing the highest eulogiums on his prudence 
and foresight. " Wery good." 

" For vich reasons," continued Sam, plucking 
nervously at the brim of his hat ; " for vich rea- 
sons, he's drawd it out to-day, and come here 
vith me to say, least-vays to offer, or in other 
vords to — " 

" — To say this here," said the elder Mr. Wel- 



ler, impatiently, " that it ain't o' no use to me 
I'm a-goin' to vork a coach reg'lar, and ha'nt 
got noveres to keep it in, unless I vos to pay the 
guard for takin' care on it, or to put it in vun o' 
the coach pockets, vich 'ud be a temptation to 
the insides. If you'll take care on it for me, sir, 
I shall be wery much obliged to you. P'raps," 
said Mr. Weller, walking up to Mr. Pickwick 
and whispering in his ear, " p'raps it'll go a lit- 
tle vay towards the expenses o* that 'ere conwic- 
tion. All I say is, just you keep it till I ask you 
for it again." With these words, Mr. Weller 
placed the pocket-book in Mr. Pickwick's 
hands, caught up his hat, and ran out of the 
room with a celerity scarcely to be expected 
from so corpulent a subject. 

" Stop him, Sam ! " exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, 
earnestly. " Overtake him ; bring him back in- 
stantly ! Mr. Weller — here — come back ! " 

Sam saw that his master's injunctions were 
not to be disobeyed ; and catching his father by 
the arm as he was descending the stairs, dragged 
him back by main force. 

" My good friend," said Mr. Pickwick, taking 
the old man by the hand ; " your honest confi- 
dence overpowers me." 

" I don't see no occasion for nothin' o' the 
kind, sir," replied Mr. Weller, obstinately. 

" I assure you, my good friend, I have more 
money than I can ever need ; far more than a 
man at my age can ever live to spend," said Mr. 
Pickwick. 

" No man knows how much he can spend, 
till he tries," observed Mr. Weller. 

Pickwick t Chap. 56. 

WEIiLEK — Personal appearance of tlxe 
elder. 

It is very possible that at some earlier period 
of his career, Mr. Weller's profile might have 
presented a bold and determined outline. His 
face, however, had expanded under the influence 
of good living, and a disposition remarkable for 
resignation ; and its bold fleshy curves had so 
far extended beyond the limits originally as- 
signed them, that unless you took a full view of 
his countenance in front, it was difficult to dis- 
tinguish more than the extreme tip of a very 
rubicund nose. His chin, from the same cause, 
had acquired the grave and imposing form which 
is generally described by prefixing the word 
'• double " to that expressive feature ; and his 
complexion exhibited that peculiarly mottled 
combination of colors which is only to be seen 
in gentlemen of his profession, and in underdone 
roast beef. Round his neck he wore a crimson 
travelling-shawl, which merged into his chin by 
such imperceptible gradations, that it was diffi- 
cult to distinguish the folds of the one from the 
folds of the other. Over this, he mounted a long 
waistcoat of a broad pink-striped pattern, and 
over that again, a wide-skirted green coat, orna- 
mented with large brass buttons, whereof the 
two which garnished the waist were so far 
apart, that no man had ever beheld them both, 
at the same time. His hair, which was short, 
sleek, and black, was just visible beneath the 
capacious brim of a low-crowned brown hat. 
His legs were encased in knee-cord breeches, 
and painted top-boots : and a copper watch- 
chain, terminating in one seal, and a key of the 
same material, dangled loosely from his capa- 
cious waistband. — Pickwick, Chap. 23. 



WHISEEB3 



523 



WHIST 



WHISKERS— The peachy cheek of Pledge- 
by. 

Young Fledgeby was none of these. Young 
Fledgeby had a peachy cheek, or a cheek com- 
pounded of the peach and the red red wall on 
which it grows, and was an awkward, sandy- 
haired, small-eyed youth, exceeding slim (his 
enemies would have said lanky), and prone to 
self-examination in the articles of whisker and 
moustache. While feeling for the whisker that 
he anxiously expected, Fledgeby underwent re- 
markable fluctuations of spirits, ranging along 
the whole scale from confidence to despair. 
There were times when he started, as exclaim- 
ing, " By Jupiter, here it is at last ! " There 
were other times when, being equally depressed, 
he would be seen to shake his head, and give up 
hope. To see him at those periods, leaning on 
a chimney-piece, like as on an urn containing 
the ashes of his ambition, with the cheek that 
would not sprout, upon the hand on which 
that cheek had forced conviction, was a distress- 
ing sight. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II,, Chap. 4. 



Fledgeby has devoted the interval to taking 
an observation of Boots's whiskers. Brewer's 
whiskers, and Lammle's whiskers, and consider- 
ing which pattern of whisker he would prefer 
to produce out of himself by friction, if the 
Genie of the cheek would only answer to his 
rubbing. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book II., Chap. 16. 

WHISKERS— The shaving- of Mr. BaUey's. 

Mr. Bailey stroked his chin, and a thought ap- 
peared to occur to him. 

" Poll," he ^aid, " I ain't as neat as I could 
wish about the gills. Being here, I may as well 
have a shave, and get trimmed close." 

The barber stood aghast ; but Mr. Bailey di- 
vested himself of his neck-cloth, and sat down 
in the easy shaving chair, with all the dignity 
and confidence in life. There was no resisting 
his manner. The evidence of sight and touch 
became as nothing. His chin was as smooth as 
a new-laid egg or a scraped Dutch cheese ; but 
Poll Sweedlepipe wouldn't have ventured to 
deny, on affidavit, that he had the beard of a 
Jewish rabbi. 

" Go with the grain. Poll, all around, please," 
said Mr. Bailey, screwing up his face for the re- 
ception of the lather. " You may do wot you 
like with the bits of whisker. I don't care for 

The meek little barber stood gazing at him 
with the brush and soap-dish in his hand, stir- 
ring them round and round in a ludicrous uncer- 
tainty, as if he were disabled by some fascination 
from beginning. At last he made a dash at Mr. 
Bailey's cheek. Then he stopped again, as if the 
ghost of a beard had suddenly receded from his 
touch ; but receiving mild encouragement from 
Mr. Bailey, in the form of an adjuration to " Go 
in and win," he lathered him bountifully. Mr. 
Bailey smiled through the suds in his satisfac- 
tion. 

" Gently over the stones, Poll. Go a tip-toe 
over the pimples? " 

Poll Sweedlepipe obeyed, and scraped the 
lather off again with particular care. Mr. Bailey 
squinted at every successive dab, as it was de- 
posited on a cloth on his left shoulder, and 



seemed, with a microscopic eye, to detect some 
bristles in it ; for he murmured more than once, 
" Reether redder than I could wish. Poll." The 
operation being concluded, Poll fell back and 
stared at him again, while Mr. Bailey, wiping 
his face on the jack-towel, remarked, " that arter 
late hours nothing freshened up a man so much 
as a easy shave." — Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 29. 

WHISPERINO-The effect of. 

Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, 
near and distant, resounding from towers of va- 
rious heights, in tones more various than their 
situations. When these at length cease, all 
seems more mysterious and quiet than before. 
One disagreeable result of whispering is, that it 
seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence, haunt- 
ed by the ghosts of sound — strange cracks and 
tickings, the rustling of garments that have no 
substance in them, and the tread of dreadful 
feet, that would leave no mark on the sea sand 
or the winter snow. So sensitive the two friends 
happen to be, that the air is full of these phan- 
toms ; and the two look over their shoulders by 
one consent, to see that the door is shut. 

Bleak House, Chap. 32. 

WHISPER— A double-barrelled. 

" I ask your pardons. Governors," replied the 
ghost, in a hoarse double-barrelled whisper, 
"but might either on you be Lawyer Light- 
wood ? " 

Our Mutual Friend, Book I., Chap. 12. 

WHIST-Pickwick at. 

Poor Mr. Pickwick ! he had never played 
with three thorough-paced female card-players 
before. They were so desperately sharp, that 
they quite frightened him. If he played a 
wrong card, Miss Bolo looked a small armory 
of daggers ; if he stopped to consider which 
was the right one. Lady Snuphanuph would 
throw herself back in her chair, and smile with 
a mingled glance of impatience and pity to 
Mrs. Colonel Wugsby ; at which Mrs. Colonel 
Wugsby would shrug up her shoulders, and 
cough, as much as to say she wondered whether 
he ever would begin. Then, at the end of 
every hand. Miss Bolo would inquire with a 
dismal countenance and reproacliful sigh, why 
Mr. Pickwick had not returned that diamond, 
or led the club, or roughed the spade, or finessed 
the heart, or led through the honor, or brought 
out the ace, or played up to the king, or some 
such thing; and in reply to all these grave 
charges, Mr. Pickwick would be wholly unable to 
plead any justification whatever, having by this 
time forgotten all about the game. People came 
and looked on, too, which made Mr. Pickwick 
nervous. Besides all this, there was a great deal 
of distracting conversation near the table, be- 
tween Angelo Bantam and the two Miss Matin- 
ters, who, being single and singular, paid great 
court to the Master of the Ceremonies, in the 
hope of getting a stray partner now and then. 
All these things, combined with the noises and 
interruptions of constant comings in and goings 
out, made Mr. Pickwick play rather badly ; the 
cards were against him, also ; and when they 
left off at ten minutes past eleven, Miss Bolo 
rose from the table considerably agitated, and 
went straight home, in a flood of tears, and a 
sedan-chair.— /'/rvtwVX-, Chap. 35. 



WHIST 



624 



WIFE 



WHIST. 

The rubber was conducted with all that gra- 
vity of deportment and sedateness of demeanor 
which befit the pursuit entitled "whist" — a 
solemn observance, to which, as it appears to 
us, the title of " game " has been very irrever- 
ently and ignominiously applied. 

A solemn silence : Mr. Pickwick humorous, 
the old lady serious, the fat gentleman captious, 
and Mr. Miller timorous. — Pickwick, Chap, 6. 

WIDOW— Her weeds (Mrs. Heep). 

It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep's humil- 
ity, that she still wore weeds. • Notwithstanding 
the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr. 
Heep's decease, she still wore weeds. I think 
there was some compromise in the cap ; but 
otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days 
of her mourning. — David Copperfield, Chap. i8. 

Even her black dress assumed something of a 
deadly-lively air from the jaunty style in which 
it was worn ; and, eked out as its lingering at- 
tractions were, by a prudent disposal, here and 
there, of certain juvenile ornaments of little or 
no value, her mourning garments assumed 
quite a new character. From being the out- 
ward tokens of respect and sorrow for the dead, 
they became converted into signals of very 
slaughterous and killing designs upon the liv- 
ing. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 41. 

WIDOWS— Opinion of Mr. Weller, the el- 
der. 

" How's mother-in-law ? " 

"Wy, I'll tell you what, Sammy," said Mr. 
Weller, senior, with much solemnity in his man- 
ner ; " there never was a nicer woman as a wid- 
der, than that 'ere second wentur o' mine — a 
sweet creetur she was, Sammy ; all I can say on 
her now, is, that as she was such an uncommon 
pleasant widder, it's a great pity she ever changed 
her con-dition. She don't act as a vife, Sammy." 

" Don't she, though ? " inquired Mr. Weller, 
junior. 

The elder Mr. Weller shook his head, as he 
replied with a sigh, " I've done it once too often, 
Sammy ; I've done it once too often. Take ex- 
ample by your father, my boy, and be wery care- 
ful o' widders all your life, specially if they've 
kept a public-house, Sammy." Having deliv- 
ered this parental advice with great pathos, Mr. 
Weller senior refilled his pipe from a tin box he 
carried in his pocket, and, lighting his fresh pipe 
from the ashes of the old one, commenced smok- 
ing at a great rate. 

" Beg your pardon, sir," he said, renewing the 
subject, and addressing Mr. Pickwick, after a 
considerable pause, *' nothin' personal, I hope, 
sir ; I hope you han't got a widder, sir." 

Pickwicky Chap. 20. 

WIDTH AND WISDOM-WeUer's maxim. 

" Vait a minit, Sammy ; ven you grow as old 
as your father, you von't get into your veskit 
quite as easy as you do now, my boy." 

" If I couldn't get into it easier than that, I'm 
blessed if I'd vear vun at all," rejoined his son. 

" You think so now," said Mr. Weller, with 
the gravity of age ; " but you'll find that as you 
get vider, you'll get viser. Vidth and visdom, 
Sammy, alvays grows together." 



As Mr. Weller delivered this infallible max* 
im — the result of many years' personal experi- 
ence and observation — he contrived, by a dex- 
terous twist of his body, to get the bottom but- 
ton of his coat to perform its office. 

Pickwick, Chap, f^^, 

WIPE— An unhappy. 

^ * * * Whose happiness was in the past, 
and who was content to bind her broken spirit to 
the dutiful and meek endurance of the present. 
Dombey dr» Son, Chap. i. 

WIFE— Loss of a. 

He was not a man of whom it could properly 
be said that he was ever startled or shocked ; 
but he certainly had a sense within him, that if 
his wife should sicken and decay, he would be 
very sorry, and that he would find a something 
gone from among his plate and furniture, and 
other household possessions, which was well 
worth the having, and could not be lost without 
sincere regret. Though it would be a cool, busi- 
ness-like, gentlemanly, self-possessed regret, no 
doubt. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. i. 

WIFE— Toots' s opinion of his. 

" But Lord bless me," pursues Mr. Toots, 
" she was as entirely conscious of the state of 
my feelings as I was myself. There was no- 
thing I could tell her. She was the only person 
who could have stood between me and the silent 
Tomb, and she did it in a manner to command 
my everlasting admiration. She knows that 
there's nobody in the world I look up to as I do 
to Miss Dombey. She knows that there's no- 
thing on earth I wouldn't do for Miss Dombey. 
She knows that I consider Miss Dombey the 
most beautiful, the most amiable, the most an- 
gelic of her sex. What is her observation upon 
that ? The perfection of sense. ' My dear, 
you're right. / think so, too.' " 

" And so do I ! " says the Captain. 

" So do I," says Sol Gills. 

" Then," resumes Mr. Toots, after some con- 
templative pulling at his pipe, during which his 
visage has expressed the most contented reflec- 
tion, " what an observant woman my wife is ! 
What sagacity she possesses 1 What remarks 
she makes ! " — Dombey &" Son, Chap. 62. 



" But, Susan, my dear," said Mr. Toots, who 
had spoken with great feeling and high admira- 
tion, " all I ask is, that you'll remember the 
medical man, and not exert yourself too much." 
Dombey &^ Son, Chap. 61. 

WIFE— Her duties to a husband. 

" To be his patient companion in infirmity and 
age ; to be his gentle nurse in sickness, and his 
constant friend in suffering and sorrow ; to 
know no weariness in working for his sake ; to 
watch him, tend him, sit beside his bed and 
talk to him awake, and pray for him asleep ; 
what privileges these would be ! What op. 
porlunities for proving all her truth and her 
devotion to him ! " 

Cricket on the Hearth, Chap. 2. 

WIFE— A solemn. 

" Your brothers and sisters have all in their 
turns been companions to me, to a certain ex- 
tent, but only to a certain extent. Your mother 



WIFE 



623 



WILLS 



has, throughout life, been a companion that any 
man might — might look up to — and — and com- 
mit the sayings of, to memory — and — form him- 
self upon — if he " 

" If he liked the model ? " suggested Bella. 

" We-ell, ye-es," he returned, thinking about 
it, not quite satisfied with the phrase : " or per- 
haps I might say, if it was in him. Supposing, 
for instance, that a man wanted to be always 
marching, he would find your mother an inesti- 
mable companion. But if he had any taste for 
walking, or should wish at any time to break in- 
to a trot, he might sometimes find it a little 
difficult to keep step with your mother. Or 
take it this way, Bella," he added, after a mo- 
ment's reflection : " Supposing that a man had 
to go through life, we won't say with a compan- 
ion, but we'll say to a tune. Very good. Sup- 
posing that the tune allotted to him was the 
Dead March in Saul. Well. It would be a 
very suitable tune for particular occasions — 
none better — but it would be difficult to keep 
time within the ordinary run of domestic trans- 
actions. For instance, if he took his supper 
after a hard day, to the Dead March in Saul, 
his food might be likely to sit heavy on him. Or, 
if he was at any time inclined to relieve his 
mind by singing a comic song or dancing a 
hornpipe, and was obliged to do it to the Dead 
March in Saul, he might find himself put out in 
the execution of his lively intentions." 

Our Mutual Fiiend, Book II., Chap. 8. 

WIPE— A bad-tempered. 

She wasn't a bad wife, but she had a temper. 
If she could have parted with that one article 
at a sacrifice, I wouldn't have swopped her away 
in exchange for any other woman in England. 
Not that I ever did swop her away, for we lived 
together till she died, and that was thirteen year. 
Now, my lords and ladies and gentlefolks all, 
I'll let you into a secret, though you won't be- 
lieve it. Thirteen year of temper in a Palace 
would try the worst of you, but thirteen year of 
temper in a Cart would try the best of you. 
You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you 
see. There's thousands of couples among you 
getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstone in 
houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that 
would go to the Divorce Court in a cart. 
Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't un- 
dertake to decide ; but in a cart it does come 
home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a 
cart is so wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart is 
so aggrawating. 

* * * * * 

My dog knew as well when she was on the 
turn as I did. Before she broke out, he would 
give a howl and bolt. How he knew it, was a 
mystery to me ; but the sure and certain know- 
ledge of it would wake him up out of his sound- 
est sleep, and he would give a howl, and bolt. At 
such times I wished I was him. — Dr. Marigold. 

WIFE-(Mr8. Varden). 

Mrs. Varden was a lady of what is commonly 
called an uncertain temper — a phrase which be- 
ing interpreted signifies a temper tolerably cer- 
tain to make everybody more or less uncomfort- 
able. Thus it generally happened, that when 
Other people were merry, Mrs. Varden was dull ; 
and that when other people were dull, Mrs. 
Varden was disposed to be amazingly cheerful. 



"Indeed, the worthy housewife was of such a ca- 
pricious nature, that she not only attained a 
higher pitch of genius than Macbeth, in respect 
of her ability to be wise, amazed, temperate and 
furious, loyal and neutral, in an instant, but 
would sometimes ring the changes backwards 
and forwards on all possible moods and flights 
in one short quarter of an hour ; performing, as 
it were, a kind of triple-bob-major on the peal 
of instruments in the female belfry, with a skill- 
fulness and rapidity of execution that astonished 
all who heard her. 

It had been observed in this good lady (who 
did not want for personal attractions, being 
plump and buxom to look at, though, like her 
fair daughter, somewhat short in stature) that 
this uncertainty of disposition strengthened and 
increased with her temporal prosperity ; and 
divers wise men and matrons on friendly terms 
with the locksmith and his family even went so 
far as to assert, that a tumble-down some half- 
dozen rounds in the world's ladder — such as the 
breaking of the bank in which her husband kept 
his money, or some little fall of that kind — 
would be the making of her, and could hardly 
fail to render her one of the most agreeable 
companions in existence. Whether they were 
right or wrong in this conjecture, certain it is 
that minds, like bodies, will often fall into a 
pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess 
of comfort, and like them, are often successfully 
cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous 
and unpalatable. — Bamaby Rudge, Chap. 7. 

WILL— Won't, and can't. 

" How I envy you your constitution, Jarn- 
dyce ! " returned Mr. Skimpole, with playful 
admiration. " You don't mind these things, 
neither does Miss Summerson. You are ready 
at all times to go anywhere, and do anything. 
Such is Will ! I have no Will at all — and no 
Won't — simply Can't." — Bleak House, Chap. 31. 

WILLS— The depositaries of human paa- 
sions. 

We naturally fell into a train of reflection 
as we walked homewards, upon the curious 
old records of likings and dislikings ; of jeal- 
ousies and revenges ; of aff"ection defying the 
power of death, and hatred pursued beyond 
the grave, which these depositaries contain ; 
silent but striking tokens, some of them, of 
excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul ; 
melancholy examples, others, of the worst pas- 
sions of human nature. How many men, as 
they lay speechless and helpless on the bed ot 
death, would have given worlds for but the 
strength and power to blot out the silent evi- 
dence of animosity and bitterness, which now 
stands registered against them in Doctors* 
Commons. — Sceves, Chap. 8. 

WILLS— The making- of. 

The maxim, that out of evil cometh good, 
is strongly illustrated by these establishments 
at home, as the records of the Prerogative Of- 
fice in Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove. 
Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady, 
surrounded by needy relatives, makes, upon a low 
average, a will a week. The old gentleman or lady, 
never very remarkable in the best of times for 
good temper, is full of aches and pains from 
head to foot, full of fancies and caprices. <"ull 



WIl.li 



526 



WIND 



of spleen, distrust, suspicion, and dislike. To 
cancel old wills, and invent new ones, is at last 
the sole business of such a testator's existence ; 
and relations and friends (some of whom have 
been bred up distinctly to inherit a large share 
of the property, and have been, from their cra- 
dles, specially disqualified from devoting them- 
selves to any useful pursuit, on that account) 
are so often and so unexpectedly and summarily 
cut off, and reinstated, and cut off again, that 
the whole family, down to the remotest cousin, 
IS kept in a perpetual fever. At length it be- 
comes plain that the old lady or gentleman has 
not long to live ; and the plainer this becomes, 
the more clearly the old lady or gentleman per- 
ceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against 
their poor old dying relative ; wherefore the 
old lady or gentleman makes another last will, 
— positively the last this time, — conceals the 
same in a china teapot, and expires next 
day. Then it turns out that the whole of the 
real and personal estate is divided between half 
a dozen charities, and that the dead and gone 
testator has in pure spite helped to do a great 
deal of good at the cost of an immense amount 
of evil passion and misery. 

American Notes, Chap. 3. 

WILL-Mr. Boflan's *• tight." 

'• Make me as compact a little will as can be 
reconciled with tightness, leaving the whole of 
the property to ' my beloved wife, Henrietty 
Boffin, sole executrix.' Make it as short as you 
can, using those words ; but make it tight." 

At some loss to fathom Mr. Boffin's notions of 
a tight will, Lightwood felt his way. 

" I beg your pardon, but professional profun- 
dity must be exact. When you say tight " 

" I mean tight," Mr. Boffin explained. 

" Exactly so. And nothing can be more 
laudable. But is the tightness to bind Mrs. 
Boffin to any and what conditions?" 

'* Bind Mrs. Boffin ? " interposed her husband. 
" What are you thinking of? What I want is to 
make it all hers so tight as that her hold of it 
can't be loosed." 

" Hers freely, to do what she likes with ? Hers 
absolutely?" 

" Absolutely ! " repeated Mr. Boffin, with a 
short, sturdy laugh. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 8. 

WIND-A winter. 

It was a bitter day. A keen wind was 
blowing, and rushed against them fiercely ; 
bleaching the hard ground, shaking the white 
frost from the trees and hedges, and whirling it 
away like dust. But little cared Kit for 
weather. There was a freedom and freshness 
in the wind as it came howling by, which, let it 
cut never so sharp, was welcome. As it swept 
on with its cloud of frost, bearing down the dry 
twigs and boughs and withered leaves, and car- 
rying them away pell-mell, it seemed as though 
some general sympathy had got abroad, and 
everything was in a hurry like themselves. The 
harder the gusts, the better progress they ap- 
peared to make. It was a good thing to go 
struggling and fighting forward, vanquishing 
them one by one ; to watch them driving up, 
gathering strength and fury as they came along ; 
to bend for a moment, as they whistled past ; 
and then to look back, and see them speed 



away, their hoarse noise dying in the distance, 
and the stout trees cowering down before them. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 69. 

WIND— And snow. 

As it grew dusk, the wind fell ; its distant 
moanings were more low and mournful ; and, 
as it came creeping up the road, and rattling 
covertly among the dry brambles on either hand, 
it seemed like some great phantom for whom 
the way was narrow, whose garments rustled as 
it stalked along. By degrees it lulled and died 
away, and then it came on to snow. 

The flakes fell fast and thick, soon covering 
the ground some inches deep, and spreading 
abroad a solemn stillness. The rolling wheels 
were noiseless, and the sharp ring and clatter of 
the horses' hoofs became a dull, muffled tramp. 
The life of their progress seemed to be slowly 
hushed, and something death-like to usurp its 
place. 

Shading his eyes from the falling snow, which 
froze upon their lashes and obscured his sight, 
Kit often tried to catch the earliest glimpse of 
twinkling lights denoting their approach to some 
not distant town. He could descry objects 
enough at such times, but none correctly. Now, 
a tall church spire appeared in view, which pres- 
ently became a tree, a barn, a shadow on the 
ground, thrown on it by their own bright lamps. 
Now, there were horsemen, foot-passengers, car- 
riages, going on before, or meeting them in nar- 
row ways ; which, when they were close upon 
them, turned to shadows too. A wall, a ruin, a 
sturdy gable end, would rise up in the road ; 
and, when they were plunging headlong at it, 
would be the road itself. Strange turnings, too, 
bridges, and sheets of water, appeared to start 
up here and there, making the way doubtful 
and uncertain ; and yet they were on the same 
bare road, and these things, like the others, as 
they were passed, turned into dim illusions. 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 70. 

WIND— The East, of Mr. Jamdyce. 

Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a 
little while up-stairs, that this caprice about the 
wind was a fiction ; and that he used the pre- 
tence to account for any disappointment he 
could not conceal, rather than he would blame 
the real cause of it, or disparage or depreciate 
any one. We thought this very characteristic 
of his eccentric gentleness ; and of the difference 
between him and those petulant people who 
make the weather and the winds (particularly 
that unlucky wind which he had chosen for such 
a different purpose) the stalking-horses of their 
splenetic and gloomy humors. 

Bleak House, Chap. 6. 

WIND— A grale of. 

" The wind blew — not up the road, or down 
it, though that's bad enough, but sheer across 
it, sending the rain slanting down like the lines 
they used to rule in the copybooks in school, to 
make the boys slope well. For a moment it 
wo«ld die away, and the traveller would begin 
to delude himself into the belief that, exhausted 
with its previous fury, it had quietly lain itself 
down to rest, when, woo ! he would hear it 
growling and whistling in the distance, and on 
it would come, rushing over the hill-tops, and 
sweeping along the plain gathering sound and 



WIND 



627 



WIND 



strength as it drew nearer, until it dashed with 
a heavy gust against horse and man, driving the 
sharp rain into their ears, and its cold, damp 
breath into their very bones ; and past them it 
would scour, far, far away, with a stunning roar, 
as if in ridicule of their weakness, and triumph- 
ant in the consciousness of its own strength and 
Y)0\ytex." —Fickimck, Chap. 14. 

WIND -The whistling- of the. 

The evening grew more dull every moment, 
and a melancholy wind sounded through the 
deserted fields, like a distant giant whistling for 
his house-dog. The sadness of the scene im- 
parted a sombre tinge to the feelings of Mr. 
Winkle. He started as they passed the angle 
of the trench — it looked like a colossal grave. 
Pickwick, Chap. 2. 

WIN D-STORM-At night. 

The red light burns steadily all the evening 
in the lighthouse on the margin of the tide of 
busy life. Softened sounds and hum of traffic 
pass it and flow on irregularly into the lonely 
Precincts ; but very little else goes by, save vio- 
lent rushes of wind. It comes on to blow a 
boisterous gale. 

The Precincts are never particularly well 
lighted ; but the strong blasts of wind blowing 
out many of the lamps (in some instances shat- 
tering the frames too, and bringing the glass rat- 
tling to the ground), they are unusually dark to- 
night. The darkness is augmented and con- 
fused by flying dust from the earth, dry 
twigs from the trees, and great ragged frag- 
ments from the rooks' nests up in the tower. 
The trees themselves so toss and creak, as this 
tangible part of the darkness madly whirls 
about, that they seem in peril of being torn out 
of the earth ; while ever and again a crack, and 
a rushing fall, denote that some large branch 
has yielded to the storm. 

No such power of wind has blown for many 
a winter night. Chimneys topple in the streets, 
and people hold to posts and corners, and to 
one another, to keep themselves upon their 
feet. The violent rushes abate not, but increase 
in frequency and fury, until at midnight, when 
the streets are empty, the storm goes thunder- 
ing along them, rattling at all the latches, and 
tearing at all the shutters, as if warning the peo- 
ple to get up and fly with it, rather than have 
the roofs brought down upon their brains. 

All through the night the wind blows, and 
abates not. But early in the morning, when 
there is barely enough light in the east to dim 
the stars, il begins to lull. From that time, 
with occasional wild charges, like a wounded 
monster dying, it drops and sinks ; and at full 
daylight it is dead. — Edwin Drood, Chap. 14. 

WIND— A solemn sound. 

As the deep Cathedral bell strikes the hour, 
a ripple of wind goes through these at their 
distance, like a ripple of the solemn sound that 
hums through tomb and tower, broken niche 
and defaced statue, in the pile close at hand. 
Edwin Broody Chap. 2. 

WIND— An easterly, in London. 

It was not summer yet, but spring ; and it 
was not gentle spring, ethereally mild, as in 
Thomson's Seasons, but nipping spring with an 



easterly wind, as in Johnson's, Jackson's, Dick- 
son's, Smith's, and Jones's Seasons. The grat- 
ing wind sawed rather than blew ; and as it 
sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit. 
Every street was a sawpit, and there were no 
top-sawyers ; every passenger was an under- 
sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him and 
choking him. 

That mysterious paper currency which circu- 
lates in London when the wind blows, gyrated 
here and there and everywhere. Whence can 
it come, whither can it go ? It hangs on every 
bush, flutters in every tree, is caught flying by 
the electric wires, haunts every enclosure, drinks 
at every pump, cowers at every grating, shud- 
ders upon every plot of grass, seeks rest in vain 
behind the legions of iron rails. In Paris, where 
nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious city 
though it be, but where wonderful human ants 
creep out of holes and pick up every scrap, 
there is no such thing. There, it blows nothing 
but dust. There, sharp eyes and sharp stomachs 
reap even the east wind, and get something out 
of it. 

The wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled. 
The shrubs wrung their many heads, bemoaning 
that they had been over-persuaded by the sun 
to bud ; the young leaves pined ; the sparrows 
repented of their early marriages, like men 
and women ; the colors of the rainbow were 
discernible, not in floral spring, but in the 
faces of the people whom it nibbled and 
pinched. And ever the wind sawed, and the 
sawdust whirled. 

When the spring evenings are too long and 
light to shut out, and such weather is rife, the 
city which Mr. Podsnap so explanatorily called 
London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such 
a black shrill city, combining the qualities of a 
smoky house and a scolding wife ; such a gritty 
city ; such a hopeless city, with no rent in the 
leaden canopy of its sky ; such a beleaguered 
city, invested by the great Marsh Forces of Essex 
and Kent. So the two old school-fellows felt it 
to be, as, their dinner done, they turned towards 
the fire to smoke. Young Blight was gone, the 
coffee-house waiter was gone, the plates and 
dishes were gone, the wine was going — but not 
in the same direction. 

Our Mutual Fnend, Book /., Chap. 12. 

WIND— A penetrating-. 

We had been lying here some half an hour. 

With our backs to the wind, it is tnie ; but the 

wind being in a determined temper blew straight 

through us, and would not take the trouble to 

go round. I would have boarded a fireship to 

get into action. 

* * )tc * * * 

The shrewd East rasped and notched us, as 
with jagged razors. 

Down with the Tide. Reprinted Pieces. 

WIND— An angry. 

Out upon the angry wind ! how. from sighing, 
it began to bluster round the merry forge, bang- 
ing at the wicket, and grximbling in the chim- 
ney, as if it bullied the jolly bellows for doing 
anything to order. And what an impotent 
swaggerer it was too, for all its noise ; for if it 
had any influence on that hoarse companion, it 
was but to make him roar his cheerful song the 
louder, and by consequence to make the fire 



WIND 



628 



WINE 



bum the brighter, and the sparks to dance more 
gaily yet : at length, they whizzed so madly 
round and round, that it was too much for such 
a surly wind to bear : so off it flew with a howl ; 
giving the old sign before the ale-house door 
such a cuff as it went, that the Blue Dragon was 
more rampant than usual ever afterwards, and 
indeed, before Christmas, reared clean out of its 
crazy frame. 

It was small tyranny for a respectable wind 
to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor crea- 
tures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happen- 
ing to come up with a great heap of them just 
after venting its humor on the insulted Dragon, 
did so disperse and scatter them that they fled 
away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling 
over each other, whirling round and round upon 
their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the 
air, and playing all manner of extraordinary 
gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor 
was this enough for its malicious fury ; for not 
content with driving them abroad, it charged 
small parties of them and hunted them into the 
wheelwright's saw-pit, and below the planks 
and timbers in the yard, and, scattering the saw- 
dust in the air, it looked for them underneath, 
and when it did meet with any, whew ! how it 
drove them on and followed at their heels ! 

The scared leaves only flew the faster for all 
this, and a giddy chase it was : for they got into 
unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, 
and where their pursuer kept them eddying 
round and round at his pleasure ; and they crept 
under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to 
the sides of hay-ricks, like bats ; and tore in at 
open chamber- windows, and cowered close to 
hedges ; and in short went anywhere for safety. 
Martin Chuzzlewit^ Chap. 2. 

WIND— The west. 

I never had so much interest before, and 
very likely I shall never have so much interest 
again, in the state of the wind, as on the long- 
looked-for morning of Tuesday the seventh of 
June. Some nautical authority had told me a 
day or two previous, " Anything with west in 
it will do ; " so when I darted out of bed at 
daylight, and, throwing up the window, was sa- 
luted by a lively breeze from the northwest, 
which had sprung up in the night, it came up- 
on me so freshly, rustling with so many happy 
associations, that I conceived upon the spot a 
special regard for all airs blowing from that 
quarter of the compass, which I shall cherish, I 
dare say, until my own wind has breathed its 
last frail puff, and withdrawn itself forever from 
the mortal calendar. — American Notes, Chap. i6. 

WIND— Around a clitirch. 

For the night-wind has a dismal trick of wan- 
dering round and round a building of that sort, 
and moaning as it goes ; and of trying with its 
unseen hand the windows and the doors ; and 
seeking out some crevices by which to enter. 
And when it has got in, as one not finding 
what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails 
and howls to issue forth again ; and not con- 
tent with stalking through the aisles, and glid- 
ing round and round the pillars, and tempting 
the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and 
strives to rend the rafters ; then flings itself des- 
pairingly upon the stones below, and passes, 
muttering, into the vaults. Anon, it comes 



up stealthily, and creeps along the walls, seem- 
ing to read, in whispers, the Inscriptions sacred 
to the Dead. At some of these, it breaks out 
shrilly, as with laughter ; and at others, moans 
and cries as if it were lamenting. It has a 
ghostly sound too, lingering within the altar ; 
where it seems to chaunt in its wild way, of 
Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods wor- 
shipped, in defiance of the Tables of the Law, 
which look so fair and smooth, but are so flawed 
and broken. Ugh ! Heaven preserve us, sitting 
snugly round the fire ! It has an awful voice, 
that wind at Midnight, singing in a church ! 

But, high up in the steeple ! There the foul 
blast roars and whistles ! High up in the stee- 
ple, where it is free to come and go through 
many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist 
and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl 
the groaning weathercock, and make the very 
tower shake and shiver ! High up in the steeple, 
where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged 
with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shriv- 
elled by the changing weather, crackle and 
heave beneath the unaccustomed tread ; and 
birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oak- 
en joists and beams ; and dust grows old and 
gray ; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat 
with long security, swing idly to and fro in the 
vibration of the bells, and never loose their 
hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air, 
or climb up sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop 
upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs 
to save one's life ! 

Christmas Chimes, 1st Quarter. 

WINE— The broken cask. 

A large cask of wine had been dropped and 
broken, in the street. The accident had hap- 
pened in getting it out of a cart ; the cask had 
tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, 
and it lay on the stones just outside the door of 
the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. 

All the people within reach had suspended 
their business or their idleness, to run to the 
spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular 
stones of the street, pointing every way, and 
designed, one might have thought, expressly 
to lame all living creatures that approached 
them, had dammed it into little pools ; these 
were surrounded, each by its own jostling group 
or crowd, according to its size. Some men 
kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands 
joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who 
bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine 
had all run out between their fingers. Others, 
men and women, dipped in the puddles with 
little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even 
with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which 
were squeezed dry into infants' mouths ; others 
made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine 
as it ran ; others, directed by lookers-on up at 
high windows, darted here and there, to cut off 
little streams of wine that started away in new 
directions ; others devoted themselves to the 
sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, 
and even champing the moister wine-rotted 
fragments with eager relish. There was no 
drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did 
it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken 
up along with it, that there might have been a 
scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted 
with it could have believed in such a miraculous 
presence. 



WINE 



529 



WINE 



A shrill sound of laughter and of amused 
voices— voices of men, women, and children — 
resounded in the street while this wine-game 
lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, 
and much playfulness. There was a special 
companionship in it, an observable inclination 
on the part of every one to join some other one, 
which led, especially among the luckier or 
lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking 
of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining 
of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When 
the wine was gone, and the places where it had 
been most abundant were raked into a gridiron- 
pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, 
as suddenly as they had broken out. The man 
who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he 
was cutting, set it in motion again ; the woman 
who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot 
ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the 
pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in 
those of her child, returned to it ; men with 
bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, 
who had emerged into the winter light from 
cellars, moved away to descend again ; and a 
gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more 
natural to it than sunshine. 

The wine was red wine, and had stained the 
ground of the narrow street in the suburb of 
Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. 
It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, 
and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. 
The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left 
red marks on the billets : and the forehead of 
the woman who nursed her baby, was stained 
with the stain of the old rag she wound about 
her head again. Those who had been greedy 
with the staves of the cask, had acquired a 
tigerish smear about the mouth ; and one tall 
joker so besmeared, his head more out of a long 
squalid bag of a night-cap than in it, scrawled 
upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy 
wine lees — Blood. 

The time was to come, when that wine too 
would be spilled on the street-stones, and when 
the stain of it would be red upon many there. 
Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5. 

WINE— Journey of a bottle of. 

And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly 
beloved and highly treasured Bottle began to 
cost me, no man knows. It was my precious 
charge through a long tour; and for hundreds 
of mifes I never had it off my mind by day or 
by night. Over bad roads — and they were 
many — I clung to it with affectionate despera- 
tion. Up mountains, I looked in at it, and saw 
it helplessly tilting over on its back, with terror. 
At innumerable inn doors, when the weather 
was bad, I was obliged to be put into my vehi- 
cle before the Bottle could be got in, and was 
obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before 
human aid could come near me. The Imp of 
the same name, except that his associations 
were all evil and these associations were all 
good, would have been a less troublesome trav- 
elling companion. I might have served Mr. 
Cruikshank as a subject for a new illustration 
of the miseries of the Bottle. The National 
Temperance Society might have made a power- 
ful Tract of me. 

The suspicions that attached to this innocent 
Bottle greatly aggravated my difficulties. It 
was like the apple-pie in the child's book. Par- 



ma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tuscany 
tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it, 
Austria accused it. Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits 
jobbed it. I composed a neat Oration, develop- 
ing my inoffensive intentions in connection with 
this Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity of 
guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and 
on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart of a 
complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a 
day, I got down to harangue an infuriated 
soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy 
degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, 
I had as much difficulty in working my way 
with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a com- 
plete system of heretical theology. In the Nea- 
politan country, where everybody was a spy, a 
soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless 
beggars of all four denominations incessantly 
pounced on the Bottle, and made it a pretext 
for extorting money from me. Quires — quires 
do I say? Reams — of forms illegibly printed 
on whitey-brown paper were filled up about the 
Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping 
and sanding than I had ever seen before. In 
consequence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it 
was always irregular, and always latent with 
dismal penalties of going back or not going for- 
ward, which were only to be abated by the sil- 
ver crossing of a base hand, poked, shirtless, out 
of a ragged uniform sleeve. Under all dis- 
couragements, however, I stuck to my Bottle, 
and held firm to my resolution that every drop 
of its contents should reach the Bottle's desti- 
nation. 

The latter refinement cost me a separate heap 
of troubles on its own separate account. What 
corkscrews did I see the military power bring 
out against that Bottle ; what gimlets, spikes, 
divining-rods, gauges, and unknown tests and 
instruments ! At some places they persisted in 
declaring that the wine must not be passed 
without being opened and tasted ; I, pleading 
to the contrary, used then to argue the question, 
seated on the Bottle, lest they should open it in 
spite of me. In the southern parts of Italy, 
more violent shrieking, face-making, and ges- 
ticulating, greater vehemence of speech and 
countenance and action, went on about that 
Bottle than would attend fifty murders in a 
northern latitude. It raised important func- 
tionaries out of their beds in the dead of night. 
I have known half a dozen military lanterns 
to disperse themselves at all points of a great 
sleeping Piazza, each lantern summoning 
some official creature to get up, put on his 
cocked hat instantly, and come and stop the 
Bottle. It was characteristic that while this 
innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty 
in getting from little town to town, Signor 
Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing 
Italy from end to end. 

Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 28. 

WINE-Old. 

The host had gone below to the cellar, and 
had brought up bottles of ruby, straw-colored, 
and golden drinks, which had ripened long ago 
in lands where no fogs are, and had since lain 
slumbering in the shade. Sparkling and ting- 
ling after so long a nap, they pushed at their 
corks to help the corkscrew (like prisoners 
helping rioters to force, their gates), and danced 
out gayly. — Edwin DrooJ, Cfmp. Ii. 



WINK 



530 



WOJffiEN 



"WTNK. 

Mr. Weller communicated this secret with 
great glee, and winked so indefatigably after 
doing so, that Sam began to think he must have 
got the tic dolouretix in his right eye-lid. 

Pickwick^ Chap. 33. 

WINK— A slow. 

This was said with a mysterious wink ; or 
what would have been a wink if, in Mr. Grew- 
gious's hands, it could have been quick enough. 
Edwin Drood, Chap. ii. 

WINTER-DAY-A. 

The month appointed to elapse between that 
night and the return, was quick of foot, and 
went by like a vapor. 

The day arrived. A raging winter-day, that 
shook the old house, sometimes, as if it shivered 
in the blast. A day to make home doubly 
home. To give the chimney-corner new de- 
lights. To shed a ruddier glow upon the faces 
gathered round the hearth, and draw each fire- 
side group into a closer and more social league, 
against the roaring elements without. Such a 
wild winter day as best prepares the way for 
shut- out night ; for curtained rooms, and cheer- 
ful looks ; for music, laughter, dancing, light, 
and jovial entertainment. 

Battle of Life, Chap. 2. 

WINTER-A ride in. 

How well I recollect the wintry ride ! The 
frozen particles of ice, brushed from the blades 
of grass by the wind, and borne across my face : 
the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a 
tune upon the ground ; the stiff-tilled soil ; 
the snow-drift lightly eddying in the chalk-pit 
as the breeze ruffled it ; the smoking team with 
the wagon of old hay, stopping to breathe on 
the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically ; 
the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land 
lying against the dark sky, as if they were 
drawn on a huge slate ! 

David Copperfeld, Chap. 62. 

WIT— And money. 

" What a blessing to have such a ready wit, and 
so much ready money to back it ! " 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47. 

WOMAN— Deal Hghtly with her fatdts. 

Oh woman, God beloved in old Jerusalem ! 
The best among us need deal lightly with thy 
faults, if only for the punishment thy nature 
will endure, in bearing heavy evidence against 
us, on the Day of Judgment ! 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 28. 

WOMAN— Her perceptions. 

"You women," said Tom, "you women, my 
dear, are so kind, and in your kindness have 
such nice perception ; you know so well how to 
be affectionate and full of solicitude without ap- 
pearing to be ; your gentleness of feeling is like 
your touch ; so light and easy, that the one en- 
ables you to deal with wounds of the mind as 
tenderly as the other enables you to deal with 
wounds of the body." 

Martin Chuzzletuit, Chap. 46. 

WOMAN-A stately. 

How Alexander wept when he had no more 



worlds to conquer, everybody knows — or hae 
some reason to know by this time, the matter 
having been rather frequently mentioned. My 
Lady Dedlock, having conquered her world, fell, 
not into the melting, but rather into the freezing 
mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out pla- 
cidity, an equanimity of fatigue not to be ruf- 
fled by interest or satisfaction, are the trophies 
of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If 
she could be translated to Heaven to-morrow, 
she might be expected to ascend without any 
rapture. 

She has beauty still, and, if it be not in its 
heyday, it is not yet in its autumn. She has a 
fine face — originally of a character that would 
be rather called very pretty than handsome, but 
improved into classicality by the acquired ex- 
pression of her fashionable state. Her figure 
is elegant, and has the effect of being tall. Not 
that she is so, but that " the most is made," as 
the Honorable Bob Stables has frequently as- 
serted upon oath, " of all her points." The 
same authority observes, that she is perfectly 
got up ; and remarks, in commendation of her 
hair especially, that she is the best-groomed 
woman in the whole stud. 

Bleak House, Chap. 2. 

WOMAN-The frosty Mrs. Wilfer. 

Indeed, the bearing of this impressive woman, 
throughout the day, was a pattern to all impres- 
sive women under similar circumstances. She 
renewed the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. 
Boffin, as if Mr. and Mrs. Boffin had said of her 
what she had said of them, and as if Time alone 
could quite wear her injury out. She regarded 
every servant who approached her as her sworn 
enemy, expressly intended to offer her affronts 
with the dishes, and to pour forth outrages on 
her moral feelings from the decanters. She sat 
erect at table, on the right hand of her son-in- 
law, as half suspecting poison in the viands, and 
as btaring up with native force of character 
against other deadly ambushes. Her carriage 
towards Bella was as a carriage towards a young 
lady of good position, whom she had met in so- 
ciety a few years ago. Even when, slightly thaw- 
ing under the influence of sparkling champagne, 
she related to her son-in-law some passages of 
domestic interest concerning her papa, she in- 
fused into the narrative such Arctic suggestions 
of her having been an unappreciated blessing to 
mankind, since her papa's days, and also of that 
gentleman's having been a frosty impersonation 
of a frosty race, as struck cold to the very soles 
of the feet of the hearers. The Inexhaustible 
being produced, staring, and evidently intend- 
ing a weak and washy smile shortly, no sooner 
beheld her, than it was stricken spasmodic and 
inconsolable. When she took her leave at last, 
it would have been hard to say whether it was 
with the air of going to the scaffold herself, or 
of leaving the inmates of the house for immedi- 
ate execution. 

Our Mutual Friend, Book IV., Chap. 16. 

WOMEN— Quarrelsome. 

To many a single combat with Mrs. Pipchin, 
did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself ; and if 
ever Mrs. Pipchin in all her life had found her 
match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper 
threw away the scabbard the first morning she 
arose in Mrs. PipcMn's house. She asked and 



WOMAN 



681 



WOMAN 



gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and 
war it was ; and Mrs. Pipchin lived from that 
time in the midst of surprises, harassings, and 
defiances, and skirmishing attacks that came 
bouncing in upon her from the passage, even in 
unguarded moments of chops, and carried des- 
olation to her very toast. 

Dombey <2r» Son^ Chap. 12. 

WOMAN— Madam Defarg-e, the tigrress. 

There were many women at that time, upon 
whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring 
hand ; but there was not one among them more 
to be dreaded than this ruthless woman, now 
taking her way along the streets. Of a strong 
and fearless character, of shrewd sense and 
readiness, of great determination, of that kind 
of beauty which not only seems to impart to its 
possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike 
into others an instinctive recognition of those 
qualities ; the troubled time would have heaved 
her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued 
from her childhood with a brooding sense of 
wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, oppor- 
tunity had developed her into a tigress. She 
was absolutely without pity. If she had ever 
had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of 
her. 

It was nothing to her, that an innocent man 
was to die for the sins of his forefathers ; she 
saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, 
that his wife was to be made a widow, and his 
daughter an orphan ; that was insufficient pun- 
ishment, because they were her natural ene- 
mies and her prey, and as such had no right to 
live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by 
her having no sense of pity, even for herself. 
If she had been laid low in the streets, in any 
of the many encounters in which she had been 
engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, 
if she had been ordered to the axe to-morrow, 
would she have gone to it with any softer feel- 
ing than a fierce desire to change places with 
the man who sent her there. 

Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under 
her rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a be- 
coming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and 
her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red 
cap. Lying hidden in her bosom was a loaded 
pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharp- 
ened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking 
with the confident tread of such a character, and 
with the supple freedom of a woman who had 
habitually walked in her girlhood, barefoot and 
bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame 
Defarge took her way along the streets. 

Tale of Two Cities, Book III., Chap. 14. 

WOMAN— An angelic. 

Mrs. Todgers vowed that anything one quar- 
ter so angelic she had never seen. " She want- 
ed but a pair of wings, a dear," said that good 
woman, " to be a young syrup : " meaning, pos- 
sibly, young sylph, or seraph. 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 9. 

WOMAN— An old bundle of clothes. 

"How's Mrs. Fibbitson to-day?" said the 
Master, looking at another old woman in a large 
chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of 
clothes that I feel grateful to this hour for not 
having sat upon her by mistake. 

David Copperjield, Chap. 5. 



WOMAN— a handsome. 

" Not to be wondered at ! " says Mr. Bucket. 
" Such a fine woman as her, so handsome and 
so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon 
on a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she 
goes." — Bleak House, Chap. 53. 

WOMAN— A brave and tender. 

" My dear," he returned, " when a young lady 
is as mild as she's game, and as game as she's 
mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect. 
She then becomes a Queen, and that's about 
what you are yourself." 

Bleak House, Chap. 59. 

WOMAN— Toots' s opinion of. 

" And now. Feeder," said Mr. Toots, " I should 
be glad to know what you think of my union." 

" Capital," returned Mr. Feeder. 

" You think it's capital, do you. Feeder ? " said 
Mr. Toots, solemnly. " Then how capital must 
it be to Me. For you can never know what 
an extraordinary woman that is." 

Mr. Feeder was willing to take it for granted, 
but Mr. Toots shook his head, and wouldn't hear 
of that being possible. 

"You see," said Mr. Toots, " what /wanted 
in a wife was — in short, was sense. Money, 
Feeder, I had. Sense I — I had not, particu- 
larly." 

Mr. Feeder murmured, "Oh, yes, you had, 
Toots ! " But Mr. Toots said : 

" No, Feeder, I had not. Why should I dis- 
guise it? I had not. I knew that sense was 
there," said Mr. Toots, stretching out his hand 
towards his wife, " in perfect heaps. I had no 
relation to object or be offended, on the score 
of station ; for I had no relation. I have never 
had anybody belonging to me but my guardian, 
and him. Feeder, I have always considered as a 
Pirate and a Corsair. Therefore, you know it 
was not likely," said Mr. Toots, "that I should 
take his opinion." 

" No," said Mr. Feeder. 

" Accordingly," resumed Mr. Toots, " I acted 
on my own. Bright was the day on which I did 
so ! Feeder ! Nobody but myself can tell 
what the capacity of that woman's mind is. If 
ever the Rights of Women, and all that kind of 
thing, are properly attended to, it will be through 
her powerful intellect. — Susan, my dear ! " said 
Mr. Toots, looking abruptly out of the window- 
curtains, " pray do not exert yourself! " 

"My dear," said Mrs. Toots, "I was only 
talking." 

" But my love," said Mr. Toots, " pray do not 
exert yourself. You really must be careful. Do 
not, my dear Susan, exert yourself. She's so 
easily excited," said Mr. Tools, apart to Mrs. 
Blimber, " and then she forgets the medical man 
altogether." — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 42. 

WOMAN- An old. 

Munching, like that sailor's wife of yore, who 
had chestnuts in her lap, and scowling like the 
witch who asked for some in vain, the old 
woman picked the shilling up, and going back- 
wards, like a crab, or like a heap of crabs ; for 
her alternately expanding and contracting hands 
might have represented two of that species, 
and her creeping face some half-a-dozen more : 
crouched on the veinous root of an old tree, 
pulled out a short black pipe from within the 



WOMAN 



532 



WOMAN 



crown of her bonnet, lighted it with a match, 
and smoked in silence, looking fixedly at her 
questioner. — Do7tibey 6^ Son, Chap. 27. 

WOMAN— The influence of a true. 

The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we 
thought, and said, and did, in that time of sor- 
row, that I assume I may refer the project to 
her influence. But her influence was so quiet 
that I know no more. 

And now, indeed, I began to think that in 
my old association of her with the stained- 
glass window in the church, a prophetic fore- 
shadowing of what she would be to me, in the 
calamity that was to happen, in the fullness of 
time, had found a way into my mind. In all 
that sorrow, from the moment, never to be for- 
gotten, when she stood before me with her up- 
raised hand, she was like a sacred presence in 
my lonely house. When the Angel of Death 
alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep — they 
told me so when I could bear to hear it — on her 
bosom, with a smile. From my swoon, I first 
awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate 
tears, her words of hope and peace, her gentle 
face bending down as from a purer region 
nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, 
and softening its pain. 

David Copperfield, Chap, 54. 



She was so true, she was so beautiful, she 
was so good, — I owed her so much gratitude, 
she was so dear to me, that I could find no 
utterance for what I felt. I tried to bless her, 
tried to thank her, tried to tell her (as I had 
often done in letters) what an influence she had 
upon me ; but all my efforts were in vain. My 
love and joy were dumb. 

With her own sweet tranquillity she calmed 
my agitation ; led me back to the time of our 
parting ; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had 
visited, in secret, many times ; spoke to me ten- 
derly of Dora's grave. With the unerring in- 
stinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords 
of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that 
not one jarred within me ; I could listen to the 
sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink 
from nothing it awoke. How could I, when, 
blended with it all, was her dear self, the better 
angel of my life ? 

***** 

And now, as I close my task, subduing my 
desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But 
one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light 
by which I see all other objects, is above 
them and beyond them all. And that re- 
mains. 

I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful 
serenity, beside me. My lamp burns low, and I 
have written far into the night ; but the dear 
presence, without which I were nothing, bears 
me company. 

Oh, Agnes ! Oh, my soul, so may thy face be 
by me when I close my life indeed ; so may I, 
■when realities are melting from me like the shad- 
ows which I now dismiss, still find thee near 
me, pointing upward ! 

David Copperfield, Chap. 60. 

WOMAN— A betrothed. 

Now, and not before, Miss Fanny burst upon 
the scene, completely arrayed for her new 



ed Mr. Sparkler in her light, and shone for 
both and twenty more. No longer feeling that 
want of a defined place and character which 
had caused her so much trouble, this fair ship 
began to steer steadily on a shaped course, and 
to swim with a weight and balance that developed 
her sailing qualities. 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15. 

WOMAN— Tackleton's opinion of. 

" Bah ! what's home ? " cried Tackleton. 
" Four walls and a ceiling ! (why don't you kill 
that Cricket ; / would ! I always do. I hate 
their noise.) There are four walls and a ceil- 
ing at my house. Come to me ! " 

" You kill your Crickets, eh ? " said John. 

" Scrunch 'em, sir," returned the other, set- 
ting his heel heavily on the floor. "You'll say 
you'll come ? It's as much your interest as 
mine, you know, that the women should per- 
suade each other that they're quiet and content- 
ed, and couldn't be better off. I know their 
way. Whatever one woman says, another 
woman is determined to clinch, always. There's 
that spirit of emulation among 'em, sir, that if 
your wife says to my wife, ' I'm the happiest 
woman in the world, and mine's the best hus- 
band in the world, and I dote on him,' my wife 
will say the same to yours, or more, and half 
believe it." — Cricket on tJie Hearth, Chap. i. 

WOMAN-A deUcate. 

" Mrs. Wititterly is of a most excitable nature, 
Sir Mulberry. The snuff of a candle, the wick 
of a lamp, the bloom on a peach, the down on 
a butterfly. You might blow her away, my 
lord ; you might blow her away." 

Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 27. 

WOMAN— An enragred. 

With these last words, she snaps her teeth 
together, as if her mouth closed with a spring. 
It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket gets 
her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a man- 
ner so peculiar to himself ; enfolding and per- 
vading her like a cloud, and hovering away with 
her as if he were a homely Jupiter, and she the 
object of his affections. 

Bleak House, Chap. 54. 

WOMEN— Painting. 

" She's a goin' off," soliloquised Sam in great 
perplexity. " Wot a thing it is, as these here 
young creaturs will go a faintin' avay just wen 
they oughtn't to." — Pickwick, Chap. 39. 

WOMEN— As drivers. 

"We are not a heavy load, George?" 
" That's always what the ladies say," replied 
the man, looking a long way round, as if he 
were appealing to Nature in general against 
such monstrous propositions. " If you see a 
woman a driving, you'll always perceive that 
she will never keep her whip still ; the horse 
can't go fast enough for her. If cattle have got 
their proper load, you can never persuade a 
woman that they'll not bear something more." 
Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 26. 

WOMAN-A pretty. 

She was very pretty ; exceedingly pretty. 
With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face ; 



part. Now, and not before, she wholly absorb- 1 a ripe little mouth, that seetned made to be 



WOMAN 



533 



WOMAN 



kissed — as no doubt it was ; all kinds of good 
little dots about her chin, that melted into one 
another when she laughed : and the sunniest 
pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's 
head. Altogether she was what you would have 
called provoking, you know ; but satisfactory, 
too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory. 

Christmas Carols Stave 3. 



" A young and beautiful girl ; fresh, lovely, 
bewitching, and not nineteen. Dark eyes, long 
eyelashes, ripe and ruddy lips, that to look at is 
to long to kiss, beautiful clustering hair, that 
one's fingers itch to play with, such a waist as 
might make a man clasp the air involuntarily, 
thinking of twining his arm about it, little feet 
that tread so lightly they hardly seem to walk 
upon the ground — to marry all this, sir, this — 
hey, hey !" — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 47. 

WOMA.N-A wolf-like. 

My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two- 
and-thirty, from somewhere in the southern 
country about Avignon and Marseilles — a large- 
eyed brown woman with black hair ; who would 
be handsome, but for a certain feline mouth, and 
general uncomfortable tightness of the face, ren- 
dering the jaws too eager, and the skull too 
prominent. There is something indefinably 
keen and wan about her anatomy ; and she has 
a watchful way of looking out of the corners of 
her eyes without turning her head, which could 
be pleasantly dispensed with — especially when 
she is in an ill-humor and near knives. Through 
all the good taste of her dress and little adorn- 
ments, these objections so express themselves, 
that she seems to go about like a very neat She- 
Wolf, imperfectly tamed. Besides being accom- 
plished in all the knowledge appertaining to her 
post, she is almost an Englishwoman in her 
acquaintance with the language — consequently, 
she is in no want of words to shower upon 
Rosa for having attracted my Lady's attention ; 
and she pours them out with such grim ridicule 
as she sits at dinner, that her companion, the 
affectionate man, is rather relieved when she 
arrives at the spoon stage of that performance. 
Bleak House, Chap. 12. 

WOMEN-Elderly. 

Ultimately I found myself backing Traddles 
into the fire-place, and bowing in great confu- 
sion to two dry little elderly ladies, dressed in 
black, and each looking wonderfully like a pre- 
paration in chip or tan of the late Mr. Spenlow. 

4t * * * * 

They both had little, bright, round, twink- 
ling eyes, by the way, which were like birds' 
eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether ; 
having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a 
little, short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, 
like canaries. 

■*^ % if. if. % 

Exactly at the expiration of the quarter of 
an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity 
than they had disappeared. They had gone 
rustling away as if their little dresses were made 
of autumn-leaves ; and they came nistling back, 
in like manner. — David Copperjield, Chap. 41. 

WOMAN— A she-devil. 

A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of 
flashing black eyes, — proof that the world hadn't 



conjured down the devil within her, though it 
had had between sixty and seventy years to do 
it in, — came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of 
which she was the keeper, with some large keys 
in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we 
should go. How she told us, on the way, that 
she was a Government Officer {concierge du 
palais apostolique), and had been, for I don't 
know how many years ; and how she had shown 
these dungeons to princes ; and how she was the 
best of dungeon demonstrators ; and how she 
had resided in the palace from an infant, — had 
been born there, if I recollect right,— I needn't 
relate. But such a fierce, little, rapid, "• ark- 
ling, energetic she-devil I never beheld. She 
was alight and flaming all the time. Her a*-^on 
was violent in the extreme. She never spoke, 
without stopping expressly for the purpose. 
She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, 
flung herself into attitudes, hammered against 
walls with her keys, for mere emphasis ; now 
whispered as if the Inquisition were there still : 
now shrieked as if she were on the rack her- 
self ; and had a mysterious, hag-like way with 
her forefinger, when approaching the remains 
of some new horror — looking back and walking 
stealthily, and making horrible grimaces — that 
might alone have qualified her to walk up and 
down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion 
of all other figures, through a whole fever. 

Pictures from Italy. 

WOMAN— An unselfish ; Miss Press. 

Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, 
but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath 
the surface of her eccentricity, one of those un- 
selfish creatures — found only among women — 
who will, for pure love and admiration, bind 
themselves willing slaves, to youth when they 
have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to 
accomplishments that they were never fortunate 
enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone 
upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough 
of the world to know that there is nothing in it 
better than the faithful service of the heart ; so 
rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, 
he had such an exalted respect for it, that, in the 
retributive arrangements made by his own mind 
— we all make such arrangements, more or less 
— he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the 
lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably 
better got up both by Nature and Art, who had 
balances at Tellson's. 

Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 6. 

WOMAN- An edg-e-tool (Kosa Dartle). 

She took everything, herself included, to a 
grindstone, and sharpened it. She is an edge- 
tool, and requires great care in dealing with. 
She is always dangerous. 

David Copperfeld, Chap. 29. 

WOMAN— A sharp (Kosa Dartle). 

" She is very clever, is she not ? " I asked. 

"Clever! She brings everything to a grind- 
stone," said Steerforth, "and sharpens it, as she 
has sharpened her own face and figure these 
years past. She has worn herself away by con- 
stant sharpening. She is all edge." 

Daxnd Copperfield, Chap. 20. 

WOMAN- An artlfloial. 

Thus they remained for a long hour, without 



WOMAN 



534 



WOMAN 



a word, until Mrs. Skewton's maid appeared, 
according to custom, to prepare her gradually 
for night. At night, she should have been a 
skeleton, with dart and hour-glass, rather than a 
woman, this attendant ; for her touch was as the 
touch of Death. The painted object shrivelled 
underneath her hand ; the form collapsed, the 
hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows 
changed to scanty tufts of gray ; the pale lips 
shrunk, the skin became cadaverous and loose ; 
an old, worn, yellow, nodding woman, with 
red eyes, alone remained in Cleopatra's place, 
huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a 
greasy flannel gown. 

Dombey df Son, Chap. 27. 



And to prepare her for repose, tumbled into 
ruins like a house of painted cards. 

Doynbey 6^ Son, Chap. 20. 

WOMAN— Of fashion. paral3rzed. 

Edith hurried with her to her mother's room. 
Cleopatra was arrayed in full dress, with the 
diamonds, short-sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth, and 
other juv^enility all complete ; but Paralysis was 
not to be deceived, had known her for the ob- 
ject of its errand, and had struck her at her 
glass, where she lay like a homble doll that had 
tumbled down. 

They took her to pieces in very shame, and 
put the little of her that was real on a bed. 

* * * * * 

It was a tremendous sight to see this old 
woman in her finery leering and mincing at 
■ Death, and playing off her youthful tricks upon 
him as if he had been the Major. 

* * * * * 

WTien the carriage was closed, and the wind 
shut out, the palsy played among the artifi- 
cial roses again like an almshouse full of su- 
perannuated zephyrs. 

Dombey dr* Son, Chap. 37. 

WOMAN-Of fasMon. 

Walking by the side of the chair, and carry- 
ing her gossamer parasol with a proud and wea- 
ry air, as if so great an effort must be soon 
abandoned and the parasol dropped, sauntered 
a much younger lady, very handsome, very 
haughty, very willful, who tossed her head and 
drooped her eyelids, as though, if there were 
anything in all the world worth looking into, 
save a mirror, it certainly was not the earth or 
sky. — Dombey ^ Son, Chap. 21. 

WOMAN— Ssrmpathy for a fallen. 

As her hands, parting on her sunburnt fore- 
head, swept across her face, and threw aside the 
hindrances that encroached upon it, there was 
a reckless and regardless beauty in it ; a daunt- 
less and depraved indifference to more than 
weather ; a carelessness of what was cast upon 
her bare head from Heaven or earth, that, 
coupled with her misery and loneliness, touched 
the heart of her fellow-woman. She thought 
of all that was perverted and debased within 
her, no less than without ; of modest graces of 
the mind, hardened and steeled, like these at- 
tractions of the person ; of the many gifts of 
the Creator flung to the winds like the wild 
hair ; of all the beautiful ruin upon which the 
storm was beating and the night was coming. 
Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 33. 



WOMAN— The instincts and prejudices of. 

It has been often enough remarked that wo- 
men have a curious power of divining the 
characters of men, which would seem to be in- 
nate and instinctive ; seeing that it is arrived at 
through no patient process of reasoning, that it 
can give no satisfactory or sufficient account of 
itself, and that it pronounces in the most con- 
fident manner even against accumulated obser- 
vation on the part of the other sex. But it has 
not been quite so often remarked that this power 
(fallible, like every other human attribute), is 
for the most part absolutely incapable of self- 
revision ; and that when it has delivered an ad- 
verse opinion, which by all human lights is sub- 
sequently proved to have failed, it is undis- 
tinguishable from prejudice, in respect of its 
determination not to be corrected. Nay, the 
very possibility of contradiction or disproof, 
however remote, communicates to this feminine 
judgment from the first, in nine cases out of 
ten, the weakness attendant on the testimony of 
an interested witness ; so personally and strongly 
does the fair diviner connect herself with hei 
divination. — Edwin Drood, Chap. 10. 

WOMAN— Influence of a g-ood. 

Strange to say, that quiet influence which was 
inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed to 
pervade even the city where she dwelt. The 
venerable cathedral towers, and the old jack- 
daws and rooks whose airy voices made them 
more retired than perfect silence would have 
done ; the battered gateways, once stuck full 
with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled 
away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed 
upon them ; the still nooks, where the ivied 
growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and 
ruined walls ; the ancient houses, the pastoral 
landscape of field, orchard, and garden ; every- 
where — on everything — I felt the same serener 
air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit. 
David Copperjield, Chap. 39. 

WOMAN— Her revenge on dress. 

The Peasant Women, with naked feet and 
legs, are so constantly washing clothes, in the 
public tanks, and in every stream and ditch, that 
one cannot help wondering, in the midst of all 
this dirt, who wears them when they are clean. 
The custom is to lay the wet linen which is be- 
ing operated upon, on a smooth stone, and ham- 
mer away at it, with a flat wooden mallet. This 
they do, as furiously as if they were revenging 
themselves on dress in general for being con- 
nected with the Fall of Mankind. 

Pictu7'es from Italy. 

WOMAN— The character of Mrs. Bagnet 

" The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, 
" saves. Has a stocking somewhere. With 
money in. I never saw it. But I know she's 
got it. Wait till the greens is off her mind. 
Then she'll set you up." 

" She is a treasure ! " exclaims Mr. George. 

" She's more. But I never own to it before 
her. Discipline must be maintained. It was 
the old girl that brought out my musical abili- 
ties. I should have been in the artillery now, 
but for the old girl. Six years I hammered at 
the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old girl said 
it wouldn't do ; intention good, but want of 
flexibility ; try the bassoon. The old girl bor- 



WOMAN 



sas 



WOMEN 



rowed a bassoon from the band-master of the 
Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. 
Got on, got another, get a living by it ! " 

George remarks that she looks as fresh as a 
rose, and as sound as an apple. 

" The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet in reply, " is 
a thoroughly line woman. Consequently, she is 
like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as she gets 
on. I never saw the old girl's equal. But I 
never own to it before her. Discipline must be 
maintained ! " — Bleak House, Chap. 27. 

WOMAN— Mrs. Bagnet as a true. 

" George, you know the old girl — she's as 
sweet and as mild as milk. But touch her on 
the children — or myself — and she's off like gun- 
powder." 

" It does her credit. Mat ! " 

" George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight 
before him, " the old girl — can't do anything — 
that don't do her credit. More or less. I never 
say so. Discipline must be maintained." 

" She's worth her weight in gold," says the 
trooper. 

" In gold ? " says Mr. Bagnet. " I'll tell you 
what. The old girl's weight — is twelve stone 
six. Would I take that weight — in any 
metal— for the old girl? No. Why not? 
Because the old girl's metal is far more pre- 
cious — than the preciousest metal. And she's 
a// metal ! " 

*' You are right. Mat ! " 

" When she took me — and accepted of the 
ring — she 'listed under me and the children — 
heart and head ; for life. She's that earnest," 
says Mr. Bagnet, " and tnie to her colors — that, 
touch us with a finger — and she turns out — and 
stands to her arms. If the old girl fires wide — 
once in a way — at the call of duty — look over it, 
George. For she's loyal ! " 

Bleak House, Chap. 34. 

WOMAN— Her devotion. 

So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home, 
within the circle of her innocent pursuits and 
thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She could 
go down to her father's rooms now, and think 
of him, and suffer her loving heart humbly to 
approach him, without fear of repulse. She 
could look upon the objects that had surrounded 
him in his sorrow, and could nestle near his 
chair, and not dread the glance that she 90 well 
remembered. She could render him such little 
tokens of her duty and service, as putting every- 
thing in order for him with her own hands, 
binding little nosegays for his table, changing 
them as one by one they withered, and he did 
not come back, preparing something for him 
every day, and leaving some timid mark of her 
presence near his usual seat. To-day, it was a 
little painted stand for his watch ; to-morrow 
she would be afraid to leave it, and would sub- 
stitute some other trifle of her making not so 
likely to attract his eye. Waking in the night, 
perhaps, she would tremble at the thought of 
his coming home and angrily rejecting it, and 
would hurry down with slippered feet and 
quickly-beating heart, and bring it away. At 
another time, she would only lay her face upon 
his desk, and leave a kiss there, and a tear. 

Dotnbey ^ Son, Chap. 23. 



Yes. This slight, small, patient figure, neatly 



dressed in homely stuffs, and indicating nothing 
but the dull household virtues, that have so lit- 
tle in common with the received idea of hero- 
ism and greatness, unless, indeed, any ray of 
them should shine through the lives of the great 
ones of the earth, when it becomes a constella- 
tion and is tracked in Heaven straightway — 
this slight, small, patient figure, leaning on the 
man, still young, but worn and gray, is she his 
sister, who, of all the world, went over to him 
in his shame and put her hand in his, and with 
a sweet composure and determination, led him 
hopefully upon his barren way. 

Dombey 6f Son, Chap. 33. 

WOMAN— Her better natixre. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Toodle's great reliance 
on Polly, she was perhaps in point of artificial 
accomplishments very little his superior. But 
she was a good plain sample of a nature that 
is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler, 
quicker to feel, and much more constant to re- 
tain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and de- 
votion, than the nature of men. 

Dombey tSr* Son, Chap. 3. 

WOMAN— Her art at home. 

The Captain's delight and wonder at the quiet 
housewifery of Florence in assisting to clear 
the table, arrange the parlor, and sweep up the 
hearth — only to be equalled by the fervency of 
his protest when she began to assist him — were 
gradually raised to that degree, that at last he 
could not choose but do nothing himself, and 
stand looking at her as if she were some Fairy, 
daintily performing these offices for him, the 
red rim on his forehead glowing again, in his 
unspeakable admiration. 

But when Florence, taking down his pipe 
from the mantel-shelf, gave it into his hand, and 
entreated him to smoke it, the good Captain 
was so bewildered by her attention that he held 
it as if he had never held a pipe in all his life. 
Likewise, when Florence, looking into the little 
cupboard, took out the case-bottle and mixed a 
perfect glass of grog for him, unasked, and set 
it at his elbow, his ruddy nose turned pale, he 
felt himself so graced and honored. When he 
had filled his pipe in an absolute reverie of 
satisfaction, Florence lighted it for him — the 
Captain having no power to object, or to pre- 
vent her — and resuming her place on the old 
sofa, looked at him with a smile so loving and 
so grateful, a smile that showed him so plainly 
how her forlorn heart turned to him, as her face 
did, through grief, that the smoke of the pipe 
got into the Captain's throat and made him 
cough, and got into the Captain's eyes and 
made them blink and water. 

Dombey 6* Son, Chap. 49. 

WOMEN— Inquisitive. 

True, I had no Avenger in my service now, 
but I was looked after by an inflammatory old 
female, assisted by an animated rag-bag whom 
she called her niece ; and to keep a room secret 
from them would be to invite curiosity and ex- 
aggeration. They both had weak eyes, which 
I had long attributed to their chronically look- 
ing in at keyholes, and they were always at 
hand when not wanted ; indeed that was their 
only reliable quality besides larceny. Not to 
get up a mystery wiili tht^si: people, I resolved 



WORDS 



536 



WORKENG PEOPLE 






to announce in the morning that my uncle had 
unexpectedly come from the country. 

Great Expectations^ Chap. 40. 

WORDS— Their influence. 

" Words, sir, never influence the course of the 
cards, or the course of the dice. Do you know 
that ? You do ? I also play a game, and words 
are without power over it." 

Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 28. 

WORD— The last a new injury. 

" Why, I'd as soon have a spit put through 
me, and be stuck upon a card in a collection of 
beetles, as lead the life I have been leading 
here." 

" Well, Mr. Meagles, say no more about it, 
now it's over," urged a cheerful feminine voice. 

"Over J" repeated Mr. Meagles, who ap- 
peared (though without any ill-nature) to be in 
that peculiar state of mind in which the last 
word spoken by anybody else is a new injury. 
" Over ! and why should I say no more about it 
because it's over? " 

Little Doirit, Book /., Chap. 2. 

WORDS. 

" Scouring a very prairie of wild words." 

Little Dorrit, Book II., CJiap. 27. 

WORDS— And higli-sGundingr phrases. 

" Oh Pa ! " cried Mercy, holding up her fin- 
ger archly. " See advertisement ! " 

" Playful — playful warbler," said Mr. Peck- 
sniff. It may be observed in connection with 
his calling his daughter " a warbler," that she 
was not at all vocal, but that Mr. Pecksniff was 
in the frequent habit of using any word that 
occurred to him as having a good sound, and 
rounding a sentence well, without much care 
for its meaning. And he did this so boldly, and 
in such an imposing manner, that he would 
sometimes stagger the wisest people with his 
eloquence, and make them gasp again. 

His enemies asserted, by the way, that a 
strong trustfulness in sounds and forms, was the 
master-key to Mr. Pecksniffs character. 

Maiiin Chuzzlewit, Chap. 2. 

WORDS. 

Peggotty's militia of words. 

David Copper field. Chap. 3. 

WORDS— Versus oaths. 

" I give you my word, constable — " said 
Brass. But here the constable interposed with 
the constitutional principle " words be blowed ; " 
observing that words were but spoon-meat for 
babes and sucklings, and that oaths were the 
food for strong men. 

Old Ct0iosity Shop, Chap. 60. 

WORDS— The parade of. 

Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal pil- 
ing up of words, which, however ludicrously 
displayed in his case, was, I must say, not at all 
peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the 
course of my life, in numbers of men. It seems 
to me to be a general rule. In the taking of 
legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to en- 
joy themselves mightily when they come to sev- 
eral good words in succession, for the expression 
of one Mea ; as, that they utterly detest, abomi- 



nate, and abjure, or so forth ; and the old an- 
athemas were made relishing on the same prin- 
ciple. We talk about the tyranny of words, but 
we like to tyrannize over them too ; we are fond 
of having a large superfluous establishment of 
words to wait upon us on great occasions ; we 
think it looks important, and sounds well. As 
we are not particular about the meaning of our 
liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine 
and numerous enough, so, the meaning or neces- 
sity of our words is a secondary consideration, 
if there be but a great parade of them. And as 
individuals get into trouble by making too great 
a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too 
numerous rise against their masters, so I think 
I could mention a nation that has got into many 
great difficulties, and will get into many greater, 
from maintaining too large a retinue of words. 
David Copperfield, Chap. 52. 

WORDS— To be economized. 

He was so perfectly satisfied both with his 
quotation and his reference to it, that he could 
not help repeating the words again in a low 
voice, and saying he had forgotten 'em these 
forty year. 

" But I never wanted two or three words in 
my life that I didn't know where to lay my 
hand upon 'em. Gills," he observed. "It comes 
of not wasting language as some do." 

The reflection perhaps reminded him that he 
had better, like young Norval's father, "in- 
crease his store." — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 4. 

WORDS. 

The persecutors denied that there was any 
particular gift in Mr. Chadband's piling ver- 
bose flights of stairs, one upon another, after 
this fashion. But this can only be received as 
a proof of their determination to persecute, since 
it must be within everybody's experience, that 
the Chadband style of oratory is widely received 
and much admired. — Bleak House, CJiap. 19. 

WORDS— In earnest. 

A word in earnest is as good as a speech. 
Bleak House, Chap. 6. 

WORKING PEOPIiE. 

For the first time in her life, Louisa had 
come into one of the dwellings of the Coketown 
hands ; for the first time in her life, she was face 
to face with anything like individuality in con- 
nection with them. She knew of their exist- 
ence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew 
what results in work a given number of them 
would produce, in a given space of time. She 
knew them in crowds passing to and from their 
nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from 
her reading infinitely more of the ways of toil- 
ing insects than of these toiling men and 
women. 

Something to be worked so much and paid so 
much, and there ended ; something to be infal- 
libly settled by laws of supply and demand ; 
something that blundered against those laws, 
and floundered into difficulty ; something that 
was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and 
over-ate itself when wheat was cheap ; some- 
thing that increased at such a rate of percent- 
age, and yielded such another percentage of 
crime, and such another percentage of pauper- 
ism ; something wholesale, of which vast foi- 



WORKINGMEN 



537 



WORKINaMEH 



tunes were made ; something that occasionally 
rose like a sea, and did some harm and waste 
(chiefly to itself), and fell again ; this she knew 
the Coketown Hands to be. But, she had scarce- 
ly thought more of separating them into units, 
than of separating the sea itself into its compo- 
nent drops. — Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 6. 

WORKINGMEN-EngUsh. 

Gentlemen's clubs were once maintained for 
purposes of savage party warfare ; working- 
men's clubs of the same day assumed the same 
character. Gentlemen's clubs became places 
of quiet inoffensive recreation ; workingmen's 
clubs began to follow suit. If workingmen 
have seemed rather slow to appreciate advanta- 
ges of combination which have saved the pock- 
ets of gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts, 
it is because workingmen could scarcely, for 
want of capital, originate such combinations 
without help ; and because help has not been 
separable from that great impertinence, Pat- 
ronage. This instinctive revolt of his spirit 
against patronage is a quality much to be re- 
spected in the English workingman. It is the 
base of the base of his best qualities. Nor is it 
surprising that he should be unduly suspicious of 
patronage, and sometimes resentful of it even 
where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy 
talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or 
with what complacent condescension the same 
devoted head has been smoothed and patted. 
It is a proof to me of his self-control, that he 
never strikes out pugilistically, right and left, 
when addressed as one of " My friends " or 
" My assembled friends ; " that he does not become 
inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, 
whenever he sees a biped in broadcloth getting 
on a platform to talk to him ; that any pre- 
tence of improving his mind does not instantly 
drive him out of his mind, and cause him to 
toss his obliging patron like a mad bull. 

For how often have I heard the unfortunate 
workingman lectured, as if he were a little 
charity-child, humid as to his nasal develop- 
ment, strictly literal as to his Catechism, and 
called by Providence to walk all his days in a 
station in life represented on festive occasions 
by a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun ! 
What popguns of jokes have these ears tingled 
to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, 
what impotent conclusions, what spelling-book 
moralities, what adaptations of the orator's in- 
sufferable tediousness to the assumed level of 
his understanding 1 If his sledgehammers, his 
spades and pickaxes, his saws and chisels, his 
paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and 
engines, the horses that he drove at his work, and 
the machines that drove him at his work, were 
all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby 
who played with them, he could not have been 
discoursed to more impertinently and absurdly 
than I have heard him discoursed to times in- 
numerable. Consequently, not being a fool or 
a fawner, he has come to acknowledge his 
patronage by virtually saying : " Let me alone. 
If you understand me no better than that, sir 
and madam, let me alone. You mean very 
well, I dare say ; but I don't like it, and I won't 
come here again to have any more of it." 

Whatever is done for the comfort and ad- 
vancement of the workingman must be so far 
done by himself. And there must be in it no 



touch of condescension, no shadow of patron- 
age. In the great working districts this truth is 
studied and understood. When the American 
civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glas- 
gow, and afterwards in Manchester, that the 
working people should be shown how to avail 
themselves of the advantages derivable from 
system, and from the combination of numbers, 
in the purchase and the cooking of their food, 
this truth was above all things borne in mind. 
The quick consequence was, that suspicion and 
reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort 
resulted in an astonishing and a complete suc- 
cess. — Uncommercial Traveller, Chap. 23. 

WORKINQMEN-The troubles of. 

Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, 
he observed a cautionary movement of her eyes 
towards the door. Stepping back, he put his 
hand upon the lock. But he had not spoken 
out of his own will and desire ; and he felt it 
in his heart a noble return for his late injurious 
treatment to be faithful to the last to those who 
had repudiated him. He stayed to finish what 
was in his mind. 

" Sir, I canna, wi' my little learning, an my 
common way, tell the genelman what will better 
aw this — though some working men o' this town 
could, above my powers — but I can tell him 
what I know will never do't. The strong hand 
will never do't. Vict'ry and triumph will never 
do't. Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat'rally 
awlus and forever right, and toother side un- 
nat'rally awlus and forever wrong, will never, 
never do't. Nor yet lettin alone will never do't. 
Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw leadin 
the like lives and aw faw'en into the like mud- 
dle, and they will be as one, and yo will be as 
anoother, wi' a black unpassable world betwixt 
yo, just as long or short a time as sitch-like 
misery can last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi' 
kindness and patience an cheery ways, that so 
draws nigh to one another in their monny trou- 
bles, and so cherishes one another in their dis- 
tresses wi' what they need themseln — like, I 
humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha 
seen in aw his travels can beat — will never do't 
till th' Sun turns t' ice. Most o' aw, ratin 'em as 
so much Power, and reg'latin 'em as if they was 
figures in a soom, or machines : wi'out loves 
and likens, wi'out memories and inclinations, 
wi'out souls to weary and souls to hope — when 
aw goes quiet, draggin on wi' 'em as if they'd 
nowt o' th' kind, and when aw goes onquiet, 
reproachin 'em for their want o' sitch humanly 
feelins in their dealins wi' yo — this will never 
do't, sir, till God's work is onmade." 

***** 

'• What," repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding 
his arms, " do you people, in a general way, 
complain of?" 

Stephen looked at him with some little irreso- 
lution for a moment, and then seemed to make 
up his mind. 

" Sir, I never were good at showin' o't, though 
I ha had'n my share in feeling o't. 'Deed we 
are in a muddle, sir. Look round town — so 
rich as 'tis — and see the numbers o' people as has 
been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an 
to card, an to piece out a livin', aw the same one 
way, somehows, twixt their cradles and their 
graves. Look how we live, an wheer we live, 
an in what numbers, an bv what chances, and 



WORKSHOP 



533 



WORLD 



wi' what sameness ; and look how the mills is 
awlus a goin, and how they never works us no 
nigher to ony dis'ant object — ceptin awlus, 
Death. Look how you considers of us, an 
writes of us, an talks of us, an goes up wi' yor 
deputations to Secretaries o' State 'bout us, and 
how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus 
wrong, and never had'n no reason in us sin ever 
we were born. Look how this ha growen an 
growen, sir, bigger an bigger, broader aa 
broader, harder an harder, fro year to year, fro 
generation unto generation. Who can look on't, 
sir, and fairly tell a man 'tis not a muddle ? " 

" Of course," said Mr. Bounderby. " Now 
perhaps you'll let the gentleman know, how you 
would set this muddle (as you're so fond of call- 
ing it) to rights." 

" I donno, sir, I canna be expecten to't, 
'Tis not me as should be looken to for that, sir. 
'Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the 
rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, 
sir, if not to do't?" 

" I'll tell you something towards it, at any 
rate," returned Mr. Bounderby. " We will 
make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges. 
We'll indict the blackguards for felony, and get 
'em shipped off to penal settlements." 

Stephen gravely shook his head. 

" Don't tell me we won't, man," said Mr. 
Bounderby, by this time blowing a hurricane, 
"because we will, I tell you ! " 

" Sir," returned Stephen, with the quiet con- 
fidence of absolute certainty, " if yo wast' tak 
a hundred Slackbridges — aw as there is, and aw 
the number ten times towd — an was t' sew 'em 
up in separate sacks, an sink 'em in the deepest 
ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to 
be, yo'd leave the muddle just wheer 'tis. Mis- 
cheevous strangers I " said Stephen, with an anx- 
ious smile ; " when ha we not heem, I am sure, 
sin ever we can call to mind, o' th' mischeevous 
strangers ! 'Tis not by them the trouble's made, 
sir. 'Tis not wi' them 't commences. I ha no 
favor for 'em — I ha no reason to favor 'em — 
but 'tis hopeless and useless to dream o' takin 
tliem fro their trade, 'stead o* takin their trade 
fro them ! Aw that's now about me in this 
room were heer afore I coom, an will be heer 
when I am gone. Put that clock aboard a ship 
an pack it off to Norfolk Island, an the time 
will go on just the same. So 'tis wi' Slackbridge 
every bit." — Hard Times, Book II., Chap. 5. 

WORKSHOP-Gabriel Varden's. 

From the workshop of the Golden Key, there 
issued forth a tinkling sound, so merry and 
good-humored, that it suggested the idea of 
some one working blithely, and made quite 
pleasant music. No man who hammered on at 
a dull monotonous duty, could have brought 
such cheerful notes from steel and iron ; none 
but a chirping, healthy, honest-hearted fellow, 
who made the best of everything, and felt kindly 
towards everybody, could have done it for an 
instant. He might have been a coppersmith, 
and still been musical. If he had sat in a jolt- 
ing wagon, full of rods of iron, it seemed as if 
he would have brought some harmony out of it, 

Tink, tink, tink — clear as a silver bell, and 
audible at every pause of the streets' harsher 
noises, as though it said, " I don't care ; nothing 
puts me out ; I am resolved to be happy," 
Women scolded, children squalled, heavy carts 



went rumbling by, horrible cries proceeded from 
the lungs of hawkers ; still it struck in again, 
no higher, no lower, no louder, no softer ; not 
thrusting itself on people's notice a bit the more 
for having been outdone by louder sounds — 
tink, tink, tink, tink, tink. 

It was a perfect embodiment of the still small 
voice, free from all cold, hoarseness, huskiness, 
or unhealthiness of any kind ; foot-passengers 
slackened their pace, and were disposed to lin- 
ger near it ; neighbors who had got up splene- 
tic that morning, felt good-humor stealing on 
them as they heard it, and by degrees became 
quite sprightly ; mothers danced their babies to 
its ringing ; still the same magical tink, tink, 
tink, came gaily from the workshop of the Gold- 
en Key, 

Who but the locksmith could have made such 
music? A gleam of sun shining through the 
unsashed window, and chequering the dark 
workshop with a broad patch of light, fell full 
upon him, as though attracted by his sunny 
heart. There he stood working at his anvil, 
his face all radiant with exercise and gladness, 
his sleeves turned up, his wig pushed off his 
shining forehead — the easiest, freest, happiest 
man in all the world. Beside him sat a sleek 
cat, purring and winking in the light, and fall- 
ing every now and then into an idle doze, as 
from excess of comfort. Toby looked on from 
a tall bench hard by ; one beaming smile, from 
his broad nut-brown face down to the slack- 
baked buckles in his shoes. The very locks 
that hung around had something jovial in their 
rust, and seemed like gouty gentlemen of hearty 
natures, disposed to joke on their infirmities. 
There was nothing surly or severe in the whole 
scene. It seemed impossible that any one of 
the innumerable keys could fit a churlish strong- 
box or a prison-door. Cellars of beer and wine, 
rooms where there were fires, books, gossip, and 
cheering laughter — these were their proper 
sphere of action. Places of distrust and cruelty, 
and restraint, they would have left quadruple- 
locked forever. — Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 41. 

WORIiD— The material and moral. 

In the material world, as I have long taught, 
nothing can be spared ; no step or atom in the 
wondrous structure could be lost, without a 
blank being made in the great universe. I 
know, now, that it is the same with good and 
evil, happiness and sorrow, in the memories of 
men. — Haunted Man, Chap. 2. 

WORIiD-The. 

The world — a conventional phrase which, be- 
ing interpreted, often signifieth all the rascals 
in it. — Nicholas Nicklcby, Chap. 3. 

WORLD-A battlefield. 

•• It's a world full of hearts," said the Doctor, 
hugging his younger daughter, and bending 
across her to hug Grace — for he couldn't separ- 
ate the sisters ; " and a serious world, with all 
its folly — even with mine, which was enough to 
have swamped the whole globe ; and it is a 
world on which the sun never rises, but it looks 
upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some 
set-off against the miseries and wickedness of 
Battle-Fields ; and it is a world we need be 
careful how we libel. Heaven forgive us, for it 
is a world of sacred ir'<?teries, and its Creator 



WORLD 



WRITING 



only knows what lies beneath the surface of His 
lightest image ! " — Battle of Life, Chap. 3. 

WORLD— Its hollowness. 

" The world is a lively place enough, in which 
we must accommodate ourselves to circum- 
stances, sail with the stream as glibly as we 
can, be content to take froth for substance, the 
surface for the depth, the counterfeit for the 
real coin. I wonder no philosopher has ever 
established that our globe itself is hollow. It 
should be, if Nature is consistent in her works." 
Barnaby Rudge, Chap. 12. 

WORLD— The opinion of the. 

Let it be remembered that most men live in 
a world of their own, and that in that limited 
circle alone are they ambitious for distinction 
and applause. Sir Mulberry's world was peo- 
pled with profligates, and he acted accordingly. 

Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and 
tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are 
in constant occurrence among us every day. It 
is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder 
and astonishment at the chief actors therein, 
setting at defiance so completely the opinion of 
the world ; but there is no greater fallacy ; it is 
precisely because they do consult the opinion of 
their own little world that such things take place 
at all, and strike the great world dumb with 
amazement. — Nicholas Nickleby, Chap. 28. 

WORLD— Toots's idea of the. 

" Oh, upon my word and honor," cried Mr. 
Toots, whose tender heart was moved by the 
Captain's unexpected distress, " this is a most 
wretched sort of affair, this world is ! Some- 
body's always dying, or going and doing some- 
thing uncomfortable in it. I'm sure I never 
should have looked forward so much, to coming 
into my property, if I had known this. I never 
saw such a world." — Dombey 6^ Son, Chap. 32. 

WRITING-Short-hand. 

I did not allow my resolution, with respect to 
the Parliamentary Debates, to cool. It was one 
of the irons I began to heat immediately, and 
one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, 
with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I 
bought an approved scheme of the noble art 
and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten 
and sixpence), and plunged into a sea of per- 
plexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the 
confines of distraction. The changes that were 
rung upon dots, which in such a position meant 
such a thing, and in such another position some- 
thing else, entirely different ; the wonderful 
vagaries that were played by circles ; the unac- 
countable consequences that resulted from marks 
like flies' legs ; the tremendous effects of a curve 
in a wrong place ; not only troubled my waking 
hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep. 
When I had groped my way, blindly, through 
these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, 
which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there 
then appeared a procession of new horrors, 
called arbitrary characters ; the most despotic 
characters I have ever known ; who insisted, for 
instance, that a thing like the beginning of a 
cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and- 
ink sky-rocket stood for disadvantageous. When 
I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found 
that they had driven everything else out of it ; 



then, beginning again, I forgot them ; while I 
was picking them up, I dropped the other frag- 
ments of the system ; in short, it was almost 
heart-breaking. 

It might have been quite heart-breaking, but 
for Dora, who was the stay and anchor of my 
tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the 
scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of diffi- 
culty, and I went on cutting them down, one 
after another, with such vigor, that in three or 
four months I was in a condition to make an 
experiment on one of our crack speakers in the 
Commons. Shall I ever forget how the crack 
speaker walked off from me before I began, and 
left my imbecile pencil staggering about the 
paper as if it were in a fit ? 

This would not do, it was quite clear. I was 
flying too high, and should never get on, so I 
resorted to Traddles for advice : who suggested 
that he should dictate speeches to me, at a pace, 
and with occasional stoppages, adapted to my 
weakness. Very grateful for this friendly aid, 
I accepted the proposal ; and night after night, 
almost every night, for a long time, we had a 
sort of private Parliament in Buckingham 
Street, after I came home from the Doctor's. 

I should like to see such a Parliament any- 
where else ! My aunt and Mr. Dick represent- 
ed the Government or the Opposition (as the 
case might be), and Traddles, with the assist- 
ance of Enfield's Speaker or a volume of par- 
liamentary orations, thundered astonishing in- 
vectives against them. Standing by the table, 
with his finger in the page to keep the place, 
and his right arm flourishing above his head, 
Traddles, as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, 
Mr. Burke, Lord Castlereagh, Viscount Sid- 
mouth, or Mr. Canning, would work himself 
into the most violent heats, and deliver the most 
withering denunciations of the profligacy and 
corruption of my aunt and Mr, Dick ; while I 
used to sit, at a little distance, with my note- 
book on my knee, fagging after him with all 
my might and main. The inconsistency and 
recklessness of Traddles were not to be exceed- 
ed by any real politician. He was for any de- 
scription of policy, in the compass of a week ; 
and nailed all sorts of colors to every denomi- 
nation of mast. My aunt, looking very like 
an immovable Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
would occasionally throw in an interruption or 
two, as " Hear ! " or " No ! " or " Oh ! " when the 
text seemed to require it — which was always a 
signal to Mr. Dick (a perfect country gentle- 
man) to follow lustily with the same cry. But 
Mr. Dick got taxed with such things in the 
course of his Parliamentary career, and was 
made responsible for such awful consequences, 
that he became uncomfortable in his mind 
sometimes. I believe he actually began to be 
afraid he really had been doing something, 
tending to the annihilation of the British con- 
stitution, and the ruin of the country. 

Often and often we pursued these debates until 
the clock pointed to midnight, and the candles 
were burning down. The result of so much good 
practice was, that by-and-bye I began to keep 
pace with Traddles pretty well, and should have 
been quite triumphant if I had had the least idea 
what my notes were about. But, as to reading 
them, after I had got them, I might as well have 
copied the Chinese inscriptions on an immense 
collection of tea-chests, or the golden characters 



WRITING 



540 



WRITER 



on all the great red and green bottles in the 
chemists' shops ! 

There was nothing for it, but to turn back 
and begin all over again. It was very hard, 
but I turned back, though with a heavy heart, 
and began laboriously and methodically to plod 
over the same tedious ground at a snail's pace : 
stopping to examine minutely every speck in 
the way, on all sides, and making the most 
desperate efforts to know these elusive charac- 
ters by sight wherever I met them. I was 
always punctual at the office ; at the Doctor's 
too ; and I really did work, as the common 
expression is, like a cart-horse. 

David Copperfield, Chap, 38. 

WRITING— The attempts of igmorance. 

Mr. and Mrs. Boffin sat, after breakfast, in 
the Bower, a prey to prosperity. Mr. Boffm's 
face denoted Care and Complication. Many 
disordered papers were before him, and he 
looked at them about as hopefully as an inno- 
cent civilian might look at a crowd of troops 
whom he was required at five minutes' notice to 
manoeuvre and review. He had been engaged 
in some attempts to make notes of these papers ; 
but being troubled (as men of his stamp often 
are) with an exceedingly distrustful and correct- 
ive thumb, that busy member had so often in- 
terposed to smear his notes, that they were 
little more legible than the various impressions 
of itself, which blurred his nose and forehead. 
It is curious to consider, in such a case as Mr. 
Boffin's, what a cheap article ink is, and how 
far it may be made to go. As a grain of musk 
will scent a drawer for many years, and still lose 
nothing appreciable of its original weight, so a 
halfpenny-worth of ink would blot Mr. Boffin 
to the roots of his hair, and the calves of his 
legs, without inscribing a line on the paper be- 
fore him, or appearing to diminish in the ink- 
stand. 

***** 

" And I tell you, my deary," said Mrs. Boffin, 
" that if you don't close with Mr. Rokesmith 
now at once, and if you ever go a muddling 
yourself again with things never meant nor 
made for you, you'll have an apoplexy — besides 
iron-moulding your linen — and you'll break my 
heart." — Our Mutual Friend, Book /., Chap. 15. 

WRITINO-Short-hand. 

I have come legally to man's estate. I have 
attained the dignity of twenty-one. But this is 
a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one. 
Let me think what I have achieved. 

I have tamed that savage stenographic mys- 
tery. I make a respectable income by it. I am 
in high repute for my accomplishment in all 
pertaining to the art, and am joined with eleven 
others in reporting the debates in Parliament 
for a Morning Newspaper. Night after night 
I record predictions that never come to pass, 
professions that are never fulfilled, explanations 
that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in 
words. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is 
always before me, like a trussed fowl ; skewered 
through and through with office-pens, and bound 
hand and foot with red tape. I am sufficiently 
behind the scenes to know the worth of politi- 
cal life. I am quite an Infidel about it, and 
shall never be converted. 

JOkuvid Copperfield, Chap. 43. 



WRITING— An ecstasy of pen and ink. 

In his epistolary communication, as in his dia- 
logues and discourses on the great question to 
which it related, Mr. Dorrit surrounded the sub- 
ject with flourishes, as writing-masters embellish 
copy-books and ciphering-books ; where the 
titles of the elementary rules of arithmetic 
diverge into swans, eagles, griffins, and other cal- 
igraphic recreations, and where the capital letters 
go out of their minds and bodies into ecstasies 
of pen and ink. — Little Dorrit, Book II., Chap. 15. 

WRITING— The efforts of Sam Weller. 

" Wery good, my dear," replied Sam. " Let 
me have nine penn'orth o' brandy and water, 
luke, and the ink-stand, will you, Miss?" 

The brandy and water, luke, and the ink- 
stand, having been carried into the little parlor, 
and the young lady having carefully flattened 
down the coals to prevent their blazing, and car- 
ried away the poker to preclude the possibility 
of the fire being stirred, without the full privity 
and concurrence of the Blue Boar being first had 
and obtained, Sam Weller sat himself down in a 
box near the stove, and pulled out the sheet of 
gilt-edged letter-paper, and the hard-nibbed pen. 
Then looking carefully at the pen to see that 
there were no hairs in it, and dusting down the 
table, so that there might be no crumbs of bread 
under the paper, Sam tucked up the cuffs of his 
coat, squared his elbows, and composed himself 
to write. 

To ladies and gentlemen who are not in the 
habit of devoting themselves practically to the 
science of penmanship, writing a letter is no very 
easy task ; it being always considered necessary 
in such cases for the writer to recline his head 
on his left arm, so as to place his eyes as nearly 
as possible on a level with the paper, while 
glancing sideways at the letters he is con- 
structing, to form with his tongue imaginary 
characters to correspond. These motions, al- 
though unquestionably of the greatest assist- 
ance to original composition, retard in some 
degree the progress of the writer ; and Sam had 
unconsciously been a full hour and a half writ- 
ing words in small text, smearing out wrong 
letters with his little finger, and putting in new 
ones, which required going over very often to 
render them visible through the old blots, when 
he was roused by the opening of the door, and 
the entrance of his parent. — Pickwick, Chap. 33. 

WRITER— A smeary. 

He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful 
bad hand. Utterly regardless of ink, he lavished 
it on eveiy undeserving object, — on his clothes, 
his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth brush, 
his umbrella. Ink was found freely on the cof- 
fee-room carpet, by No. 4 table, and two blots 
were on his restless couch. A reference to the 
document I have given entire will show that on 
the morning of the third of February, eighteen 
fifty-six, he procured his no less than fifth pen 
and paper. To whatever deplorable act of un- 
governable composition he immolated those ma- 
terials obtained from the bar, there is no doubt 
that the fatal deed was committed in bed, and 
that it left its evidences but too plainly, long 
afterwards, upon the pillow-case. 

He had put no Heading to any of his writings. 
Alas ! Was he likely to have a Heading without 
a Head, and where was his Head when he took 



WRITING 



641 



WBITi: 



such things into it ? In some cases, such as his 
Boots, he would appear to have hid the writings ; 
thereby involving his style in greater obscurity. 
But his Boots were at least pairs; — and no two of 
his writings can put in any claim to be so 
regarded. — Somebody s Luggage, Chap, i. 

WRITING. 

Rob sat down behind the desk with a most 
assiduous demeanor ; and in order that he might 
forget nothing of what had transpired, made 
notes of it on various small scraps of paper, 
with a vast expenditure of ink. There was no 
danger of these documents betraying anything, 
if accidentally lost ; for long before a word was 
dry, it became as profound a mystery to Rob, 
as if he had had no part whatever in its produc- 
tion. — Dombey ^ Sbn^ Chap. 23. 

WRITING— Dick Swiveller as a correspond- 
ent. 

** Is that a reminder, in case you should for- 
get to call ? " said Trent with a sneer. 

" Not exactly, Fred," replied the imperturba- 
ble Richard, continuing to write with a busi- 
ness-like air, " I enter in this little book the 
names of the streets that I can't go down while 
the shops are open. This dinner to-day closes 
Long Acre. I bought a pair of boots in Great 
Queen Street last week, and made that no 
thoroughfare too. There's only one avenue in 
the Strand left open now, and I shall have to 
stop up that to-night with a pair of gloves. 
The roads are closing so fast in every direction, 
that in about a month's time, unless my aunt 
sends me a remittance, I shall have to go three 
or four miles out of town to get over the way." 

" There's no fear of her failing, in the end?" 
said Trent. 

" Why, I hope not," returned Mr. Swiveller, 
•' but the average number of letters it takes to 
soften her is six, and this time we have got as 
far as eight without any effect at all. I'll write 
another to-morrow morning. I mean to blot it 
a good deal and shake some water over it out 
of the pepper-castor, to make it look penitent. 
* I'm in such a state of mind that I hardly know 
what I write ' — blot — ' if you could ace me at 
this minute shedding tears for my past miscon- 
duct ' — pepper castor — ' my hand trembles when 
I think ' — blot again — if that don't produce the 
effect, it's all over." 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 8. 

WRITING— Of Joe Gargery. 

Evidently, Biddy had taught Joe to write. 
As I lay in bed looking at him, it made me, in 
my weak state, cry again with pleasure to see 
the pride with which he set about his letter. 
My bedstead, divested of its curtains, had been 
removed, with me upon it, into the sitting-room, 
as the airiest and largest, and the carpet had 
been taken away, and the room kept always 
fresh and wholesome night and day. At my 
own writing-table, pushed into a corner and 
cumbered with little bottles, Joe now sat down 
to his great work, first choosing a pen from the 
pen-tray as if it were a chest of large tools, and 
tucking up his sleeves as if he were going to 
wield a crowbar or sledge-hammer. It was 
necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the 
table with his left elbow, and to get his 
right leg well out behind him, before he could 



begin, and when he did begin he made every 
down-stroke so slowly that it might have been 
six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could 
hear his pen spluttering extensively. He had a 
curious idea that the inkstand was on the side 
of him where it was not, and constantly dipped 
his pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied 
with the result. Occasionally, he was tripped 
up by some orthographical stumbling-block, but 
on the whole he got on very well indeed, and 
when he had signed his name, and had removed 
a finishing blot from the paper to the crown of 
his head with his two forefingers, he got up and 
hovered about the table, trying the effect of his 
performance from various points of view as it 
lay there, with unbounded satisfaction. 

Great Expectations, Chap. 57. 

WRITING— Preparations for. 

Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of laughter 
at the idea of her own importance and dignity, 
brooded over- the whole table with her two 
elbows, like a spread eagle, and reposed her 
head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the 
formation of certain cabalistic characters, which 
required a deal of ink, and imaginaiy counter- 
parts whereof she executed at the same time 
with her tongue. Having once tasted ink, she 
became thirsty in that regard, as tame tigers are 
said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and 
wanted to sign everything, and put her name in 
all kinds of places. — Battle of Life, Chap. i. 

WRITING— Of a beginner. 

Writing was a trying business to Charley, who 
seemed to have no natural power over a pen, 
but in whose hand every pen appeared to be- 
come perversely animated, and to go wrong and 
crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into 
corners, like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd, 
to see what old letters Charley's young hand had 
made ; they, so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and 
tottering ; it, so plump and round. Yet Charley 
was uncommonly expert at other things, and 
had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched. 

" Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy 
of the letter O in which it was represented as 
square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed 
in all kinds of ways, " we are improving." 

Bleak House, Chap. 31. 

WRITING-DESK-A spattered. 

He comes out of his dull room — where he has 
inherited the deal wilderness of desk bespatter- 
ed with a rain of ink. — Bleak House, Chap. 20. 

WRITINGh-A letter. 

The writing looked like a skein of thread in 
a tangle, and the note was ingeniously folded 
into a perfect square, with the direction squeez- 
ed up into the right-hand corner, as if it were 
ashamed of itself. The back of the epistle was 
pleasingly ornamented with a large red wafer, 
which, with the addition of divers ink-stains, 
bore a marvellous resemblance to a black beetle 
trodden upon. — Taks, Chap. i. 

WRITE -Kit learning: to. 

To relate how it was a long time before his 
modesty could be so far prevailed upon as to 
admit of his sitting down in the parlor, in the 
presence of an unknown gentleman — how, when 
he did sit down, he tucked up his sleeves and 



WBITERS 



648 



YEAH 



squared his elbows, and put his face close to the 
copy-book, and squinted horribly at the lines — 
how, from the very first moment of having the 
pen in his hand, he began to wallow in blots, 
and to daub himself with ink up to the very 
roots of his hair — ^how, if he did by accident 
form a letter properly, he immediately smeared 
it out again with his arm in his preparations to 
make another — how, at every fresh mistake, 
there was a fresh burst of merriment from the 
child and a louder and not less hearty laugh 
from poor Kit himself — and how there was all 
the way through, notwithstanding, a gentle wish 
on her part to teach, and an anxious desire on 
his to learn — to relate all these particulars 
would no doubt occupy more space and time 
than they deserve. 

Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 3. 

WRITERS -Public. 

Flaming placards are rife on all the dead 
walls in the borough, public-houses hang out 
banners, hackney-cabs burst into full-grown 
flowers of type, and everybody is, or should be, 
in a paroxysm of anxiety. 

At these momentous crises of the national 
fate, we are much assisted in our deliberations 
by two eminent volunteers ; one of whom sub- 
scribes himself A Fellow Parishioner, the other, 
A Rate-Payer. Who they are, or what they 
are, or where they are, nobody knows ; but 
whatever one asserts, the other contradicts. 
They are both voluminous writers, inditing 
more epistles than Lord Chesterfield in a single 
week ; and the greater part of their feelings are 
too big for utterance in anything less than capi- 
tal letters. They require the additional aid of 
whole rows of notes of admiration, like balloons, 
to point their generous indignation : and they 
sometimes communicate a crushing severity to 
stars. — Our Vestry. Reprinted Pieces. 



YAWN— An xinfinislied. 

Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his 
wineglass, puts down that screen and calls up a 
look of interest. It is a little impaired in its 
expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still 
to dispose of, with watering eyes. 

Edwin Drood, Chap. 4. 

YEAR— New. 

Next to Christmas-day, the most pleasant 
annual epoch in existence is the advent of the 
New Year. There are a lachrymose set of people 
who usher in the New Year with watching and 
fasting, as if they were bound to attend as chief 
mourners at the obsequies of the old one. Now, 
we cannot but think it a great deal more com- 
plimentary, both to the old year that has rolled 
away, and to the New Year that is just begin- 
ning to dawn upon us, to see the old fellow out, 
and the new one in, with gaiety and glee. 

There must have been some few occurrences 
In the past year to which we can look back with 



a smile of cheerful recollection, if not with a 
feeling of heartfelt thankfulness. And we are 1 
bound by every rule of justice and equity to give I 
the New Year credit for being a good one, until 
he proves himself unworthy the confidence we 
repose in him. 

This is our view of the matter ; and enter- 
taining it, notwithstanding our respect for the 
old year, one of the few remaining moments of 
whose existence passes away with every word 
we write, here we are, seated by our fireside on 
this last night of the old year, one thousand 
eight hundred and thirty-six, penning this arti- 
cle with as jovial a face as if nothing extra- 
ordinary had happened, or was about to hap- 
pen, to disturb our good humor. 

Characters {Sketches), Chap. 3. 

YEARS— The death of. 

" Hard weather indeed," returned his wife, 
shaking her head. 

" Years," said Mr. Tugby, " are like Chris- 
tians in that respect. Some of 'em die hard ; 
some of 'em die easy. This one hasn't many 
days to run, and is making a fight for it. I 
like him all the better." 

Chimes, ^th Quarter. 

YEAR— The old and new. 

It was a hard frost, that day. The air was 
bracing, crisp, and clear. The wintry sun, 
though powerless for warmth, looked brightly 
down upon the ice it was too weak to melt, and 
set a radiant glory there. At other times, Trotty 
might have learned a poor man's lesson from the 
wintry sun ; but, he was past that, now. 

The Year was Old, that day. The patient 
Year had lived through the reproaches and mis- 
uses of its slanderers, and faithfully performed 
its work. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. It 
had labored through the destined round, and 
now laid down its weary head to die. Shut out 
from hope, high impulse, active happiness, it- 
self, but messenger of many joys to others, it 
made appeal in its decline to have its toiling 
days and patient hours remembered, and to die 
in peace. Trotty might have read a poor man's 
allegory in the fading year ; but he was past 
that, now. 

And only he ? Or has the like appeal been 
ever made, by seventy years at once upon an 
English laborer's head, and made in vain ? 

The streets were full of motion, and the shops 
were decked out gaily. The New Year, like an 
Infant Heir to the whole world, was waited for, 
with welcomes, presents, and rejoicings. There 
were books and toys for the New Year, glitter- 
ing trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the 
New Year, schemes of fortune for the New 
Year ; new inventions to beguile it. Its life 
was parcelled out in almanacks and pocket- 
books ; the coming of its moons, and stars, and 
tides, was known beforehand to the moment ; 
all the workings of its seasons in their days and 
nights, were calculated with as much precision 
as Mr. Filer could work sums in men and 
women. 

The New Year, the New Year. Everywhere 
the New Year ! The Old Year was already 
looked upon as dead ; and its effects were sell- 
ing cheap, like some drowned mariner's aboard- 
ship. Its patterns were Last Year's, and going 
at a sacrifice, before its breath was gone. Its 



YES 



643 



YOUTH 



treasures were mere dirt, beside the riches of 
its unborn successor ! — Chimes, 'zd Quaker. 

YES— Its expression. 

I was much impressed by the extremely com- 
fortable and satisfied manner in which Mr. 
Waterbrook delivered himself of this little 
word " Yes," every now and then. There was 
wonderful expression in it. It completely con- 
veyed the idea of a man who had been born, 
not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling 
ladder, and had gone on mounting all the 
heights of life one after another, until now he 
looked from the top of the fortifications, with 
the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the 
people down in the trenches. 

David Copper fields Chap. 25. 

YOUTH— Depraved. 

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, 
ragged, scowling, wolfish ; but prostrate, too, in 
their humility. Where graceful youth should 
have filled their features out, and touched them 
with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, 
like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, 
and pulled them into shreds. Where angels 
might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and 
glared out menacing. No change, no degrada- 
tion, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, 
through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, 
has monsters half so horrible and dread. 

Christmas Carol, Stave 3. 

YOUTH- The depravity of. 

" This," said the Phantom, pointing to the 
boy, " is the last, completest illustration of a hu- 
man creature, utterly bereft of such remembran- 
ces as you have yielded up. No softening mem- 
ory of sorrow, wrong, or trouble enters here, 
because this wretched mortal from his birth has 
been abandoned to a worse condition than the 
beasts, and has, within his knowledge, no one 
contrast, no humanizing touch, to make a grain 
of such a memory spring up in his hardened 
breast. All within this desolate creature is bar- 
ren wilderness. All within the man bereft of 



what you have resigned, is the same barren wil- 
derness. Woe to such a man ! Woe, tenfold, 
to the nation that shall count its monsters such 
as this, lying here by hundreds and by thou- 
sands ! " 

Redlaw shrunk, appalled, from what he 
heard. 

" There is not," said the Phantom, " one of 
these — not one — but sows a harvest that man- 
kind MUST reap. From every seed of evil in 
this boy, a field of ruin is grown that shall be 
gathered in and garnered up, and sown again in 
many places in the world, until regions are over- 
spread with wickedness enough to raise the wa- 
ters of another Deluge. Open and unpunished 
murder in a city's streets would be less guilty 
in its daily toleration, than one such spectacle 
as this." 

***** 

" There is not a father," said the Phantom, 
" by whose side in his daily or his nightly walk, 
these creatures pass ; there is not a mother 
among all the ranks of loving mothers in this 
land ; there is no one risen from the state of 
childhood, but shall be responsible in his or her 
degree for this enormity. There is not a coun- 
try throughout the earth on which it would not 
bring a curse. There is no religion upon earth 
that it would not deny ; there is no people upon 
earth it would not put to shame." 

The chemist clasped his hands, and looked, 
with trembling fear and pity, from the sleeping 
boy to the Phantom, standing above him with 
its finger pointing down. 

" Behold, I say," pursued the Spectre, " the 
perfect type of what it was your choice to be. 
Your influence is powerless here, because from 
this child's bosom you can banish nothing. His 
thoughts have been in ' terrible companionship ' 
with yours, because you have gone down to his 
unnatural level. He is the growth of man's in- 
difference ; you are the growth of man's pre- 
sumption. The beneficent design of heaven is, 
in each case, overthrown, and from the twopole.s 
of the immaterial world you come together." 
Haunted Man, Chap. 3. 



INDEX. 



Abbey— Nell in the old, 6. 
Abilitt — Misdirected, 5. 
Absence of Mind, 300. 
ACTOB— (^ee Drama), 157. 

Feeling a part, 7. 

His reading of Hamlet, 6. 

His expressions uf consciously 
imitated, 178. 

The dying, 6. 

For the starved business, 
283. 
ACTOBS-^A gathering of, 7. 
Acquaintance— The art of extend- 
ing, 7. 

A charity to Mr. Toots, 7. 
Adaptabelity, 7. 
Addresses — Public, 7. 
Adjectives— Bark's use of pro- 
fane, 7. 
Admtbeb— Quale as an indiscrimi- 
nate, 8. 
Adornment- Of a home, 220, 224. 
Adventubous People— (5ee Adapta- 
bility), 7. 
Advebtising— Sawyer's mode of, 
358. 

As a means of revenge, 8. 

A building "billed," 8. 

Show-biUs, 9. 
Advertisement— A walking, 9. 
Advertisements- Alphabetical an- 
swers to, 9. 

Peculiarities of, 8. 
AuvicE— Of Mrs. Bagnet, on con- 
duct, 9. 

Of Mr. Micawber, on procras- 
tination and money, 9. 

Pickwick's, on love-making, 
278. 

Of Joe, on lies, 270. 

Of Wemmick, on portable pro- 
perty, 200. 

Of Toodle, 225. 

As to boy, 52. 
• Of Squeers, on appetites, 22. 

To clergymen, 109. 

To the melancholy, 272. 

On children (See Cuttle), 93. 

Of Mrs. Crupp, on love, 130. 

Of Bucket, 249. 
Affection — For home, 222. 

Home the place of, 224. 

Unrequited, 275. 

(See Love). 

The expression of, 9. 

The subtlety of, 9. 

Of the idiot, 10. 
I Affections — Wounded, 10. 

The natural, 10. 

Of childhood, 10. 
Affectation and Keserve, 397. 

Of innocence, 249. 
Afflictions — Their power, 218. 
Affliction— The agony of, 10. 

Assuaged by memory, 10. 

Comfort in, 11. 
Affront— Mr. Pickwick's, 11. 
AoB — A yo»ithf\il old, 11. 

The dutios of old, 11. 

Revered by the poor, 11. 

The influeuce of dress on, 159. 
Ages— Like drops in the ocean, 30. 
Aggravation— Blood, liquid, 49. 
Agnes, 294. 

The true woman, 532. 

Influence of, 534. 

Grave of, 212. 



AiiABM- bell— Voice of the, 44. 
Alibi— The elder Weller's idea of 

an, 11. 
Allen— Ben, and Bob Sawyer, 61. 
Alphabet— Of the stars, 453. 

Like a bramble bush, 170. 

Joe and Pip's study of the, 170. 

Learning the, 11. 

Reminiscences of its study, 12. 
Alps— Among the, 12. 

Of testimony (See Ancestry), 
16. 
Amateur Artist, 24. 
AmensI— Like Macbeth' s (See 

Church), 103. 
America- Liberty in, 269. 

Justice in, 254. 

A provincialism of, 197. 

Canal boat in, 56. 
Americans— (^ee Chollop), 64. 

Their characteristics, 12. 

Their devotion to dollars, 13. 
American Eagle— The, 13. 

Flag, 197. 

Habits — Salivatory phenom- 
ena, 13. 

In Washington, 13. 

Publicists in, 14. 

Women, fashionable, 14. 

The social observances in, 14. 

Mark Tapley's opinion of, 15. 

Landlord, 257. 

Dinner, an, 147. 

Magistrate, an, 283. 

Congressman, 268. 

Transcendentalists, 486. 

Universities, 495. 

Trees, 491. 

Habits, 481, 482. 

Religion and lectures, 395. 

Shakers, 434. 

Speculator, 451. 

Reception, 392. 

Press, 372. 

Prison, 376. 

Railroad journey, 389, 390. 

Steamboat, 453. 
Amusement— The philosophy of (See 
"Circus "), 104. 

(See New York), 331. 
Anatomy— "Venus on, 15. 
Anatomical Subject — Wegg as 

an, 15. 
Ancestors— Remote and doubtfal, 

16. 
Ancestry— A satire on the pride 
of, 15. 

Its personal importance, 16. 
Ancient Bank, 35. 
Angels — Communion with the (See 
Dead), 134. 

(See Flowers, etc.), 197. 
Angels' Eyes— stars, 453. 
Anger, 300. 

(See Rage), 386. 
Animals, 299. 

(See Dogs, Donkeys, Cats, 
etc.), 155, 166. 

Their weather Instincts, 16. 
Anniversary, 294. 
Anniversaries— Of ghosts, 209. 
Anno Domini, 17. 
Announcement— Of a baby, 32. 
Antiquarian Dihcovkry, 360. 

Controversy, 361. 
Apartment— A spacious, 18. 

A small. 18. 

Of Dick SwiveUer, 18. 

An ancient, 18. 



Apabtment— A dirty, 19. 

Dusty, 19. 
Apartment— Mark Tapley's idea of 
ajoUy, 19. 

And gloomy furniture, 19. 

A cosy, 19. 

Its grandeur in decay, 19. 

A gloomy (See dining-room^, 
147. 

(See Library), 269. 

And furniture, 19. 

The hangings of an, 20. 

The ghostly air of an, 20. 

A mouldy, 20. 

To let— its advantages, 20. 

A snug, 20. 

Of a suicide, 21. 

Associations of empty, 21. 

The Growlery of Jarndyce, 21. 

Mr. Fips' office, 21. 

A model bedroom, 21. 

A solitary, 22. 

The loneliness of Law Inns. 
22. 

(See Inn), 249. 

A grim, 17. 

An old and abandoned, 18. 

An old (See Furniture), 204. 
Apartments— Of Mr. Tartar, 17. 
Appearance- Personal (^ee Expres- 
sion — Face — Features- 
Characters — Eyes — Hair, 
etc.). 
Appetite— and love, 276. 

(See Favor), 191. 

The advice of Squeers, 22. 
Apology — For drunkenness (See 

Swiveller), 460. 
Apprenticeship- Of Oliver Twist, 

22. 
Apron— Of Ruth, 237. 
Architect— His designs, 22. 
Architecture— Monotony in, 234. 
Argument— "A gift of nature," 22. 
Aristocracy — A sign of, 23. 

Of blood, 49. 
Aristocrat— Monseigneur, the, 71. 
Aristocratic Privilege— Gout, an, 

210. 
Arithmetio, 23. 

Windy, 72. 
Aroma, 23. 
Art— Of carving, 69. 

Miss La Creevy's dlfflcultiet 
of, 23. 

Family pictures, 23. 

A top-heavy portrait, 23. 

Of the butcher, 55. 

Of letter -writing (See Yalea* 
tine), 496. 

Italian pictures. 24. 

Family pictures. 24. 

Pictures in Italian Churches, 
24. 
Art and Nature— A criticism, 23. 
Artist— (.S'^c Art). 23. 

An Amateur. 24. 
Ashes— Of a Home, 25. 
kssi£.TL\Tt—(Sef Face, a frosty), 182. 

(See Austerity). 27. 

The expression of. 26. 
Association — The influ»MU'c of, 25. 
Associations— Of evening. 173. 

Of cMiriMtnma, '.)5. 

Of Humlay bells, 43. 

Of a battle-field. 38. 

Of childhood. 91. 

Of holidays. 219. 
Asthma— Of Mr. Omer, S6. 



ASTHMA 


546 


BOYTHORN 


Asthma— The want of breath, 26. 


Banquet- A fashionable, 149, 150. 


BmD— The raven of Barnaby Budge, 


Asylum— A lunatic, 281. 


Bantam— Angelo Cyrus, 61. 


48. 


Attachment— (-See Aflection), 9. 


Bab-room— The Six JoUy Fellowship 


BntTH— Of a baby, 31, 49. 


Attachsient— Personal, Lowten's 


Porters. 36. 


Birthday- Mrs. Bagnet's, 148. 


opinion of, 200. 


The May-pole, 36. 


"BiTZEE," 62. 


Auction Sale— Of Dombey's furni- 


A mob in John Willet's, 36. 


Blackpool — Stephen, descriptieo 


ture, 25. 


Bakgain— Life a (Gradgrind), 270. 


of, 184. 


August— Nature in, 26. 


Barkis— His dress, 158. 


In soUtude, 449. 


Scenery in, 468. 


" Barkis is Willin'," 36. 


Lectures Bounderby, 537. 


Aunt— (-See Mr. F.'s), 83. 


Baekis — "It's true as taxes is," 37. 


Life a muddle to, 271. 


Austerity— In religion, 27, 94, 395. 


Death of, 37. 


The law a muddle to, 261. 


Of Mr. Murdstone, 71. 


Baek— His adjectives, 7. 


The death of, 137. 


Of Mrs. Cleunam, 25. 


Baenaby Eudge— In the country, 


Blacksmith— (iSee Evening), 174. 


Of Mrs. General, 60. 


119. 


Bleak House— Description of, 234. 


Of Dombey, 27, 493. 


Babnaby's Dream, 313. 


Blessing — Mrs. Cruncher's, 211. 


Its chilling influence, 26. 


Barnacle — A buttoned-up man, 56. 


ChUdren, as a, 91. 


In politeness, 27. 


Barnacles— For office, 341, 342, 343. 


Blimber— The school of Dr., 417. 


The selfishness of, 27. 


Bashfulness— Of Mr. Toots, 37. 


The reading of Dr., 392. 


Its influence on youth, 27. 


Battle-field— An old, 38. 


Cornelia, 418. 


Australia— Micawber ofl" for, 303. 


The world a, 538. 


Mrs., dress of, 158. 


AUTHOE — His loss of imaginary 


Bay— (See City ; the approach to New 


Doctor, 62. 


friends, 27. 


York), 105. 


Blind— The faces of the, 49. 


Mr. Dick, the mad, 27. 


Beadle— (/See Officials), 342. 


Blindness— Degrees of, 48. 


Mad— Mr. Dick's difi"usion of 


Beard, 312. 


Blockhead— (/See Drummle), 66. 


facts. 28. 


Beauty— A grinning skull beneath, 


Blood vs. Liquid Aggravation, 49, 


A conceited, 116. 


39. 


The Aristocracy of, 49. 


Pott's method of work, 173. 


(See Woman), 532. 


Blush— A, 49. 


ACTHOKEss — Mrs. Hominy, an 


Beau — A superannuated, 63. 


Plushes, 181. 


American, 28. 


Bed — "An out-an-outer," 39. 


Bluster, 48. 


Autumn— Sunset in, 174. 


Bedroom- Pickwick in the wrong. 


Bluntness vs. Sincerity, 48. 


At Chesney Wold, 235. 


39. 


Boarding-house Keepers — An« 


Scenery, 28. 


A model (/S'ee apartment), 21. 


swers to advertisement, 9. 


Wind at twilight, 29. 


Bedstead— A despotic monster, 41. 


Boaeding-house— Mrs. Todgers' 49, 


Nature in, 29. 


Bedsteads — The characteristics of, 


Boarding-house Keeper— Mrs.Tod^ 


The voices of, 29. 


41. 


gers, 50. 


AVABICE— The miser, 29. 


Beef and Mutton— Nothing solar 


(See BiUickin), 239. 


Fledgeby, the young mi- 


about them, 167. 


Trials of a, 213. 


ser, 30. 


Bees— Models of industry, 41. 


Bob Cratchit's Christmas Dinneb, 


And cvmning, 30. 


Their example a humbug, 41. 


98. 


And heartlessness, 30. 


Beggars— In Italian churches, 41. 


Bob Sawyer's Opinion, 298. 


Awake— Lying, 30, 


Italian, 42. 


Body— "A dem'd, moist, unpleas* 


Awe, 30. 


In the name of philanthropy, 


ant," 287. 




356. 


Boffin— Mr. and Mrs., 188, 352. 


B. 


Of society, 42. 


Bohemians— The gypsies of gentil- 




Begging-Letter Writers, 43. 


ity, 50. 


Baby-A sick, 93. 


Bells — Associations of Sunday, 43. 


Boisterousness— Of Boythom, 284. 


Its martyrdom, 30. 


Grown worldly, 44. 


Books, 291. 


Description of a, 31. 


The voice of alarm, 44. 


School, 421. 


His welcome of pins, 31. 


Vibrations of the, 44. 


The readers of, 50. 


Talk, 31. 


Church, the, 45. 


Of reference, 50. 


The birth of a, 31. 


At midnight, 45. 


The lost, of earth, 50. 


Cutting teeth, 31. 


The last stroke of the year, 45. 


Book-keeper— Of morals (See Good 


A patient, 32. 


The Chimes, 45. 


and Evil), 210. 


Announcement of a, 32. 


The fairies of the, 45. 


Book-keeping— Moral, 243. 


Dot's, 32. 


Bella Wilfer— (^-ee Needlework), 


Book-Keepers — and Old Ledgerg, 


A Moloch of a, 32. 


328. 


60. 


Bachelor.s— In society, 33. 


Benediction— An interrupted, 209. 


Boldness, 50. 


Crusty, 33. 


Benevolence— Of the poor, 87. 


Boots— Tight; and love, 276. 


A miserable creature, 33. 


" Its expression, 178. 


Tight, 50. 


Major Bagstock, 33. 


King Lear an exemplification 


Irreparable, 50. 


Bachelor— A bad habit to be an old, 


of, 46. 


(.See Old Clothes), 344, 


216. 


Bereavement— (^ee Affliction), 10. 


At the inn, 511. 


(See Sparsit), 450. 


Berth— In a canal boat, 56. 


Pickwick's gaiters, 360. 1 


(,S'ee Diirdles), 66. 


Betty Higden— Her devotion, 88. 


Bores, 51. 


Mr. Minns, the, 70. 


Betsey Prig — And Sairey Gamp, 


Bore— A practical, 51. 


(See Tottle), 78. 


410. 


" Born Again "—Mrs. Weller, 612. 


Bad Humor— And religion, 395. 


Betsey Trotwood— Her impertur- 


Botanical Blotches — (See Cup- 


Bagnet, Mr.— Description of, 61. 


bability, 181. 


board), 130. 


Mrs., 534, 535. 


Her opinions (See Expression 


Botany-Bay Ease, 145. 


Her advice, on conduct, 9. 


of Dress), 178. 


Bottles, 51. 


Birth-day dinner of Mrs., 148. 


And Mrs. Crupp, 46. 


Journey of a, 529. 


Bagstock— Major, his features, 181. 


And Uriah Heep, 46. 


Bounderby— Mr., 62. 


As a bachelor, 33. 


" Janet, Donkeys I " 46. 


His dress, 158. 


At dinner, 147. 


Bible— The, 47. 


Josiah, his education, 169 


His laughter, 259. 


Bible Studies— Of Rob the Grind- 


A local magnate, 283. 


His opinion of stamina, 136. 


er, 167. 


And ChUders, 246. 


As a traveller, 489. 


Bill— A, 47. 


The household of (See- Spar- 


The sayings of Major, 34. 


Bills — A house covered with adver- 


sit), 450. 


Bailey— An Old, 53. 


tising, 8. 


Bower, 51. 


Bailey— His whiskers, 523. 


(See Advertising), 9. 


Boy— Advice as to his lodgings, 52. 


Balconies— An ItaUan street, 34. 


Bill— Weeping on a wet wall, 232. 


The Spartan. 52. 


Balloonist— A, 34. 


Bill of Fare (.See Eating), 166. 


At Mugby, 52. 


Ball— A fancy dress, 34. 


" Biler"— The vagrant boy, 52. 


A street, 52. 


Spangles by daylight, 34. 


BiLLiCKiN— Mrs., the housekeeper, 


A vagrant, 52. 


A fashionable, 34. 


239. 


A depraved, 52. 


"Balmy"— Dick S\viveller'8, 444. 


Bipeds and Quadrupeds, 47. 


" Jo" the outcast, 52. 


Banker— Mr. Lowry, tbe, 70. 


Bird- Of Tim Linkinwater (See City 


Baileyan"old,"53. 


Bank— An old-fashioned, 35. 


Square), 107. 


David Copperfield's servanli 


Clerks— (,S(;e House), 232. 


Birds— The unhappiness of caged. 


238. 


Officials 1 Their individual- 


47. 


(See " Fat Boy"), 190, 191. 


ity, 35. 


The traits of, 47. 


Discipline in church, 396. 


Bankruptcy, 86. 


(See "Christmas at Sea"), 97. 


His reading, 391. 


The world's idea of, 36. 


Birds and Angels— Jenny Wren (See 


His fight, 193. 


A normal condition, 144. 


Flowers, etc.), 197. 


His toilette, 482. 


•Court of, 121. 


Bird-cage- Heart like a, 219. 


Boythoen— Mr.,62. 






BOYTHORN 


547 


CHRISTMAS 


BoTTHORN— HiB Opinion of Courts, 


Cat— Carker like a, 63, 192. 


Chess— The law a game of, 260. 


128. 


Mrs. Pipchin and Paul, 59. 


Chesney Wold— Autumn at, 235. 


His opinion of Corporations, 


Cats and Dogs— (^See Dogs), 155. 


Animals at, 16. 


etc., 118. 


Catacombs of Rome— The graves of 


Chesterfield— As a man of th« 


Mr., his laughter, 259. 


martyrs, 59. 


world, 88. 


A vigorous manhood, 284. 


"Catechism" — "Overhaul the" 


Chevy Slyme, 74. 


"Boz" — The original, 54. 


(See Walk), 504. 


Chick, 294. 


Bbass— Sally, 83. 


Cathedral— (/S-ee Rome), 407. 


Chickenstalker— Mr. and Mrs. at 


Sampson, 62. 


At sunset, 472. 


home, 221. 


Sampson {See Compliments), 


Cause and Effect — In life, 272. 


Cmr.D — A matured, 88. 


115. 


Cellars— And old ledgers, 60. 


Sickness of Johnny Harmon, 


His opinion of hearts, 219. 


Centuries— The awe of contempla- 


88. 


His office, 264. 


tion, 30. 


Death of Johnny Harmon, 89. 


Sally (See Swiveller), 460. 


Ceremony— A frosty, 60. 


A fashionable, 90. 


Bbead and Butteb— Eating, 166, 54. 


Chadband— Rev. Mr., and Jo, 109. 


Of a female philanthropist, 90. 


Bkeath — Asthma, the want, 25, 55, 


Chair — Tom Smart's vision, 60. 


And father— a contrast, 90. 


Bbeakfast— Conversation at, 205. 


" Chaeley ' '—{See Orphans), 350. 


Grave of a, 212. 


Brewers and Bakers, 207. 


The writing of, 541. 


(See Baby), 30. 


Broadway Pig, 362. 


Chambebmaid, 87. 


Its idea of an austere father, 


Broker— Pancks' opinion of a, 54. 


Chance eevelations op thought, 


191. 


In second-hand furniture, 54. 


218. 


Its first experience in church. 


Broker's Shop, 54. 


Chancery— The Court of, 126, 127. 


102. 


Browdie— John, the laughter of,259. 


Changes of Ttme, 481. 


O^-TiDHOOD — Of Florence, 209. 


Bruises— Of Mr. Squeers, 55. 


Change— The results of, 87. 


Its affection, 10. 


Bucket— The detective, 146. 


Characters— General description 


The power of observation 


Mr., the advice of, 249. 


of, 80. 


in, 90. 


Buds— "Children of the flowers," 92. 


A haunted man, 80. 


The fortitude of, 90. 


Bully— Of humility, 62. 


A famUy party at Pecksnifl'r, 


The early experience of, 91. 


Bumble— His opinion of juries, 254. 


81. 


In a city, 91. 


" The law's a bachelor," 261. 


Miscellaneous, 81. 


Sad remembrances of, 91. 


BxTNSBY — Capt., 62, 295. 


Female, 82. 


The dreams of, 91. 


{See Features), 192. 


(See Coachman), 113. 


Neglected, 91. 


Burden— Of cares, 59. 


(See Cabs and Drivers), 56. 


CHiLDrsHNESs — A mlsnomcr, 91. 


Business Manager— Capt. Cuttle as 


(See Dinner, fashionable), 149. 


Children— The blessing of, 91. 


a, 55. 


(5'ecBoy), 52. 


Injustice to, 91. 


Mr. Carker, the, 55. 


See Landlord), 256. 


Keeping and losing, 92. 


Business — The motto of Pancks, 55. 


(See Gentility, shabby), 207. 


A lawyer's view of, 92. 


Attachment to {See Horses 


(See Inventor), 253. 


The sympathy of, 92. 


and Dogs), 228. 


(See Authoress), 28. 


At church, 92. 


The routine of, 216, 


(See Court), 120. 


At Christmas, 97. 


(See Contentment), 117. 


(See Face, a frosty), 182. 


Of nature, 92. 


Butcher— Artistically considered, 


(See Betsey Trotwood), 46. 


Neglected, their footprints, 


55. 


(See Facts), 186. 


92. 


Buttoned-up Men— Their impor- 


(See Mrs. Rouncewell), 230. 


Who are doted upon, 92. 


tance, 56. 


(See Factory-town), 184. 


Their legs calendars of dis- 


Buttons— Of Sloppy, 74. 


(See Face of a proud, etc.), 182. 


tress, 93. 


(See Dress of Sloppy), 159. 


(See Eyes, inexpressive), 178. 


The love of, 93. 


Butler— A stately (^ee Dinner), 151. 


(See Carker, Jr.), 241. 


In the hospital, 93. 


BuZFUZ— Serjeant, 122, 125. 


(See Silas Wegg), 239, 240. 


Capt. Cuttle's advice, 93. 




(See Mantalini), 286. 


Their martyrdom, 93. 


C. 


See Admirer— Quale), 8. 


The gauntlet of their diseases. 




(^ee "Actors, a gathering 


93. 


Cabin— (»See Canal boat), 56. 


of"), 7. 


In love, 93. 


Cabs and Drtvebs — Description of. 


(See Ball), 34. 


The death of, 144. 


56. 


(See Court, dencnption of Doc- 


A hater of (Tackleton), 94. 


Calais — Approach to, 432. 


tors' Commons), 120. 


(See Orphans), 350. 


Callebs— Cards like theatrical 


At a public dinner, 151. 


(See Spiritual growth), 452. 


snow, 58. 


And dress (See Dress), 157. 


Their education (Pipchin 's 


Calton— Mr., 63. 


{^ee Sally Brasq), 264, 


system), 167. 


Canal Boat— An American, 56. 


(See Americans in Washing- 


On Simday, 470. 


Candle — Lighting a, 57. 


ton), 13. 


At seaside, 431. 


(See Chambermaid), 87. 


(See Serjeant Snubbing. '^f6 


Their education, 167. 


Candidates — For office, 171. 


And characterisfcics {See Capt. 


The Pardiggle, 356. 


Captain Cuttle— His home, 223. 


Cuttle), 57. 


Of Toodle, 225. 


Dress of, 157. 


And characteristicp, 6A. 


(See Nurse), 337, 338, 339. 


Despondency of, 227. 


Character- SimpUcity of Capt. 


(See Race-course), 385. 


Simplicity of, 61. 


Cuttle, 61. 


CnnxiP^Dr., His style of shaking 


As a business man, 55. 


Purity of Tom Pin^b, <?»? 


hands, 217. 


His love of Walter, 134. 


A vigorous (See Laugvi oi' \)oy- 


Description of, 298. 


The expression of, 181, 182. 


thorn), 259. 


CmMES-(See BeUs), 45. 


His habit of thought, 215. 


Illustrated by home B^irround- 


Chimneys— (^ce "City Neighbor- 
hood), 107. 


On shipwreck, 437. 


ings, 223. 


His reverence for science, 57. 


Indecision of, 246. 


Chimney-sweepinq — (Set Appren- 


His observations and charac- 


Characteristics— Of America 1. 1, vi. 


ticeship). 22. 


teristics, 57. 


Personal, 192. 


Chin— A desert of, 62. 


And Mrs. MacStinger, 58. 


Charity— Acquaintance, a i ha. Ivy 


A double. 94. 


And Mr. Toots, 58. 


to. 7. 


Chirrup— Mrs. , as a carver, 69. 


The reading of, 392. 


Induced by Christmas f v* •lo- 


Mr. and Mrs., 274. 
Chiveby. John- Description of, 64 


Oapxtal and Talent, 305. 


tions, 97. 


Cards— A game for love, 58. 


Of the poor, 87. 


His heart, 218. 


Of callers, 58. 


Held by main force 87. 


Disappointment of, 280. 


Cares— Second-hand, 59. 


Speculators in, 87. 


In love, 278. 
Reticence of, 399. 
CW..LLOP-Mr.. 64. 


The oppressiveness of, 59. 


The romance of, 87. 


Carker, Jr.— Description of, 241. 


Charitable Missions, 310. 


8r.— Description of, 63. 


Cheek— An unsympathetic, 87. 


Cj'okinq Cough. 118. 
».u.ubTiAN— A conventional, 94. 


The business manager, 55, 192. 


Cheer— An English, 88. 


(See Content), 117. 


Cheerfulnkss— Kit's religion, 88. 


A profesfllng. 94. 


The hvpocrite, 243. 


Kit's philosophy of, 88. 


A rigid. 94. 


Flight of, 308. 


Cheerless Apartment, 269. 


• • A boiling-over old." 64. 


Carpet-Shaking — The pleasures of, 
59. 


Cheehyule Bkothebs, 63. 

CHKMIST-ThO, 88. 


Ch- 'imANiTY- Austere 27. 
Chkis'vmas— Associatioua of. M 


Carvino — The art of, 69. 


Cherub, 295. 


D.iy 96. 


Caste, 446. 


Up aloft (See saUor), 408. 


Ith 1^8r onr 9*. 


Castor-Oil- A conversational ape- 


The conventional (See WU- 


Srr* on i vv<»»'«»«» ''** i*^ 


rient, 13. 


fer), 79. 


Scwiir* >•^ 



CHRISTMAS 


548 


CRISP ABKTiE 


Chbtstmas — A charitable time, 97. 


Clergymen- (,5^6 Stiggins), 75. 


Conversation— Castor Oil as a sub- 


Eve, 97. 


Advice to, 109. 


ject of, 13. 


At sea, 97. 


The true, 109. 


(See Baby Talk), 31. 


The recollections of, 98. 


Rev. Mr. Chadband, 109. 


Conventionalities — Social, 188. 


Carol, 98. 


Exhortations of Chadband, 


In religion and politics, 132. 


Dinner, Bob Cratchit's, 98. 


109. 


CoNVENTiONAT.TSM— In Christianity, 


Of Scrooge, 99. 


The fashionable, 110. 


94. 


(See Time), 481. 


Client— (.se« Lawyer), 266, 267. 


Conventional Phrases, 118. 


Fire— (,See Sparks), 450. 


Clock— Its expression. 111. 


Convict— His early experiences,!!?. 


Chuckle — [See Dance), 131. 


What it said. 111. 


Trial of a, 123. 


An internal, dangerous, 259. 


Clothes— (-Sfe Dress), 157-S-9. 


(See Execution). 


Chuffet— Description of, 64. 


The ghosts of, 208. 


Cooking, 118. 


Chuech, 102, 311. 


Second-hand, 189. 


The melodious sounds of, 118. 


Pictures in, 24. 


Second-hand (See Fashions), 


The misfortunes of (.See Din- 


Child at, 92. 


189. 


ner), 148. 


And preacher— A child's first 


Clothing— (-S-ge Old Clothes), 344. 


Description of, 99. 


experience of, 102. 


Closet— (5ee Cupboard), 130. 


(See " Pudding "), 381. 


A hideous, 102. 


Clouds— (ASee Evening in Autmnn), 


"Copeland's" Pottery, 364. 


An apology to heaven, 102. 


174. 


Copperfield— David, at school, 417. 


In Italy, 102. 


(See Execution), 175. 


His first love, 277. 


A wedding in, 102. 


Coach— Riding in a. 111. 


Drunk, 163. 


Tower— The beUs, 45. 


Experience in a Virginia, 111. 


Corns — Treading on people's, 118. 


Pew, 355. 


The early morning, 112. 


Corporation— (.See Life Assurance), 


BeUs, 45. 


An old style, 112. 


271. 


Windows, 103. 


Travelling— the miseries of. 


Public boards, etc., 118. 


Chukches — As Monuments, 101. 


113. 


Corpse— (5ee Dead-house), 134. 


Old, 103. 


Coaches— The ghosts of mail, 112. 


(^-ee Death of Quilp), 138. 


A Sunday experience among. 


Associations of decayed, 112. 


Cohrespondence — (.See Letter, and 


101. 


Weller's opinion of, 113. 


Writing), 269, 541. 


Beggars in Italian, 41. 


Their autobiography, 113. 
Men like (5ee Pecksniflf), 284. 


Costs — Legal (.See Court), 128. 


Chuechyakd— A, 103. 


Cough — Of inexpressible grandeur. 


(See Tombstones), 483. 


CoACHTVTAN- A representative of 


178. 


Flowers on graves, 135. 


pomp. 113. 


A choking, 118. 


Little NeU in an old, 103. 


Tom Pinch's journey with a. 


An expressive, 118. 


In London, 103. 


113. 


A monosyllabic, 119. 


Chuzzlewit & Son— (5'e€ Old Firm), 


A labelled, 216. 


Country— The, 119. 


347. 


His love of his occupation. 


House and garden in the, 


Jonas— His Education, 170. 


228. 


235. 


His bad passions, 30. 


Com— Of the heart, 219. 


Village, scenes in a, 187. 


Anthony— Death of, 141. 


COKETOWN— A triumph of fact, 183. 


Mrs. Skewton's Arcadia, 119. 


CrECUMLOCTTTION OFFICE, 340, 341. 


Cold— Mrs. Nickleby's cure for a. 


Scenery, journey of little Nell, 


ClECXJMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, 173. 


114. 


119. 


CiECUS— The phUosophy of the, 104. 


Coldness, 25. 


Scenery, 119, 424. 


People— Mr. Sleary on, 104. 


And indiflference, 247. 


Excursions of Bamaby 


The performers, 104. 


Coliseum— Rome, 407. 


Rudge, 119. 


City — An old and drowsy, 104. 


Collector — Pancks, the, 114, 257. 


Gentleman, an English, 119. 


A quiet nook in London, 105. 


Color- Of sound (See Night), 334. 


Court— Trial in Old Bailey, 120. 


Crowd— Its expressions, 105. 


Comfort— In affliction, 11. 


A Doctor of civil law, 120. 


Of Philadelphia, 105. 


" Coming out strong"— (.See Mark 


Doctors' Commons, 120, 121. 


The approach to New York, 


Tapley), 288. 


And lawyers, 121. 


105. 


Common Sense— Mr. Skimpole's idea 


The insolvent, 121. 


Travellers to the, 105, 


of, 114. 


Examination of Sam WeUer, 


(See Genoa), 206. 


Complacency— (5'ee Content;, 117. 


122. 


(5ee Lyons), 282. 


Compliments — Diffusive, 197. 


Trial of the convict, 123. 


Childhood in a, 91. 


Of a lawyer, 115. 


Pickwick in Court. 124. 


Dust in the, 165, 174. 


Composition — Cramming for a, 173. 


The Judge and Witness, 124. 


Gardens, 205. 


Compromise— With cleanliness, 115. 


The Juryman, 124. 


Houses, 233, 236. 


Conceit — (See Boimderby), 62. 


The Judge, 124. 


Trees, 491. 


Mr. Podsnap as a type of, 115. 


Buzfuz's appeal for damages, 


Graveyard, 211, 213. 


The grandeur of Podsnap- 


125. 


Its crowd — A human stew, 


pery, 115. 


Trial in, 125. 


130. 


Spiritual, the experience of 


Jaggers, the lawyer. In, 266. 


Idlers, 245. 


Dickens, 115. 


Court of Chancery— The, 127. 


A housetop view in a, 237. 


Self, 116. 


The Lord Chancellor in, 126. 


Evening in the, 174. 


Concentration— Of mind (See Ex- 


(Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce), 126, 


Approach to a, 106. 


pression), 178. 


127. 


London in old times, 106. 


Condensation— Of language, by 


Its bedevilments, 127. 


Square — The office of the 


lovers, 281. 


Its wiglomeration, 128. 


Cheerybles, 106. 


Conduct— Mrs. Bagnef s advice on. 


The end of Jarndyce vs. Jarn- 


Neighborhood— A, 107. 


9. 


dyce, 128. 


Cleanliness— A compromise with, 


Confusion— Sometimes agreeable, 


Boythorn's opinion of the. 


115. 


116. 


128. 


And dirt (See Compromise), 


Congress of the United States, 


Courts— Like powder-mills, 129. 


115. 


116. 


Courtship — (-See Love, etc.). 


OfMrs. Tibbs, 238. 


Congressman— In America, 72, 268. 


Cow— (^'ee Facts), 185. 


Uncomfortable, 108. 


Conservatism— (S'ee Todgers), 328. 


Crabbedness— Of Tackleton, 76, 94 


Clemency Newcome— Description 


Conscience— Mr. Pecksniffs bank, 


(See Bachelor), 33. 


of, 82. 


117. 


Cramming— (.See Public Man), 381. 


the writing of, 541. 


A troubled, 117, 215. 


Creakle — The teacher, 64, 422. 


Clennam— Mrs., her religion, 27. 


A convenient garment, 117. 


Credulity— Of the world, 193. 


Clerk— A lawyer's, 108. 


Consolation — In disappointment, 


Cricket— Music of the, 221, 254, 


An indignant, 108. 


275. 


255. 


His office. 108. 


Constancy — Secret of success, 467. 


Crime— (^ee Revolution), 399. 


The faithful old, 108. 


Consumption— (^ee also Fever, Sick- 


Successful (.See Success), 467. 


An old, 64. 


ness, etc.), 116. 


And filth in London, 129. 


Smallweed, a lawyer's, 261. 


Content— The still small voice of. 


A kind of disorder, 129. 


Newman Noggs, 72. 


227. 


The fascination of. 129. 


Mr. Grewgious as a model, 


The tranquillity of, 117. 


Crtmtnal — (See Execution), 176. 


193. 


The generosity of, 117. 


On trial (^ee Court), 123. 


(See " City Square "), 106. 


Contentment, 117, 270. 


Crtmtnals — Their struggle with 


Clerks- At lunch, 262. 


The vision of Gabriel Grub, 


crime, 129. 


Of lawyers, 266, 267. 


117. 


Cbisparkle— The cupboard of Mrs., 


Offices of merchants', 108. 


Contentions— Of life, 270. 


130. 


Olbbgtiten— Weller'8 opinion of. 


Contrasts — In life, 117. 


Mr., his eyes, 178. 


244. 


CoNTRmoN— Of Mr. Toots, 117. 


Mr., 356, 357. 



CBITICISM 



549 



D0MBE7 



Cbiticism— On art (See Art), 23. 
Cbossing THE Channel, 454. 
Obowd — The escort of a, 200. 

Its expression and solitude, 

105. 
A, 130. 

A passing, 130. 
CETJEiiTY— Of women (See Drivers), 
632. 
In school, 420. 
Its effect on the mind, 251. 
Face a stamped receipt for, 
179. 
Cbttnoheb— Jerry, 130. 

Mrs., her blessing before 
meat, 211. 
Cbupp — Mrs. and Betsey Trotwood, 
46. 
" Spazzums " of Mrs., 130. 
Mrs., her advice on love, 130. 
Cunning — The simplicity of, 30. 
CUPBOAED — Mrs. Crisparkle's, 130. 
CtXBE— For a cold, 114. 
CuBiosiTY Shop, 441. 
CuBious Man — A, 64. 
CuBSE— An imprecation of the eyes, 
173. 

CUESES, 131. 
CXNIOS, 131. 



Damp — "A demd, moist, unpleas- 
ant body," 287. 

Maps of (See Hotels), 231. 
Dance — A negro, 131. 

House, a sailor's, 409. 

A country, 132. 

A Christmas, 132. 

A solemn, 132. 

A trial to the feelings, 132. 
Dandyism— In religion and politics, 

132 
Dante—" An old file," 133. 

Sparkler's idea of, 133. 
Daking Death. 133. 
Dabtle — Rosa, description of, 84. 
Daughtee — Affection of a, 536. 
\^ David Copperfield, 133. 
./Dawn — Description of, 133. 

(See Morning.) 
Daybbeak, 317. 
Deaf and Dumb— Their responsi- 

biUty, 133. 
Dead — The memory of, 134. 

The influence of the, 134. 

Memory of the, 134. 

The memory of Lady Ded- 
lock, 134. 

Flowers above the (Little NeU), 
135. 

(See Grave and Graveyard.) 

Of a city, 135. 
Dead-House— In Paris, 134. 

The ghosts of the Morgue, 134. 
Death— Thoughts of, 136. 

Scenes before the funeral, 136. 

Scenes after funeral, 136. 

A levelling upstart, 136. 

Of a remorseful woman, 136. 

And stamina (Bagstock), 136. 

Of the good, 137. 

The approach of, 137. 

Thoughts on the approach of, 
137. 

The discovery of its approach, 
137. 

The inequality of, 137. 

Not to be frightened by, 137. 

Its expressions, 137. 

Of Stephen Blackpool, 137. 

In the street, 138. 

Of Quilp, 138. 

Of Mrs. Weller (Mr. WeUer's 
letter), 139. 

Of the rich man; pressure, 
139. 

Of the prisoner, 139. 

Of Little Nell, 140. 

Of the young, 140. 

By starvation, 141. 

In old age, 141. 

Weller's philosophy on, 141. 

Of "Jo." 141. 

Its obUvion, 143. 



Death— Of a mother, 143. 

Of youth (Paul Dombey), 143. 

Of Marley, 144. 

Of the young (Thoughts of 
Little NeU), 144. 

And sleep (See Childiahness), 
91. 

(See Home, alter a faneral), 
220. 

In prison, 379. 

Of the schoolboy, 420. 

Of Ham, 438. 

In a duel, 164. 

Condemned to, 378. 

Of Gaffer, 160. 

On the river, 404. 

Of Barkis, 37. 

Of little Johnny Harmon, 89. 

Of the drimkard, 161. 

Of an actor, 6. 

Fearless of, 133. 

Nell's thoughts of (See " Ab- 
bey "), 5. 

A sentence of (See Court), 124. 
Debauch, 205. 
Debt— Chevy Slyme in, 206. 

Prisoner for, 379. 

(See Dick SwiveUer), 541. 

(See Micawber), 304. 

Mantalini in, 286. 

(See Bill), 47. 

Skimpole's idea of, 144. 
Debtoes— Paying debts a disease, 

144. 
Decay— Of manhood (Dry Rot), 164. 

Grandeur in, 19. 
Deception — Of Caleb Plummet, 174, 

278. 
Dedlock— Lady, her enniii, 190. 

The face of, 182. 

Sir Leicester, a gentleman, 
207. 

Paralyzed, 353. 
\ The memory of Lady, 134. 

Defaege— Madame, the tigress, 531. 

Madame, 84. 

(^ee Revolution), 400. 
Degeadation— By drunkenness, 160. 
Dejection, 145. 
Demonstration— The power of (See 

Inventor), 253. 
Dennis— The executioner, 65. 
Depoetment — Prim (See Formal 
People), 198. 

Of Turveydrop, 78. 

Turveydrop on, 144. 

" Botany Bay ease," 145. 
Depot— (^ee Railroad), 390. 
Depeavity— (iSee Boy), 52. 

Natural, 145. 

Of youth, 543. 

Its written lessons, 145. 
Depression— Of spirits, 145. 
Desceiption— Of cabs and drivers, 
56. 

Of a foundry, 199. 

Of bottles (^ee Bar), 51. 

Of a baby, 31. 

Personal — (See Characters, 
Expression, Face, Features, 
Eyes, Hair, etc.) 
Designs— Of an architect, 22. 
Despaik, 310. 
Despondency — Of Capt. Cuttle, 

227. 
Destiny, 145. 

The hiirh-roads and by-roads 
of, 145. 
Detective— Nadgett, the, 71. 

Mr. Bucket, the, 146. 
Determination, 146. 
Devil- When he is dangerous, 

146. 
Devotion— (5fe« Love, Affection), 9. 

Of Little Dorrit. 146. 

Of Tom Pinch, 146. 
Dew- The tears of the dawn (See 

Dawn), 133. 
Diagrams- Like fireworks, 22. 
Diamonds, 147. 
Diamond cut Diamoni>— (<SIstf Sold), 

448. 
DicB-Box— Of destiny, 145. 
Dick -Mr., 301. 

Mr. ; his one idea, 245. 



DiOK— Mr. ; the mad author, 87. 

Mr. ; his kite, 256, 

Mr. (See Affection), 9. 
Dickens- The home of, 220. 

Origin of Boz, 54. 

His spiritual experiences, 115, 

His love of David Copperfield, 
133. 

His opinion of work and suc- 
cess, 216. 

In Venice, 498. 
Dick Swiveller's Opinion, 76, 299, 

Swiveller on charities, 310. 

(See also Swiveller.) 
Diet— Schoolboy, 419, 421. 
Difficulties— Micawber's, 302. 
Digestion- The process of wind- 
ing up, 147. 
Dignity- (5«« Pride), 372. 

Of servant, 396. 

Its relatione to dress, 158. 

An expression of, 147, 

Like an eight-day clock, 147. 
Dilemma— Capt. Cuttle in a, 216. 
Dingwall — Mr., 65. 
Dining-table— A Dead Sea of ma- 
hogany, 147. 

RooAi- A gloomy, 147. 
Dinner— (/Sfee Pomposity), 366. 

Fashionable, 447. 

(SeeW&itevB), 502,503. 

A Christmas, 98. 

(See Lunch), 262. 

(See Restaurant), 397-6. 

At S6& 42T 

Of Guppy (See Eating), 167. 

An austere, 26. 

Bagstock at, 147. 

Bagstock after, 147, 

And dinner-time, 147. 

Toby Veck's, 147. 

Dick Swiveller's observationt 
on, 148. 

Mrs. Bagnet's birthday, 148. 

A fashionable — its guests, 149. 

After, 150. 

Party— a fashionable, 150. 

In State, 151. 

An unsocial, 161. 

Description of public, 151. 

With a philanthropist (Mrs. 
Jellyby), 152. 

Pickwick after wine, 152. 

A fashionable, 153. 

At a restam-ant, 153. 

"The mut^ty smell of ten 
thousand " (See Dining- 
room), 147. 

Pip's misfortunes at, 152. 
Diogenes, 154. 
Dirt— In apartments. 19, 115. 
Disappearance — A mysterioua 

153. 
Disappointment— (Se« Tears), 476, 

227. 
Disease— (5Sj<j Consumption), 116. 

Paying debts a, 144. 

Of children, 93. 
Dismal Jemmy, 65. 
Display— Value of public, 164. 
Dissecting, 298. 
Distinctions— In gentility, 207. 

In life, 272. 
Distrust- Not just. 272. 
Docks— Liverpool, 'fl)8. 
Docks- Down by tlie, 164. 
Doctor of Civil Law, 120. 
Doctors' Commons, 120. 
Dodson and Fogg— (Lawyers), 967. 
Dog— And Joe (See Outcast), 350. 

His fidelity, 154. 

A ChriHtlan, 155, 

A png, 155. 

The gambol!* of Boxer, 156. 
Dogs and Cats, 155. 
Doggish 'M.\ti—(See Gashford), 67. 
Dollars— Americans, their devo- 
tion to, 13. 
Dolly Vardbn, 83. 
Dombey and Son, 814. • 

DoMBE Y— The unsociable library oC, 
2«9. 

His home, 220. 

Remorse of. ;396. 

Bankrupt. 36. 

Auction sale of bis forniture, K, 



DOMBEY 



550 



FACE 



\\ 



DoMBEY— His austerity, 27. 

Mr., as a grandfather, 211. 
His expression, 181. 
His pride, 294. 
His egotism, 170. 
Paul, death of, 143. 
Mr^., death of, 143. 
Dignity {See Pride), 372. 
And his child, 90. 
Domestic Tyuannt, 493. 
DoNKET— His obstinacy, 156. 
Donkeys— 156. 

Blooded, 156. 
Janet, 46. 

And post-boys, 370. 
Doors— (^Seg Door-knockers), 156. 
Door-knockers — The physiog- 
nomy of, 156. 
DoTHEBOYs' Hall— (;S'e€ Letter 

from), 269, 419. 
Dot— Her embrace. 172. 

{See Pipe- filling), 363. 
{See Pipe), 363. 
Dot's Baby, 32. 
Dover, 429. 
Dowager— The rustle of her dress, 

159. 
DoYCE— The inventor, 66, 252, 253. 
De. Chillip, 298. 
Dragon, 289. 
Drama — Curdle's opinion of the, 

157. 
Dreams — Of the sane and insane, 
157. 
Of childhood, 91. 
Among the poor, 444. 
{See Sleep), 443. 
{See Grief), 214. 
Dbess — Individuality of, 157. 
Of Miss Tox, 157. 
Party toilette, 157. 
The power of, 158. 
Its relations to dignity, 158. 
Of Barkis, 158. 
Of an artificial woman, 159. 
The rustle of, 159. 
Its influence on age, 159. 
159. 

An antediluvian pocket-hand- 
kerchief, 159. 
Buttoned-up men, 56. 
{See Little Dorrit's uncle), 

65. 
Of Cheeryble Bros., 63. 
Of Bunsby, 62. 
{See Toilette), 483. 
{See Characters, etc.), 61. 
{See Chuflfey), 64. 
Fancy {See BaU), 34, 
Of ecclesiastics and ticket- 
porters {See Contrasts), 117. 
Of Ruth, 237, 238. 
Of Mr. Bounderby, 158. 
A seedy, 158. 
Of Joe, 158. 
Pip and Joe in uncomfortable, 

158. 
Of Mr. Sloppy, 159. 
Of Mrs. Wilfer, 159. 
Of Dr. Marigold, 159. 
A bad fit, 159. 
Dbink— (^ee Sherry Cobbler), 435. 
Oxford night-caps (ASee Night- 
caps), 336. 
Toast, 410. 
324. 
Dbinktng — {See Sairey Gamp), 412. 

Without moderation, 164. 
Drinking Age — Its expressions, 

179. 
DBrv'EEs AND Cabs, 56. 
Drowned — And resuscitated, 159. 
Gaffer, 160. 
{See Drunkard), 161. 
Drowning— (5ee Death of Quilp),138. 

298. 
Dbummle— Bentley, 66. 
Drunkard— His descent, 160. 

The death of, 161. 
Dritnkenness — The Pickwickians, 
162. 
Of Dick Swiveller, 162. 
Of Mr. Pecksniff, 162. 
Of David Copperfield. 163. 
The effects of. l'>4. 
Apology for, 460. 



Dry Eot— In men, the, 164. 
Duality of Thought — {See Ideas), 

245. 
Duel— Description of a, 164. 
Dumps — Nicodemus, 33. 
DuRDLES — Description of, 66. 
Dust — In apartments, 19. 

In churches {See Church),102. 

Of dead citizens (Churches), 
101. 

In London, 165. 
PusTY — Evening in London, a, 174. 
Duty— The test of a great soul, 165. 

To society, 165. 

The world's idea of, 165. 
Duties — Of old age, 11. 
Dwarf— (A^ee Quilp.) 

E. 

Eagle— The French, 165. 

The American, 13. 
Early Rising, 165, 
Earthquake, 398. 
Earth— Revolution of the, 495. 
Eating — In America {See Dinner), 
147. 

{See Lunch), 262. 

The process of winding up 
{See Digestion), 147. 

{See Gourmand), 210. 

Grace before, 211. 

A pauper overfed, 166. 

A bm of fare. 166. 

Bread and butter (Joe and 
Pip), 166. 

And growth, Guppy's lunch, 
167. 

Its "meUering" inja.tience, 
167. 

Beef and mutton, 167. 
Eccentricity of Trades, 486, 
Ecclesiastical Dignitaries, 117. 
Economy in Words, 536. 
Editor— Pott, the, 72. 

{See Popularity), 369. 
Education— Early (^eeAlphabet),ll. 

{See Youth), 543. 

(See Universities), 495. 

Of facts, 185. 

Of cMldren, 167. 

Mrs. Pipchin's system, 167. 

A victim of, 167. 

Early, 168. 

The forcing process in Dr. 
Blimber's school, 168. 

In England, 168. 

Practical, 169. 

{See "Facts.") 

The Gradgrind School of, 169. 

The misfortune of, 169. 

Josiah Bounderby' s practical, 
169. 

A perverted, 170. 

Early, the alphabet, 170. 

From A to Z, 170. 
Effervescence— Of rage, 386. 
Egotism— Of pride, 373. 

Self-importance, and igno- 
rance {See Country Gentle- 
man), 119. 

{See Conceit), 115. 

170. 
Election— Mr. Weller at an, 170. 

A public, the devotion of 
party, 170. 

A spirited, 171 

Candidates, 171. 
Elements— Of love, 280. 
Eloquence— Of Rev. Mr. Chad- 
band, 109. 
Embarrassjient- Enjoyment of, 

265. 
Embrace— An earnest, 172, 

Like a path of virtue, 172. 

A definition of, 172. 
Emigrants, .303, 304. 

Departure of, 435. 

Ship. 171. 

On shipboard, 172. 
Empty Eooms, 21, 
Encyclopedias— An eye to look, 

179. 
Enemies— Of the human race {See 
1 epravity), 145. 
' Energy, 172. 



Engine— Job Trotter & portable 

182. 
England — Its fashions, 189. 

Education in, 168. 
Englishmen — As travellers, 173. 

Their cheer, 88. 
English Labor— Its evils, 256. 

Country gentleman, 119. 
Enjoyment — The influence of (See 

Dance), 132. 
Ennui— (-Se^ Fashion), 190. 
Enthusiasm, 172. 
Epidemics — Moral, 173. 
Epistolary Labor— (^Sle* Letter- 
writing), 269. 
Epithet — Definition of an, 173. 
Essay— Pott's mode of preparation, 

173. 
Eternity, 173. 

The ocean of, 30. 

{See River), 403. 
Evening — The influences of a sum- 
mer, 173. 

A summer Sunday, 173. 

In the city, 174. 

In London, a dusty, 174. 

In the spring-time, 174. 

An autumn, 174. 

On the river, 403. 

Shadows, 434. 
Evidence— Of a witness, 173. 

Circumstantial, 173. 
Exaggeration— Of Caleb Plum- 

mer, 174. 
Example — Of bees, 41. 
Excitement — Mental, 177. 
Exclusiveness— Fashionable, 188. 
Execution— The gallows, 175. 

of Fagin, 176. 

(See Guillotine), 214. 
Executioner— Dennis, the, 65. 
Expectoration — In America, 177. 
Expression- A ti-iumphant, 177. 

A fierce, 177. 

Of feature (Joe), 177. 

An unhappy, 178. 

A weighty, 178, 

A convivial, 178. 

After sleeo, 178. 

The imitation of, 178. 

Of dress, 178. 

Of benevolence, 178. 

A concentrated, 178. 

" Faint with dignity," 147. 

Of Mrs. Varden, 180. 

(See Eyes, Faces, Features, 
Characters.) 

♦'Like an eight-day clock," 
147. 

Of diamonds, 147. 

{See Faces of the Blind), 49. 

In coughing. 118. 

In death, 137. 

Of asperity, 25. 

Of the hand, 217. 

Of a crowd, 105. 

Admonitory, of a clock, 111. 
Extremes— In life, 240. 
Eye— Its expression, 179. 

OfMr. Murdstone, 71. 

(See Bunsby), 62. 

Its devilish expression, 179. 

A learned, 179. 

An expressive, 179. 
Eyes— An imprecation on the, 173. 

Of Mrs. Varden, 180. 

Out of town, 180. 

178. 

Sinister, 178. 

Solemn, 178. 

Of Mr. Crisparkle, 178. 

Inexpressive, 178. 

Inquisitive. 178. 

Of Ruth, 178. 

Bright, 179. 
Eye-glass— (-See Official), 343. 



Face— Like the knave of clubs. 
180. 
An Irish, 180. 
Like a capital O, 181. 
No guide to thoughts, 180. 
Like a physiognomical punch, 
181. 



FACE 



651 



GABDEN 



Pace— An unsympathetic, 87. 

A pretty, 39. 

Of Mr. Grewgious, 182. 

Of Job Trotter, 182. 

Of a hypocrite, 182. 

A frosty, 182. 

Of a scornful woman, 182. 

Shadowed by a memory, 182. 

Of Marley, in the fire-place, 
196. 

Its expression after death, 
137. 

A cool slate, 87. 

Like door-knocker {See Cal- 
ton), 63. 

Not a letter of recommenda- 
tion, 180. 
Faces— Of the blind, 49. 

Their expression, 179. 

A nosegay of, 191. 
Facts— Gradgrind, the man of, 185. 

Gradgrind's lessons of, 185. 

The man of, 185. 

A disgust of. 185. 

The Gradgrind philosophers, 
185. 

Gradgrind on, 186. 

versus Fancies, 186. 

Mr. Dick's dissemination of, 
256. 

Mr. Dick's diffusion of, 28. 

{See School), 423. 

{See Education, the Gradgrind, 
etc.), 169. 
Factory— Iron Works, 184. 
Factories— The hands, 184. 
Factory-town — A triimiph of fact, 
183. 

Its peculiarities, 183. 

The workingmen, 184. 

484. 
Fagin— The execution of, 176. 
Fainting — Mrs. Varden's family 
tactics, 186. 

Of Miss Miggs, 187. 

The freemasonry of, 187. 
Fair— A village, 187. 

The Greenwich, 187. 
Fairies— Of the bells, 45. 
Faith— Its triumphs, 59. 
Fallen Women, 534. 
Falsehood- And truth, 491. 

{See Lies), 270. 
Fame— (ASee Nobody), 336. 
Family— Of the Chuzzlewits, 15, 16. 

A reunion (Toodle's), 225. 

Tactics, Mrs. Varden's, 186. 

Party, 81. 

Portraits, 23. 

Trials— (.See Husbands), 243. 
Fancy— Of animals, 16. 
Fancied- Night (^-ee Night), 336. 

Half awake, 30. 

versus Facts, 186. 
Fang— His face liable for damages, 

180. 
Farewell — Mr. Merdle's style of, 

268. 
Farmer, 291. 

Fascination— Queer {See Swlveller), 
460. 

Of crime, 129. 
Fashion— The ennui of, 190. 

The world of, 189. 

{See Rouge), 408. 

In England, 189. 
Fashions- Of the age {See Dandy- 
ism), 132. 

Like human beings, 189. 

Second-hand clothes, 189. 
Fashionable Exclusiveness, 188. 

People— The Veneerings, 188. 

People— How they are man- 
aged, 189. 

Women, 14, 534. 

Woman— Her dress, 159. 

Clergymen, 110. 

Party, a, 188. 

Society. 188. 

Conventionalities, 188. 

Calls. 188. 

Funeral, a, 20.3. 

Footmen and Sam Weller, 
615. 

Bidl,84. 



Fathbb— And Child— A contrast, 
90. 

Child's idea of a, 191. 

And children, 191. 

{See Baby, Dot's), 32. 
Fat Boy— And Sam Weller, 516. 

Joe as a spy, 190. 

Joe in love, 191. 

Joe, the, 190. 
Favor— The pleasure of a, 191. 
Fear— A means of obedience, 191. 
Features— (-See Expression), 177, 
178. 

And manners, an excess of, 
192. 

Their expression in death,137 

{See Characters.) 

{See Baby), 32. 

And personal characteristics, 
192. 

{See Eyes), 178. 
Peelings— Of Mr. Toots, 193. 

Sam Weller on the, 192. 

Of public men, 192. 

Of Mr. PecksniflF, 192. 
Pelont— A kind of disorder {See 

Crime), 129. 
Female Characters, 82. 
Fever — Its hallucinations, 193. 

The wanderings of, 137. 

Its ravings, 6. 
Fiction— Of the law, 260. 

Characters in, 193. 
Fidelity — And Order— Of Mr. 
Grewgious, 193. 

Of Tim Linkinwater, 108. 

Of Diogenes (Dog), 154. 
Fight- A schoolboy's, 193. 

Between Dick Swlveller and 
Quilp, 193. 

Pip's, 194. 

In bar-room, 36. 
Figures- A kind of ciphering 

meaeles, 23. 
Figure— Of Mrs. Kenwigs, 193. 
Filial Duty {See Weller), 512. 
Financier— (ii>'ee Tigg), 77. 
Fips— Mr., his office, 21. 
Firmness — {See Determination), 

146. 
Fire, 194. 

And mob, 194. 

Its red eyes, 195. 

And breeze, 195. 

A bright, 196. 

Little Nell at the forge, 196. 

Sikes, the murderer, at a, 196. 
Fireplace— An ancient, 196. 
Fist— Of John Browdie, 181. 
Five Points, N. Y., 329. 
" Fixing " — A provincialism of 

America, 197. 
Flag — The American, 197. 
FiiAMWELL— Mr. (A social pretend- 
er), 66. 
Flatterer, 197. 
Fledgeby— The miser, 30. 

Whiskers of, 523. 
Fleet Market, 290. 
Flintwitcu — Jeremiah, descrip- 
tion of, 67. 
Flirts- (^fee DoUy Varden), 83. 
Flirtation— (iSee Weller), 512. 
Florence- Her filial love, 275. 

Her girlhood, 209. 

In her desolate home, 224. 

A wanderer, 226. 

" The golden water," 136. 

535. 
Flowers— Of hope, 228. 

Floating on the river, 227. 

Above the dead, 135. 

Birds and Angels, 197. 
Flucttuations— In life, 270. 
Flute-Plater— Mr. Mell. the. 197. 
Flute- Music— Dick Swiveller's sol- 
ace, 197. 
Fog— A sea of, 198. 

And whiskers. 181. 
Fogg — Mr., the lawyer, 67. 
Foreign Languages, 259. 
Forge— Little Noll at the, 196. 

The villago, 174. 
Forgiveness. 198. 

Pecksuiffiau, 198. 



Formal People, 198. 
Footmen's " Swarry," 515. 
Footman— (5ee House), 231. 
Fortitude— Of Little Nell, 90. 
Fortune Hunters, 198. 
Foundry- Description of, 199. 

{See Fire, Little Nell, etc.), 
199. 
Fountain- The waters of, 199. 

Ruth at the, 279. 
Fowls— (5ee City Neighborhood). 
107. 

Carving, 59. 

Their peculiarities, 199. 
Fragrance— (iSee Axoma), 23. 
Fraternal Railing — An embrace, 

172. 
Frankness, 218. 

France- The reign of the guillotine, 
215. 

Scenes in Flemish, 199. 
French— Eagle, the, 165. 

Gentleman, a, 208. 

And English lashions, 189. 

Language, the, 199. 
Friends— The escort of a crowd of, 
200. 

The value of dead, 134. 

Not too many, 200. 
Friendship— Lowten's opinion of, 
200. 

Between opposite characters, 
200. 

A Pecksnif&an, 200. 

The Damons and Pythiases of 
modern life, 200. 
Friendly Service — Wemmick'a 

opinion of a, 200. 
Friendless Men, 201. 
Frivolity— (<Sce Hearts, light), 219. 
Frogs— The music of, 201. 
Frost— The, 201. 

Funeral — Mr. Mould's philosophy 
of a, 201. 

Of Anthony Chuzzlewit, 202. 

Its pretentious solemuitiea, 
202. 

A fashionable, 203. 

An unostentatious, 203. 

Of Mrs. Joe Gargery, 203. 

Of Little Nell, 204. 

Before the, 136. 

Home alter a, 220. 

After the, 136, 202. 

The request of Dickens, 201. 
Furniture— (^ee Bed), 39, 41. 

{See Chair), 60. 

Of a lawyer's office, 262. 

{See Dining-room), 147. 

Of a table, 223. 

In a desolate home, 225. 

{See Apartments), 17, 18, 19, 
20. 

Auction sale of, 25. 

Broker in second-hand, 54. 

{See Home, Apartments, etc.). 

Old-fashioned, 204. 

Covered, 204. 

The home of a usurer, 204. 
Future— The river a type of the, 

205. 
Fussy People — (Mr. and Mrs. 
Merrywinkle), 244. 



Gabriel Grub— His vision, 117. 
Gadshill— The home of Dickeoa, 

220. 
Gaffer— His death. 160. 
Gaiety— Of Mark Tapley, 288, 289. 

Forced. 205. 
Gallows — An execution, 176. 
Gallantry— Pecksnifflan, 206. 
Galvanic— Don't bo. 46. 
Game— Of cards for love, 68. 
Games— Christmas. 95. 
Gamblers- (*'«•« Kaoe-courte), 386. 

The frenzied, 205. 
Gami'— Sairey {See Nurse), 338. 

410. 

Her observation on hearta. 
219. 
Garden, 206. 

An old, 205. 



lihABDENS 



553 



HOMINY 



Gardens— In London, 205. 

VauxhaU, 497. 
Gabdening — In London, 392. 
Gabgebx— Mrs. Joe {See "Cleanli- 
ness "), 108. 
Mrs. Joe, the funeral of, 203. 
Mrs. Joe, 84. 
Joe, 67. 
Gashfokd, 67. 
Genealogy, 355. 
Genekai,— Mrs., ceremony of, 60. 

Mrs., description of, 85. 
Gentcjs— In debt, 206. 

The weaJiness of, 206. 
Gentility— The distinctions of, 207. 
Shabby, 207. 
New South Wales, 145. 
Gentleman—" A werry good imita- 
tion," 207. 
An English, 207. 
A French, 208. 
The grace of a true, 208. 
The true, 208. 
Genoa, 206. 

George — Mr., the trooper, 67. 
Ghost— Of the dead {See Dead- 
house), 134, 
And the senses, 208. 
Of dead businesses, 442. 
Of clothes, 208. 
A privilege of the upper 

classes, 209. 
Their anniversaries, 209. 
An argument with a, 208. 
Of Marley, his appearance, 

180. 
Of Marley, 208. 
Giants— Used up, 209. 
Gift— Argument a gift, 22. 
" Gift of Gab "—(See Speech), 452. 
Girls— Traddles' idea of, 209. 
GmLHOOD— Of Florence, 209. 
Gloves — Boimderby's opinion of, 

168. 
GoBLEB— Mr., the hypochondriac, 

245, 
God Save the EIing — Miss Press's, 

352. 
Gold— The influence of riches, 210. 
Good— The death of the, 137. 

And evn (See Honor), 226, 210. 
Deeds, their influence (See 
Dead, the influence of the), 
134. 
Humor, philosophy of, 88. 
{See Cheeryble), 63. 
Religion of, 88. 
Its contagiousness, 259. 
GOOD-NIGHT— An interrupted bless- 
ing, 209. 
Good Purposes- Perverted, 210. 
Goodness— Its propagation, 210. 
Of heart (See Cheeryble), 63. 
((See Clergyman; the true), 109. 
Gordon— Lord, 68. 
Gossip— (*S'ee News), 330. 

210. 
Gout— A patrician disorder, 210. 

Mr. Weller's remedy for, 210. 
An aristocratic privilege, 210. 
Gourmand— A, 210. 
GowAN — Mrs;, her house, 232. 

An amateur artist, 24. 
Grace— Before dinner, 152. 

Before meat, 211. 
Gradgrind— The man of facts, 185. 
His school of philosophy, 186. 
His philosophy of life, 270. 
The house of, 236. 
Description of, 186. 
His taste, 474. 
(See Opportunities), 348. 
His school of education, 169. 
Grammar— For the laity, 211. 

(See Addresses), 7. 
Grandfather— The, 211. 
Gratitude— A mother's, 211. 
Grave- The, 211. 

Of the dead pauper, 211. 

Of the martyrs, 59. 

(See Funeral, alter the), 202, 

Of Mr, Merdle, 211. 

Flowers on, 135. 

A child's, 212. 

Of the erring, 212. 



Grave— Of Sxnike, 212. 
Grave-digger, 212. 
Grave-diggers {See Old Age), 343. 

289. 
Graveyard— (/S^ec Churchyard), 103, 

213. 
Gravestones — Pip's reading of 
them, 213. 

Pip's fanuly, 213, 
Gravy — The hmnan passion for, 213. 
Greatness — Nothing little to the 
really great, 165. 

Modest, 313. 
Greenwich Fair— A spring rash, 

187. 
Grewgious — Mr., 68. 

His fidelity and order, 193. 

Face of, 182. 
Gride— Arthur, the usurer, 68. 
Gridiron — A gridiron is a, 213. 
Grlef — A burden, 214. 

(See Affliction), 10. 
Groves— John Chivery among the 

linen, 279. 
Growlery— Of Jarndyce, 21. 
Guillotine — The, 214. 

Execution by the, 214. 

The reign of the, 215. 
Guilt— The pain of, 215. 
GUPPY— The woe of, 181. 
Guests at Dinner— Description of, 

149, 151. 
Gusher— The face of, 181. 

GUSTER. 86. 

Gypsies— (tS^ee Bace-course), 385. 

H. 

Habeas Corpus — Sam Weller on, 

266. 
Habit— Force of, 379. 
Of reflection, 215. 
Its influence, 216. 
And duty, 216. 
Habits — ^American {See Americans), 
13. 
Of work and life, Dickens', 
216. 
Hackman— A labelled, 216. 
Haib^A head of, 216. 
Unruly, 216. 
Of Bitzer, 62. 
Of Bunsby, 62. 
{See Dress of Joe), 158. 
Of Pancks, like a porcupine, 

179. 
Arts auxiliary, 312. 
^' Aggerawater8"{»S'ec Wilkins), 
80. 
Halo— Of diabolism, 179. 
Hallucinations of mind, 193. 
Ham— A simoon of, 23. 

His death, 438. 
Hamlet— A journeymati, in conver- 
sation, 179, 
An actor's reading and dress,6. 
Hand — Merdle's style of shaking, 
217. 
Its gentleness, 217. 
Its character, 217. 
A resolute, 217. 
Dr. Chilhp's style of shaking, 

217. 
A ghostly, 217. 
Of sympathy, 217. 
A cold and clammy, 27. 
Shaking, pecvdiar, 36. 
Shaking (See Salutation), 413. 
Handkerchief — An ante - diluvian 

169. 
Happiness— Overflowing (See Con- 
tent), 117, 
Of Mark Tapley, 288, 289. 
At Christmas, 96, 99. 
Of the unfortunate, 217. 
The power of trifles, 217. 
True, 218. 
Harris — Mrs, and Sairey Gtamp, 

411-12. 
Haste — The advantages of seeming, 

218. 
Hat— Sam WeUer's apology for his, 
218, 
The pursuit of a, 218. 
Haunted Man— A, 80. 1 



Head— A soft, better than a soft 

heart, 219. 
Of hair, 216, 
Headstone — Bradley, the teacher, 

422. 
Heat— ((See Sun), 471. 
Heart— (jSee Love), 277. 

Its innocence and guilt, 2S0. 
An oppressed (Toots), 275. 
Of John Chivery, 279. 
Its secrets (See Death), the 

approach of, 137. 
In the right place, 218. 
Innocent, 218. 
Open, 218, 
Loving, 218, 

A pure (Tom Pinch), 218. 
The chance revelations of the, 

218. 
Aflflic'tions, 218. 
The coin of the, 219. 
An empty, 219. 
Like a bird-cage, 219. 
The silent influence of the, 

219. 
The necessity for shutters, 

219. 
Light, 219, 

Mere mechanisms, 219. 
And heads, 219, 
Heartlessness, 30, 219. 
Heaven— The real, 219. 
Heep— Uriah, 68. 

Humility of, 241. 
The hand of, 217. 
And Betsey Trotwood, 46. 
Asleep, 444. 
300. 
Hexam— Charley, at school, 416. 
Hiccough— Of a passing fairy, 23. 
High Tide, 480. 
Holidays, 421, 

The happy associations of, 

219, 
In school, 415. 
(See Races), 384. 
Holiness— Sometimes a matter oi 

dress, 158, 
Homage— a?o woman, 219. 
Home— Of Miss Tox, 222. 
Of Mrs. Pipchin, 222. 
The love of, 222. 
The comforts of (Gabriel Var- 

den), 223. 
Of confusion and wretched- 
ness, 223, 
A rosary of regrets, 223. 
Of Capt, Cuttle, 223. 
The representative of charac- 
ter, 223, 
In the suburbs, 224. 
Disappointment in a, 224. 
Adornment of a, 224. 
The place of affection, 224. 
An abandoned, 224. 
A desolate, 224. 
A fashionable, 225. 
A family reunion at Toodle's, 

225. 
Of Miss Tox, 226. 
Its peace and consolation, 

226, 
Of Dickens— Gadshill, 220. 
Of Dombey, 220. 
After a funeral, 220. 
Of a tourist, 220. 
The music of crickets at, 

221, 
Of Mrs. Chickenstalker, 221. 
221. 
Of a female philanthropist, 

221. «» 

A solitary, 221. 
Of the toy maker, 486. 
Of Sol Gills, 410. 
An unhappy, 271. 
Its ruins, 25. 
Prison the only, 379. 
Memories of, 91. 
Again, 432. 
Of the poor, 367. 

HOMELESSNESS, 226. 

Homeliness— (iSee Fang), 180. 
Hominy— Mrs., an American author • 



I 



HONEST ETES 



668 



JO 



Honest Eyes, 179. 
Honest Man— An, 227. 

The luxury of, 227. 
Honor— The true path of, 226. 

The word of, 227. 
Honexthtjnder, 355. 
Hook— Capt. Cuttle's, 325. 
Hope — In misfortune, 310. 

Disappointed, 227. 

A subtle essence, 228. 
Hopes— Disappointed, 227. 

Of Capt. Cuttle, 227. 

Unrealized, 228. 
Hoese— Tenacity of life in a, 228. 

A fast, 228. 

The carrier's, 228. 

Mr. PecksuiflTs, 228. 

Theatrical, 366. 
Hobse-flesh— Judges of, 254. 
HoBSES— And women, 532. 

And dogs, 228. 
HOBSEBACK— Winkle on, 228. 
Hospital, — The patients in a, 229. 

Associations of a, 229. 

A female, 230. 

Maggy's experience in a, 230. 

The sick in, 230. 

(^SeePoor), 367. 

Children in the, 93. 

Death in the, 89. 
Hotel— Physiognomy of a, 359. 

(See Inn), 247. 

A fashionable, 230. 

Characteristics of, 231. 
House — Of a Barnacle, 231. 

A sombre, 231. 

An old, 232. 

A tenement, 232. 

And surroundings (of Mrs. 
Growan), 232. 

A gloomy, 232. 

In a tashiouable locality, 233. 

A debilitated, 233. 

Illuminated by love, 233. 

A fierce-looking, 233. 

An ancient, renovated, 233. 

An old-fashioned, 233. 

A stiff-looking, 233. 

Of a Southern planter, 233. 

A monotonous pattern, 234. 

Of Caleb Plummer, 234. 

A shy-looking, 234. 

Description of Bleak House, 
etc., 234. 

A sombre-looking, 235. 

A dissipated-looking, 235. 

A dull, fashionable, 235. 

In winter, 235. 

And garden, 235. 

Mr. Gradgrind's, 236. 

Of Mr. Dombey, 220. 

(See Boarding-house), 49. 

A solitary, 221. 

(See Inn), 247. 

After a death, 220. 

Putting its hair in papers (See 
Furniture), 204. 

Covered with advertisements, 
8. 
Houses— Old, 236. 

A neighborhood, 236. 

In St. Louis, 236. 

Isolated in a city, 236. 

Involved iu law, 236. 

(See City Neighborhood), 107. 
Housekeeper— lluth as a, 237, 238. 

Servants a curse to the, 238. 

Neatness of Mrs. Tibbs, 238. 
Mrs. Sweeney, 238. 

Of Dedlock Hall, 239. 

Mrs. Billickin, 239. 

(See Cleanliness), 108. 

(See Kitchen), 256. 

Boarding, 50. 

A China shepherdess (See 
Cupboard), 130. 
Housekeepino, 434. 

After marriage, 293. 
Housewife- The carving, 59. 
House-aqent- Casby, the, 236. 
House-top — Scenes from Todgers', 

237. 
Household— A loom in the, 274. 
House-front — Like au old beau, 
236. 



Howler— Kev. Melchisedeck, 296. 
Hubble— Mrs., Description of, 86. 
Huckster— The stall of Silas Wegg, 
239. 
Mr. Wegg, 240. 
Human Ills— The world full of wisl- 

tations, 240. 
Human Help — And God's forgive- 
ness, 240. 
Humanity— Its extremes, 240. 
Humbugs— Official, 240. 

Social, Miss Mowcher's opin- 
ion, 240. 
Humility— A bully of, 62. 
(See Uriah Heep), 68. 
Of Uriah Heep, 241. 
Description of Carker, Junr., 
241. 
HuNOER — In an English workhouse, 
242. 
Before the French revolution, 

242. 
{See Restaurant), 397-8. 
HuNQRT Jurymen, 254. 
HuRRY— The advantage of a seem- 
ing, 218. 
HusBANDs~A tea-party opinion of, 
243. 
Mrs. Jlniwin's treatment of, 
243. 
HusBAND^A surly, 243. 

Pott, the subjugated, 243. 
Hypocrite— Moral bookkeeping of, 
243. 
Carker, the, 243. 
Quilp's description of a, 244. 
Pecksniff, as a, 244, 
Weller's opinion of a, 244. 
And Misanthropy, 309. 
His face, 182. 
{See Clergyman), 109. 
Hypocrisy, 244. 

And conceit, 244. 
Hytochondriac, 244. 
(Mr. Gobler), 245. 

I. 

Ideas, 480. 

Like money, to be shaken, 

167. 
A flow of, 245. 
Mr. Willet's cooking process, 

245. 
Penned up, 245. 
The association, 245. 
Idiot — Barnaby Rudge, 73. 
His affection, 10. 
In prison (See Night), 334. 
Idle Life— An, 245. 
Idlers- City, 245. 
Ignorance and Wealth — (See 

Country Gentleman), 119. 
Imagination— And Love, 280. 

A starved, 246. 
Imitation— Of expression, 178. 
Immortality— (/See Postboys), 870. 
Impartiality of the Sea, 428. 
Impertinence— Rebuked, 246. 
Imperturbability — Of counte- 
nance, 180. 
Improvement— (*S3« Railroad), 38&- 

388. 
"Impogician"— Sairey Gamp will 

not suflfer, 413. 
Impositions- Life to be protected 

from, 273. 
Impostors — Social, 246. 
Impressions— Of people; first, 246. 
Impudence and Credulity, 246. 
Incomprehensibility — The com- 

poimd interest of, 246. 
Income, 304. 
Indecision— Of character, 246. 

Sparkler's, 246. 
Indian— The noble, a delusion, 413. 
Individuality— (.S-ftc Lawyer), 266. 

(^ee Bank Officials), 35. 
Indigestion — Love and religion, 

395. 
Indifference, 247. 
Industry— Bees as models of, 41. 
lNFANi-8— (i'e* Baby). 30. 31. 
Influence— Of the dead, 134. 
Ofeventaonllfe, 272. 



Influence— Of woman, 280. 
Of association, 25. 
The mellering influence ol 

eating, 167. 
SUent, 219, 
Kind, 247. 
lN.rusTicE — To children, 91. 

(See Innocent Offenders), 250. 
To the Jews, 254. 
Inn— (/See Landlord), 256. 

Hotel, Tavern, etc. (See Bar- 
room), 36. 
{See Hotel). 
An EngUsh. 247. 
f The Maypole, 247. 
A roadside, 247. 
Memories of an old, 248. 
Scenes in au, 248. 
An unwholesome, 249. 
An ancient apartment in an, 

249. 
Boom in an, 249. 
A wayside, 249, 
Inns— Of Europe, 247. 
Innocence- The affectation of ad- 
vice, etc., 249. 
And guilt, 250. 
Innocent Offenders — Public in- 
justice to, 250. 
Hasty judgment of the, 250. 
Innovation — Opposed {See Tod- 
gers's), 328. 
{See Railroad), 386. 
Inquisitiveness, 64, 250. 

Of lawyers, 267. 
Inquisitive Women, 535. 

Eyes, 178. 
Inquisition — The tortures of the, 

250. 
Insanity— In dreams, 157. 
Insolvency— Court of, 121. 
Institutions— Banking, 35. 
INSTINCTS—Of animals, 16. 

And prejudices of woman, 

534. 
{See Affection?), 10. 
Insult— 'I'o Pickwick, 11. 
Insurance Company— A Life, 271. 
Intellect— And Blindness, 4i8. 
Blighted by cruelty, 251. 
Interest and Convenience, 247. 
Interviewing, 311. 
Invalid — (^ee Hospital ; Sick; 
Fever). 
Philosophy of an, 251. 
Tim Linkinwater'a friend, 

252. 
Reveries of, 252. 
Inventor— (/See Doyce), 66. 

Character of Daniel Doyce, 

253. 
Encouragement of, 253. 
Invention and Discovery— The 

mental property in, 252. 
Iron Works- (/See Forge), aud Fac- 
tory, 184. 
Irving— Washington, 30. 
Italy— Its lessons to the world, 

252, 
Italian— Buildings and streets, 34, 
Churches, beggars in, 41. 
Beggars, 42. 
IvT Green— The, 253. 



Jack- The sailor, 408. 
Jaogers- Mr., the lawyer, 68, 968. 

At home. 265. 
Jarley's Waxworks, 606. 
Jarndyok v. Jarndyoe, 126-7-8. 

His growlery, 21. 

(.See Courts). 
JiNOLE — Deacription of, 69. 
Jealousy— Of MantJilini. 283. 

Of Mrs. SuaKsby, 74, 75, 263. 
Jkllyby — Mrs.. X>'^. 

The homo of Mrs., 221, 223. 

Mrs., dinner with, 152. 

On mlsslonB. 311. 

" The husband of Mrs.," 355. 
Jemmy— Dismal, 66. 
Jkwkluy, '291. 
Jews— liijustico to the. 254. 
..Jo"— The outcast. 360, 361. 



JO' 



5M 



LONDON 



"Jo " — His ignorance, 350. 

The death of, 141. 

The outcast, 52. 

And ReT. Mr. Chadband, 109. 

(See Graveyard), 213. 
JOBLEfG, 299. 

His seedy attire, 158. 
Joe — The fat boy, expression of, 
177. 

The fat boy, 190, 191. 
Joe Gabgebt — Mrs., on a Banix>age, 
391. 

The writing of, 541. 

The gentleness of his hand, 
217. 

And Pip, 67. 

His opinion of an inn, 249. 

His dress, 158. 

Study of the alphabet, 170. 
Jokes — Upon public men, 254. 
JoKEE— Tibbs as a, 77. 
JoiXT, 289. 

JoLLiTT— Of Mark Tapley, 288, 289. 
JosAS Chtzzlzwh, 299. 
JoRKrvs — The silent partner, 69. 
JorR>-ET— (6ee Ride). 
JuiKJE — (See Court), 124. 

The Lord Chancellor, 126. 

And witness in Court, 124. 

Of horse^esh, 254. 
JxntrES — Bumble's opinion of, 254. 
JrTBTMAX— His examination, 124. 

Himgry, 254. 
JCET, 254. 

Justice — A picture of, 283. 
In America, 254. 



Keswigs— Mr., on jokes, 254. 

Mr. and Mrs. (See Baby), 31. 

Mrs., as a dazzler, 193. 
Ketixe— An aggravating, 264. 

And cricket, 254. 

Boiling a, 255. 

The song of the, 255. 
ExsDRED Vices, 499. 
ExsT)>rES3 — {See Influences), 247. 
ExsG Leab— An example of benevo- 
lence, 46. 
Eiss— A cold, 256. 
Kisses— Lips and, 255. 
EissrsG — Mark Tapley's foreign 

manner, 255. 
Kit LEABKrsG to •write, 541. 
Kite— Mr. Dick and his facts, 256. 
KiTCHES — Of Clemency Newcome, 

256. 
KnTEBBEEL— Charles, his expres- 
sion, 178. 

Description of, 69. 

Mrs., description of, 86. 
KsimsG, 256. 
Kboos, 69. 



La Cbzevt— Miss, on a cross-grain- 
ed man, 283. 
Miss, her art, 23. 
Labor— (See Working People), 536, 
537. 
The curse on Adam, 49. 
Clerical, 341. 

The evils of English, 256. 
Lakp, 256. 

(See Light at Night), 270. 
Lakdlokd— A New England, 256. 
John wmet, the, 257. 
Pancks and the, 257. 
[See Inn), 257. 
Revenge of Pancks, 257. 
Languages— An acquaintance with, 
259. 
The difficulties of a foreign, 

259. 
Of lovers; its condensation, 

281. 
A. dismal, 199. 
Lakbscape — (See Scenery), 28. 
Lasterx— A queer (See S<aenoe), 

426. 
Last Word, 536. 
Laugh— Of Mr. Willet, 180. 
The melodramatic, 259. 



Laugh— 259. 

An enjoyable, 259. 

A sorrowful, 259. 

An internal chuckle, 259. 

The contagion of a, 259. 

A hoarse, dramatic, 8. 
Laughter— Kit's philosophy of, 88. 

And good humor, 259. 

John Browdie's, 259. 

Of Major Bagstock, 259. 
Lausdresses, 260. 
Laura BBrDGiiAS — The mute, 49. 
Law— The majesty of, 260. 

An excuse for, 260. 

The fictions of, 260. 

The hardship of the, 260. 

Houses involved in, 236. 

Boythom's opinion of, 128. 

A suit in (See Courts), 12&-7. 

Betsey Trotwood's opinion of, 
129. 

303, 306. 

Offices— The loneliness of, 22. 

Stationer, Snagsby, the, 260. 

A game of chess, 260. 

A joke, 260. 

A married m^i's opinion of 
the, 261. 

A muddle, to Stephen Black- 
pool, 261. 
Lawyer — Snitchey, the, 74. 

(See Court, Insolvent), 121. 

(See Courts and Lawyers), 
121. 

In Court, 120, 121, 122, 124, 
125, 127. 

Fis compliments, 115. 

(See Sampson Brass), 62. 

Mr. Jaggers, 68-9. 

Spenlow, the, 75. 

His view of children, 92. 

Tholes, the, 79. 

Stryver, the, 76. 

An imperturbable (See Tulk- 
inghom), 180. 

Mr. Fogg, 67. 

328 

Offices at night, 262. 

Without brains, 262. 

His office, 262. 

Inns of, 262. 

The old, 262. 

Tulkinghom, the, 263, 

The office of Sampson Brass, 
264. 

The office of Yholes, 264. 

SaUy Brass as a, 264. 

Jaggers in court, 265. 

Jaggers at home, 265. 

Office of Jaggers, 265. 

His enjoj-ment of embarrass- 
ments, 265. 

His office, clerks, etc., 266. 

His individuaUty, 266. 

And client, 2tj6. 

Appearance of Serjeant Snub- 
bin. 266. 

Alwavs inquisitive, 267. 

And " client— Dodson and 
Fogg. 267. 
Lawtebs — Their own prescrip- 
tions, 267. 

Like undertakers. 267. 

Their distrustful nature, 267. 

Clerks and offices, 267. 

Office of Snitchey & Craggs, 



Clerk of, 261, 108. 

Clerks at lunch, 262. 
Law-tebms — Sam Weller on, 266. 
Leaves — Autumn. 174. 

A gust of tears, 29. 
Leave-takexg, 268. 
Lectures, 395. 
Ledgers— Old, 60. 
Legs— Simon Tappertit'F. 269. 

Of Tillv SlowbOT, 26Q. 

269, 29:3. 

Caleiidars of distress, 93. 

Like a roll of flannel, 269. 

Crooked. 383, 

{See Shakspeare), 434. 

Effect of love on Toots', 275. 

Just come, 268. 



Legs — (See Drunkenness of Peck- 
sniff i, 162. 
Legacies— Hankering after, 288. 
Legislaxop^- American, 263. 
Lessoxs— Of Christmas. 96. 

Of depravity. 145. 
Letter — {See Valentine). 496. 

From Fanny Squeers, 269. 
LETTER-wRirrsG-^Peggotty's. 269. 

Of Mr. Weller, on the death 
of Mrs. W.. 139. 
Letter- WRITER— The begging, 43. 
Lexicon- A dropsical, 50. 

LiBERTT EN* AMERICA, 269. 

Library- An unsocial, 269. 
Lies, 270. 

In a parenthesis, 67. •* 
LiPE— A cheerful view of. 251. 

The plug of {See Lillyvick), 
69. 

Its declinins years, 272. 

Its stationsr2T2. 

The influence of events, 272. 

A bargain across a counter, 
270. 

A burden to Sim, Tappertit, 
270. 

A chequered, 270. 

A contented, 270. 

An embodied conimdrnm, 
270. 

A game. 270. 

A muddle, to Stephen Black- 
pool, 271. 

A wasted, 271. 

And death, the inequaUtiea 
of, 137. 

Its un rewards {See Popular- 
ity), a36. 369. 

Its mysteries {See Suicide), 
467. 

Unre wards {See Nobody), 336. 

Assurance Company, office of 
a. 271. 

The melancholy side of, 272. 

The revenges of, 272. 

The river of. 272. 

Social distinctions of, 272. 

Transitions of, 272. 

To be protected from imposi- 
tions, 273. 

Pancks" ptilosophy of, 273. 

Tiggeideaof, 273. 
Light— At night, 270. 

{Sfe Candle), 57. 
Lighthouse. 270. 
Lights— The street, 270. 
Likexess— A. 273. 
LnxYTiCK— Mr.. 69. 
Letkixwater— Tim, his age, IL 

His friend. 252. 
Lioxs— Biped and quadruped, 47. 
Lips a2vd Kisses, 2&. 
LiRRiPER— Mr., description of, 69. 

Mrs., opinion of" Paris, 353. 
LrrERATTTRE- Mr. Britton's opinion 
of. 273. 

{See Reforms), 394. 
Ltttee Dorrit— Her devotion, 146. 

Uncle of, 65. 

Description of, S4 
Little Neix— And the old school 
master. 1-34. 

Night thouc:hts of, 336. 

In the churchvard, 135. 

(See Church va'rd), 103. 

{See Abbey). 5. 

Her fortitude. 90. 

{See Night), a33. 

Thouefits on death, 144. 

The love for, 277. 

On the road. 4S3. 

At the forge, 196, 199. 

Death of, 140. 

Funeral of, 204. 
Little People, 274. 

The qualities of, 274. 
LmiMER- Pattern of respectabili 

ty, 396. 
Lobley— The sailor, 70. 
Locksmith, 538. 
LoDGEB— Capt. Cuttle as a, 68. 
Logic — (See Opinion), 348. 
LoxET-rs-Ess— (See Bell), 45. 
LoxDOS, 274. 

Streets of, 316. 



LONDON 



666 



MODERATION 



London— Dust in, 165. 

The poor of, 129. 

Becreatious in, 393. 

A Bolitude, 449. 

Suburb of, 466. 

On Sunday, 469, 470. 

In summer, 467. 

At night {See Night), 334. 

Streets, 457-8-9. 

A fog in, 198. 

A dusty evening in, 174. 

Tom Pinch's ride to, 113. 

Shabbiness in, 274. 

In old times, 106. 
Loom— The household, 274. 
Lord Gordon, 68. 
Lobd'« Prayer— Jo's repetition of 

the, 142. 
Loss— Of children, 92. 

Of a wife, 524. 
Lost— Search for the, 274. 
LoYB — ^The disappointment of Dick 
Swiveller, 279. 

The disappointment of John 
Chivery, 280. 

The elements of its growth, 
280. 

The period of, 280. 

A school-mistress in, 274. 

A smouldering fire, 275. 

Alienated, 275. 

The consolation of disappoint- 
ed, 275. 

Unrequited, of Toots, 275. 

Oppressiveness of, 276. 

An outcast from a parent's, 
276. 

And appetite, 276. 

And tight boots, 276. 

Cymon Tuggs in, 276. 

First, of David Copperfield, 
277. 

For Little Nell, 277. 

Its sorcery, 278. 

Making; Pickwick's advice, 
278. 

John Chivery in, 278. 

Of Ruth and John Westlock, 
279. 

Of the Carrier for Dot, 218. 

Joe, the fat boy, in, 191. 

At school, 421. 

{See Needlework), 328. 

Among children, 93. 

Of children, 93. 

Pecksniffian, 205. 

Music the solace of, 197. 

Its expression (See Eyes of 
Ruth), 178. 

The advice of Mrs. Crupp, 
130. 

{See Affection), 9. 

Of home, 222. 

An embrace of, 172. 

Selfishness of, 434. 

Language of (^S'ee Vegetables), 
498. 
Lovers— Their power of condensa- 
tion, 281. 
Loveliness in Woman— The influ- 
ence of, 280. 
LowBY— Mr., the banker, 70. 
Lunatic— (»%e Madman), 281. 

Asylum — Au American, 281. 

His courtship of Mrs. Nickle- 
by, 281. 

{See Author), 27, 28. 
Lunch— Of Guppy, 167. 

{See Clerks at), 262. 
Lyons, 282. 



M. 

Machtnert- Oar-makIng, 282. 
MacStingkr— Mrs., 295, 318. 

Mrs., and Capt. Cuttle, 58. 
MaoChoaktimchild — The teacher, 
Madman— The raving of a, 282. 

(See Lunatic). 
Magistratk— An American, 283. 

Office of a, 283. 

A pompous, 265. 

A policM", 283. 

Grummer, the, 260. 



Magnate — Bounderby aa a local, 
283. 

A local, 66. 
Maggy, 86. 

Her hospital experiences, 230. 

Her idea of a theatre, 478. 
Maid — " Guster," Mrs. Snagsby's, 
85. 

TiUy Slowboy, 85. 
Man— An emaciated, 283. 

A surly, 283. 

Mr. Pecksnififs views of, 284. 

Of the world— Chesterfield as 
a, 88. 
Manhood— Its decay (See Dry Rot), 
164. 

Modest, 289. 

A vigorous (Boythorn), 284. 

A boisterous, 284. 

A useful and gentle, 284. 
Mankind — The vision of Gabriel 

Grub, 117. 
Manager- Cuttle as a business, 55. 
Manner — (See Asperity, Austerity, 
etc.), 27. 

(See Bluster), 48. 
Mantalini— Mr. (See Rage), 386. 

His characteristics, 285, 286, 
287. 
Manufacture— Oar making (See 

also Factory), 282. 
Manufacturing Town, 183. 
Maps— Bursting from walls, 232. 
Mark Tapley, 289. 

His opinion of the sea, 428. 

Kissing his coimtry, 255. 

His idea of joUy rooms, 19. 

Wants misfortune, 288. 

His opinion of Pecksniff, 288. 

Cannot do himself justice, 
288. 

No credit in being jolly, 288. 
Market— (Fleet), 290. 

French, 290. 

Covent Garden, 290. 

Salisbury, 290. 

Day, 290. 
Marigold— Dr., 192. 

His dress, 159. 
Marchioness— And Dick Swiveller, 
464, 465. 

The, at cribbage, 461. 
Marriage— (.See Valentine), 496. 

Of Walter and Florence, 102. 

Uncongenial, 493. 

Elder Weller on, 521. 

292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297. 

(^ee Weller), 513. 
Marley — His face, 180. 

Death of, 144. 
Marseillaise- The, 296. 
Marshalsea, 310. 
Martyrdom— Of children, 30, 93. 
Martin— Miss, description of, 86. 
Matrimony— (iS'ee Old Boys), 343, 
296. 

292, 296. 
Meagles— The home of, 220. 

Mrs., her face, 180. 
Meanness— (iS'ee Facie), 185. 
Measles— Figures a kind of ci- 
phering, 23. 
Meat— To be humored, not drove, 

55. 
Mechanism- The heart a, 219. 
Medicine — (See Physician), 357, 
358, 359. 
292, 298. 
Meeting- At Mrs. Weller's, 476. 
Meek— Mr., his protest, 80. 
Mell— The teacher, 417. 

Mr., the lliite player, 197. 
Melancholy, 145. 

It!* cure. 272. 
Melodramatic Laugh, 259. 
Memories— Of an old inn, 248. 

Flowin-r to eternal seau, 227. 

Of childhood, 01. 

Sad (See Ueniorse), 896. 

(fi'e* Christ ni(is), 98. 

Ofabattle-fleUl, :«. 

And rovori(!8 of the Pick, 2,52. 

ItP intlueuce on the face, 182. 

Of the dead, 1.'14. 

Influence ou grief, 10. 



Mephistopheles — Bagstock an 

overfed, 147. 
Merchant — A conceited (Se4 

Conceit), 115. 
Merdle — His style of shaking 
hands, 217. 

Mrs., her grammar, 211. 

His dinner in state, 153. 

Mr., death of, 1.39. 

Fall of (See Rich Man), 402. 

293. 
Merriment — (See Laughter), 259. 
Merrt People, 299. 
Meteoric Phenomena, 426. 
MiCAWBER— At punch, 382. 

Speech of, 300. 

His difficulties, 302, 304, 306. 

Description of. 70. 

299. 300, 301, 302, 303. 

Mrs., 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 
307. 

Advice of on money, etc., 9. 
Microscope— Eyes of a telescope 

and, 178. 
Mrs. Miff, 86. 
MiGGS, 86. 

306, 307, 313. 

Miss, and Simon Tappertit, 
187. 

Her expression, 181. 
Milestones. 307. 
Military Review, 307. 

Glory, 448. 
Mills — (See Factory-Town), 183, 

184. 
Mind— Blighted by cruelty, 251. 

(See Ideas), 245. 

Confused by drunkenness, 
164. (See also Drunken- 
ness.) 

Contusion of, 246. 

While half asleep, 30. 

A starved imagination, 246. 

A burdened, 214. 

A disordered, 193. 

Effect of poetry on, 364. 

A waning, 91. 

An active (Mrs. Snagsby), 250. 

The wanderings of the, 137. 

An excited, 177. 
Minns — Mr. Augustus (bachelor), 70. 
Miniature— In another's eyes, 179. 
Mint— The heart a roj'al, 219. 
Mint Juleps— And sherry cobblers, 

234. 
Mirth— Natural and fbrced, 205. 
Mirror— Its reflection, 150, 809. 

(^ee Apartment), 20. 
Misanthropes, 309. 

(See Cynics), 131. 
Miser— Scrooge, the, 73. 

Grandfather Smallweed, 74. 

(See Arthur Gride), 68. 

His avarice, 29, 30. 

(See Furniture, the home of, 
etc.), 204. 
Misery— Of solitude, 449. 
Mission— (>S<'<; Reformers), 394. 

(See Charity), 87. 
Missions of Life. 310, 311. 
Missionaries- Weller's opinion of, 

244. 
Missionary, 310. 
Misfortune, 310. 
Misfortunes— Of a bachelor, 33. 

Wisitations. 240. 

Of children. 91, 93. 

Coveted by Mark Tapley, 28& 
Mississippi Sunset, 472. 

River. 405. 
Mistakes ok Science, 426. 
Mistake— Pickwick In wrong bed 

room, 39. 
MiiiT—(See Fog), 198. 
Mob, 311. 

Shout with largest, 311. 

Kevolutitniary. 311. 

(See lU'Vointion). 400, 401. 

In John Wlllefs bur, 36. 

And fire. 194. 
MonPLE- Mr., 310. 
Model— Pluninicr's idea of a, 81. 

Hair and art. 312. 

ArtistH'. 312. 
Moderation— In drinking. 164. 



JffODEST GBEATNESS 


656 


OLD 


Modest Gbeatness, 313. 
Modesty— And blushes, 49. 


N. 


No NAWE—(5€e Nobody), 336. 
"No Thoroughparb "^'—(JSee Dick 


Of Toots, 37. 


Nadgett— (The secret man), 71. 


Swiveller), 541. 


Of self-respect, 396. 


Name-A sign, 325. 


Note— When found, make a, 58. 


Miss Tox'8 (See Nursery), 339. 


An unchristian, 325. 


Nurse— (A^ee Sairey Gamp), 84. 

The Marchioness, (See Swiv 


289, 313. 


Betsey Trotwood's objection, 


Monet— And its uses, 313. 


325. 


eller), 462. 


Barnaby's dream of, 313. 


A morsel of grammar, 325. 


Mrs. Pipchin, the, 337. 


A child's idea of, 313. 


An undesirable, 326. 


Characteristics of, 337. 


Lender, 314. 


A good, 326. 


A gentle, 337. 


Micawber's advice on, 9. 


(See Wilfer), 79. 


Mrs. Squeers as a, 338. 
Sairey Gamp as a, 338. 


And ignorance (^ee Wealth), 


Napoleonic Faces, 326. 


506, 507. 


Native— Bagstock's ; his dress, 159. 


Mercenary, 338. 
And child, 339. 


Euined by a legacy, 378. 


Nature— Not responsible for hu- 


And time, 481. 


man errors. 326. 


NmtsERY— Miss Tox in a, 339. 


(See Kich Man), 401, 402. 


Squeers' opinion, 326. 


Child in a, 339. 


And wit, 530. 


Child's love of, 326. 




(See Society), 448. 


(See Niagara), 332. 


O. 


MoNSTKosiTT— Wegg as a, 15. 


Description of, 38. 




Montague Tigg— Description of, 


In August, 26. 


Oab-making, 282. 


77. 


In autumn, 29. 


Oath— (5'ee Profanity), 380. 


MoNSBiGNEUK— Description of, 77. 
MooN-At sea (^ee Night), 334. 


Children of, 92. 


Of Mr. Peggotty, 339. 


The voices of, 29. 


Oaths— And words, 536. 


Morality— Of Pecksniff, 354. 


Navy Yard, 326, 327. 


Obituary— Of John Chivery, 280. 


Moral Responsibility — (See Deaf 


NEATNESS-Of Mrs. Tibbs, 238. 


By Joe, 364. 


and Dumb), 133. 


(See Kitchen), 256. 


Oblivion— Of death, 143. 


Moral Epidemics, 173. 


OfMr. Tartar, 17. 


Observation— In children, 90. 


Morgue— In Paii!>, 134. 


Necessity and Lawyers, 328. 


Obstinacy— Of donkeys, 156. 


Morning, 314, 315, 316, 317. 


Needlework— Love as a teacher 


Obscurity— Of ancestry, 16. 


Early Rising, 165. 
(-See Execution), 175. 


of, 328. 


Obstructions— In life and travel. 


Neglect— In childhood, 91, 92. 


339. 


Ride. 112, 402. 


Of opportunities (See Death), 


Occupations— Humanizing, 339. 
Offender- An innocent, 250. 


Mother, 317- 


137. 


Her domestic care (See Cup- 


Negro— Dance, 131, 409. 


Office— Reminiscences of a law, 


board), 130. 


Coachman, 111. 


266. 


Her gratitude, 211. 

The Tittle (See Orphans), 350. 


Neighborhood, 290. 


Candidates for, 171. 


A city, 237. 


OfMr. Fip8,21. 


The death of a, 143. 


Repulsive, 457. 


Of Sampson Brass, 264. 


Mother's— Pride, 317. 


Of houses, 232, 236. 


Of Jaggers, 265. 

Of Snitchey & Craggs, 268. 


Love, 318. 


In the suburbs, 224. 


Virtues visited, 318. 


An ancient, 328, 330. 


Of the Cheeryble Brothers, 


Motives— {.See Interest and Con- 


Five Points, New York, 329. 


106. 


venience), 247. 


An irregular, 329. 


A lawyer's, by candlelight, 


Mould— The undertaker, 201, 494. 


A foul, 329. 


339. 


Mr., philosophy of, 201. 


"Its influences," 329. 


A smeary, 339. 


Mountain— (.See Alps), 12. 


Nell— Night thoughts of, 336. 


An intelligence, 339. 


Water, 318. 


(>ee Night), 333. 


A business, 340. 


Mourning Garb, 318. 


(.See Little Nell.) 


The circumlocution, 340. 


Mouth— Its expression (^^ee Mrs. 


At school, 418. 


Defence of the circumlocu- 


General), 179. 


Her country journey, 119. 


tion, 340. 


A post office (See Wemmick), 


"Never Mind," 330. 


Trials of the circumlocution, 


79. 


Newgate, 374. 


341. 


(See Papa), 353. 
"MoviN ON, Sir,"'- (.%e Boy), 52. 
MowcHER— Miss, on rouge, 408. 


Newman Noggs— His face, 180. 


Aspirants for (The Barnacles), 


(See Clerk), 108. 


341. 


Newcome, Clemency— Her kitch- 


Holders (The Barnacles), 342. 


Miss, on social humbugs, 240. 


en, 256. 


Of lawyers, 262, 264, 267. 


Miss, description of, 86. 


Newspaper— (.S'e^ Advertisements), 


Of clerks, 108. 


Mbs.— Markieham, 86. 


8,9. 
A diminutive reader of, 330. 


The loneliness of law, 22. 


General, 85, 179. 


Official— (.See Magistrates), 283. 
(See Dingwall), 65. 


F's aunt, 83. 


A smeared, 330. 


Muddle— The law a, 261. 


News— Its rapid circulation, a30. 


Bank, 35. 


Life a, 271. 


Newsboy— Adolphus Tetterby^ 330. 


Humbugs, 240. 


MuGBY— Boy at, 52. 


New York— Streets of, 329, 331. 


(Alderman Cute), 842. 


MuBDSTONE— Miss, description of, 
82. 


The approach to, 105. 
Five Points, 329. 


The village, 342. 
The beadle, 342. 


Mr., description of, 71. 


New South Wales Gentility, 


The nursery of, 342. 


Religion of, 395. 


145. 


Barnacle at home, 342. 


Murder— (.S'ee Revolution), 399. 


New Year, 542. 


Barnacle, the public, 843. 


Murderer— Death of, 318. 


Niagara, 331. 


Ohio River— Scenery, 404. 


Discovered, 320. 


NicKLEBY— Ralph, the usurer, 495, 


Old Age— The duties of, 11. 


Fears of, 321. 


496. 


A youthful, 11. 


Fascinations of, 321. 


Mrs., and the lunatic, 281. 


In a poor-house, 230. 


Purpose of, 321. 


Mrs., on night-caps, 336. 


343. 


Phantoms of, 322. 


Night— A light at, 270. 


The vanity of, 343. 


Philosophy of, 322. 


And morning (See Dawn), 133. 


Old Bailey— The, 120, 375. 


Music— Snore, 323. 


Bells at, 45. 


Old— Boys, 343. 


Serenade, 323. 


School at, 416. 


Coaches, 112. 


Sampson Brass's, 323. 


Storm at, 455. 


Clerk (See Chuffey), 64. 


Sympathy of, 323. 
Overture, 324. 


Birds of prey, 427. 
832, 333, 334. 


Clothes (See Shop), 344, 441. 
Couple, 345. 


Definition of, 324, 


Walks, 335. 


Edifices (See Churches), 103. 


Its associations, 324. 


Fancies, 335. 


Fashioned bank, 35. 


Power of, 324. 


Thoughts, 336. 


Firm. 347. 


Of crickets, 221. 


Caps. 336. 


Houses {See House and 


Of the water ; a Sunday tune. 


Nipper— Miss ; her sayings, 472. 


Home), 


205. 


NoAKES— Percy, Esq., 71. 


Ledgers, the smell of, 60. 


Of the kettle and cricket, 254, 


Nobility, 336. 


Lady, 346. 


255. 


Nobody— Story of, 336. 


Maid, 846, 347. 


(See Song), 450. 


NoGGS— Newman, 72. 


Man, death of an, 141. 


(See Ship), 435. 


Noses— In art, 336. 


Man, the conventional, 345, 


The street singer, 460. 


337. 


346. 


(See Organ), 349, 350. 
Musician- Mr. Mell, 197. 


Nose— Mixed or composite, 336. 


Memories (See Sea), 429. 


(See Features), 192. 


People, Swlveller's opinion 


Mutes— (i'ee Blind), 49. 


An interrogative, 178. 


of, 346. 


Mybtert, 324, 325. 


As if touched by the linger of 


People, obstinacy of, 346. 


And Love, 280. 


the devil, 179. 


Times, 346. 



OLD 



687 



POOR 



Old— Wine, 529. 

Woman, 531, 533. 

Women, a type of good, 348. 
Olivbb Twist— Apprenticeship of, 
22. 

Among the coffins, 495. 
Omee — Mr., his philosophy of old 
age, 11. 

Mr., his want of breath, 25. 

Mr., his short breath, 65. 

Mr., his cheerful philosophy, 
251. 
Omnibus, 31:8. 

Opekativks— (i^ee Factories), 184. 
Opinion— Of the world, 539. 

A unanimity of, 348. 

How changed, 348. 

A self-important {See Expres- 
sion), 178. 
Opportunities — Lost, 348. 

Neglected, 216. 
Oppkessiveness — Of cares, 59. 
Obacle— The village, 348. 

The medical, 358. 
Oeatorx— Of Rev. Mr. Chadband, 

109. 
Oeatob— A windy, 349. 

A British, 349. 
Organ— Tom Pinch at the, 349. 

Its melody, 350. 
Organist, 350. 

Ornaments— Of a home, 220, 224. 
Orphans, 350. 

Dress of Oliver Twist, 158. 
Outcast— Jo, 350, 351. 

Betty Higden, 351. 

An, 352. 

From a parent's love, 276. 

Jo, the, 52. 

(See Homelessness), 226. 

{See Night), 333. 
Overfed — A pauper, 166. 
Oysters- And poverty, 371. 

(^ee New York), 331. 



Pain— To a sleeper {See Guilt), 215. 

Painters- {.See Art), 23. 

Paint— Miss Mowcher's opinion of, 

408. 
Panic — Intoxication of, 353. 
Pancks— The collector, 114. 

His business motto, 55. 

His opinion of a broker, 54. 

72,310. 

Like a porcupine, 179. 

His philosophy of life's 
duties, 273. 

On reference, 394. 

And the Patriarch, 257. 
Pantry— (5'ee Cupboard), 130. 
Papa — As a mode of address, 353. 

Potatoes, poultry, prunes, and 
prism, 179. 
Paralysis- Sir L. Dedlock, 353. 
Pardiggle— Mrs., 356. 
Pardiggle's Mission, 311. 
Paris — Mrs. Lirriper's opinion of, 
353. 

The ghosts of the Morgue, 
134. 
Parliament— The national duet- 
heap, 353. 

A member of, 353. 
Partner — The silent, 69. 

Scrooge as a business, 144. 
Parting and Meeting, 352. 
Party — Devotion to, 170. 

On the river, 405. 

A fashionable, 188. 

A social, 352. 
Passions — Influence of bad, 354. 
Pastime— Of the aristocracy, 23. 
Patience and Gentleness, 146. 
Patient — In a hospital, 229. 

Baby, 32. 
Patriotism— (.Sfee Revolution), 400. 

Of Miss Proas, 352. 

Of the Barnacles, 341. 
Patbons and Patronwwes — BoflSn's 

opinion of, 352, 
PauIi— At school, 415. 

His idea of money, 313. 
On the aoa-shore, 428. 



Paul's Reverie, 324. 
Pauper— An overfed, 166. 

The dead, 211. 
Peace— At home, 226. 
Pecksniff— As a hypocrite, 244. 

Mark Tapley's opinion of, 288. 

As a moral man, 354. 

Drunk, 162. 

Making love, 205. 

His forgiveness, 198. 

His views of man, 284. 

The horse, 228. 

His feelings, 192. 

Throat of, a54. 

Miss Cherry, face of, 182. 

Conscience of, 117. 

And his daughters, 354. 

Family party, 81. 
Pecksniffian— Morality, 354. 

Traits, 354. 

Tears, 477. 
Pedigree— Influence of time upon, 

355. 
Peggotty, 82. 

Mr., his face, 181. 

Oath of, 339. 

" Barkis is willln," 37. 

Her letter writing, 269. 
Peeoher— Miss, the schoolmistress, 

274. 
Pell— Solomon {See Court, Insol- 
vent), 122. 
Penitence — Extra superfine (writ- 
ing), 355. 
People— First impressions of, 246. 

Like languages, 259. 

Little, 274. 
Personal Descriptions— (iSee Char- 
acters), 31. 

{See Features), 192. 
Pets— Children as, 92. 

At school, 417. 
Petrifaction — A widow glaring, 

179. 
Pew, 355. 
Pew-opener, 294. 

Mrs. Miflf, the, 86. 
Phantom— (5'ee Chair), 60. 
Phantoms — Of the bells, 45. 
Philadelphia— Description of, 105. 

Eastern Penitentiary, 376. 
Philanthropy — Gunpowderous, 
355. 

As a platform manoeuvre, 356. 

Beggars in name of, 356. 
Philanthropists — {See Reformers). 

{.S-ee Charity), 87. 

Mrs. Crisparkle, 355. 

At dinner, 152. 

Mrs. Jellyby at home, 221. 

The child of a, 90. 

Mrs. Jellyby, 355. 

Honeythunder, 355. 

Traits of, 355. 

Mrs. Pardiggle, 356. 

Phrenological formation of, 
357. 
Philosopher— Puzzled, 426. 
Philosophy — Of life's duties, 
Pancks', 273. 

Squeers on, 357. 

Of Sam Weller, 514. 

Of Dick Swiveller, 463. 

Of an invalid, 251. 
Photographs — {.S'ee Lirriper), 69. 
Phrases — Like fireworks {See Con- 
ventional), 118. 
Physician— (5'ee Poor), 369. 

{See ChiUip, Dr.), 217. 

Bob Sawyer, 357, 388. 

The oracular, 358. 

A fashionable, 359. 

The. 359. 

A blessing, 359. 
Physiognomy— Of a hotel, 369. 

Of door-knockers, 166. 
Pianist — {See Fashionable Party), 

188. 
Pickwick— Policy of, 311. 

His antiquarian discovery, 

300. 
Sara Weller's opinion of, 360. 
The antiquarian oontroversy, 

361. 
In a rage, 361. 



Pickwick— 360. 

Insult to, 11. 
After wine, 152. 
Inebriated, 382. 
On trial, 125. 
In court, 124. 
And the lawyers, 267. 
At whist, 523. 
At Bath, 506. 
And the driver, 228. 
Advice on love-making, 278. 
In the wroui^ bedri>om, 39. 
PiCKWicKiANS'— Sense, 360. 
Drunk, 162. 

Before a magistrate, 260. 
Pictures— In the sunset, 472. 
{isee Art), 23, 24. 
Of depravity, 145. 
Pie— A weal {See Eating), 167. 
Pig— An American, 362. 
Pigs, 362. 
Pike-keepers, 309. 
Pillow— (.See Nurse), 338. 
Pinch— Tom, 72, 289, 290, 291. 

Tom, the purity of his natar^ 

218. 
Tom, his expression, 181. 
Tom, his ride, 402. 
Tom, at the organ, 349, 350. 
Pioneer- Western, 362. 
Pipe, 445, 446. 

Pictures in the smoke, 363. 
Pipe Filling— A fine art, 363. 
Pip— Bis family gravestones, 213. 
His misfortunes at dinner, 
152. 
Pip and Joe— Dress of, 158. 

{See Eating), 166. 
Pip— His fight, 194. 
Pipchin— Mrs., and the cat, 59. 

Mrs., her educational system, 

167. 
Mrs., the home of, 222. 
Mrs. {See Nurse), 337. 
Pipkin— Nathaniel, 72. 
Plagiaeism— Dramatic, 363. 
Planter— The home of a Southern, 

233. 
Plate-making, 361. 
PLATroBM — Of other people'g 

corns {See Corns), 118. 
Pleasubes of Chbistmas, 95. 
Plummeb— C&leb, his exaggeration, 
174. 
Caleb, his loving deception, 

278. 
Caleb, the home of, 234. 
Pocket— Mrs. Sarah, 180. 
PoDSNAP— (5ee Dinner-party), 150. 
Miss, the fashionable, 90. 
Their exclusiveness, 188. 
{See Conceit), 115. 
Poetical Obituary— By Joe, 364. 
Poetby— Weggs' opinion of, 864. 

Of charity, 87. 
PoGBAM- Elijah, 14, 72. 
Poison, 297. 

Police— (/See Detective), 146. 
English detective, 365. 
Magistrate, 283. 
Oflice, 365. 
Polish and Depobtmknt, 144. 
Politeness— Austerity in, 27. 
Politician— Pot-house {See Ora- 
cle). 348. 
Pot-house {See Orator), S49. 
{See Oftico), 341, 342, 343, 365, 
366. 
Politics— Weller at an election, 
170, 171. 
In America, 116. 
Political Economy— Toots on, 866. 
Pomp — Keprcfented by a coach- 
man, 113. 
Pomposity— Sap^ea a type of, 866. 

Its influence, 366. 
Pony— A theatrieal. 3()6. 
Poou— Their characteristics, 86A. 
Plea of the. 867. 
Homes of the, 367. 
Ilo!>pital scenes among the, 

367. 
And unfortunate, voice of, 

3(>6. 
Parish, 368. 
To bo cultivated, 368. 



POOR 



558 



REVENGE 



PooB— Patients, 369. 

Public duty to the, 368. 
Tenderness of the, 369. 
Kindness to each other, 369. 
Their reverence for old age, 

11. 
Charity of the, 87. 
Their love of home, 222. 
Men, and poor women, the 

difference, 207. 
Of London (See Crime and 

Filth), 129. 
Relations, 395. 
PopuLAEiTT— (Slurk, the editor), 
369. 
(See Ride), 402. 
PoKTEE— Toby Veck, the, 369. 

A solemn, 370. 
POKTBAITS— (.See Art), 23, 24. 
PosiTivENESs — Mrs.Pratchett's,370 
Post Boys — And donkeys, 370. 
Pott — Submissiveness of Mr., 206. 
Mr., the editor, 72. 
His mode of writing an essay, 

173. 
His domestic aflaictions, 243. 
Potato — The charm of peeling (See 
dinner, Dick Swiveller's), 
148. 
{See cooking), 118. 
Potomac River, 453. 

POTTEET, 364. 
PouLTEY— (.S'ee Eagle), 165. 
Poverty— (^See Poor), 366, 367, 368, 
369, 370. 
Its straits, 207. 
(/See Five Points), 329. 
371. 

And oysters, 371. 
PowEE— Its attraction for low na- 
tures, 371. 
And will, 371. 
Insolence of newly acquired, 

371. 
Petty (See Official), 342. 
Of sublime intelligence, 466. 
Practical— Man (See tftilitarian), 
also 372. 
Men (See Gradgrind and 

Bounderby). 
Bore, 51. 
PRAiErE— Scenery, 425. 

"Of wild words," 636. 
Peayee — Cruncher on, 371. 
At sea, 436. 
Of Jo, 142. 
Pratchett — Mrs. (See Chamber- 
maid), 87. 
Preacher— His exhortations, 109. 
Preaching v. Practice— (^ee Law- 
yers), 267. 
Precepts— Of married ladies, 372. 
Precociousness — Of Smallweed, 

261. 
Predicament, 372. 
Preserving the Unities, 495. 
-American. 372. 
(See Popularity) 369. 

-A cause of death, 139. 
Pretenders— Social, 188. 
Pride, 372, 373. 

The expression of, 182. 
Come to grief, 373. 
Prim People— (5'ee Formal), 198. 
Primer— Or introduction to the art 

of coughing, 119. 
Principle — Skimpole's opinion 
of, 374. 
A man of (Weller), 374. 
Prison, 310. 

Baniaby in (See Night), 334. 
Prisonous, a street boy, 52. 
374, 375, 37ti, 377. 
Newgate, 374. 
Sunrise in. 374. 
French, 375. 
Old Bailey, 375. 
Discipline, 375. 
Solitary confinement in Amer- 
ican, 376. 
Prisoner— Before execution, 3T7. 
Old, 378. 
Dead, 379. 
Friendless, .379. 
Sampson Braes, 379. 



Prisoner— For debt (Weller's sto- 
ry), 379. 

Trial of a, 123. 

Death of the, 139. 

(See Court) 120. 
Privileges— (Coach), 297. 
PRizE-f iGHT— (.See Fight), 194. 
Procrastination— Micawber's ad- 
vice on, 9. 
Prodigies- Children as, 92. 
Prodgit— Mrs. (yS'ee Baby), 81. 
Profanity— Bark's adjectives, 7. 

(See Oath), 339. 

380. 

Of old Lobbs, ;^80. 
Professing Christians, 94. 
Professional Enthitsiasm, 380. 
Proofs— Smeared, 381. 
Property— Portable, Wemmick's 

advice, 200. 
Prosperity — Effect of (Mark Tap- 
ley), 381. 
Protection— From crime and im- 
position, 273. 
Protest— Of iMr. Meek, 30. 
Proverb— A flowing-bearded and 

patriarchal, 381. 
Provincialisms— Of America, 197. 
" Prunes and Prism "— (5ee Papa), 

353. 
Psychology— Of visions, 499. 
Public Men — Self-importance of, 
381. 

Duties of secretary, 381. 

Their feelings, 192. 

Must expect sneers, 254. 

In America, 14. 
Public— \^riters, 542. 

Display— The value of, 154. 

House (See Inn), 247. (See 
Inns and Bars). 

House, a dissipated- looking, 
235. 

Dinners, 151. 

Injustice to innocent offend- 
ers, 250. 
Pudding — Description of (See 
Christmas Dinner), 99. 

A successful, 381. 
Pugilist — A moral, 82. 

" Chicken," 381. 
Pulpit Slang, 443. 
pumblechook, 72. 
Punch— Micawber's, 382. 

Bob Sawyer's, 382. 

Its results, 382. 

Feeling, the groundwork of, 
382. 

The aroma of a, 23. 
Punishment— At school, 416, 417, 

422. 
PuppY-LovE— (.See School Days),420. 
Puritan— (;See Gordon), 68. 
Pursuit— Of the lost, 274. 
Purse— An empty, 383. 



Quack, 292. 

Quadrille— A trial to the feelings 
(See Dancing), 132. 

A negro, 131. 
QuAKERLY Influence— (^See City 

of Philadelphia), 105. 
Quale— As an admirer, 8. 
Quarrel, 296. 

(See Gamp), 410. 

(See " Never Mind "), 330. 
Quarrelsome Women, 530. 
QuiLP, 73. 

His expression, 181. 

His description of a hypo- 
crite 244 

His fight with Dick Swiveller, 
193 

At homp, 384. 

His domestic system, 884. 

Mrs., and Mrs. Jiniwin, 248. 

Death of, 138. 

Post-mortem examination of, 



Race-couese — Scenes upon a, 385. 
Races— Going to tlie, 384. 



Rage— Of Pickwick, 361. 
Rage— Its effervescence, 386. 

A madhouse style of maimer, 



Of Mr. Smallweed, 386. 
Raileoad — Construction of the, 386. 

A finished, 387. 

The course of, 388. 

Rush of the engine, 388. 

On a, 388. 

Preparations for a, 389. 

Train, 389. 

Arrival of the train, 389. 

Journey, in America, 389. 

Cars, in America, 390. 

Its responsibility, 390. 

Depot, 390. 
Rain— In the city, 390. 

Alter a, 390. 

A drizzly, 390. 
Rampage— Mrs. Joe on a, 391. 
Reading — A boy's, 391. 

Wopsle's manner of, 391. 

Words delicious to taste, 391. 

Mr. Wegg's difficulty in, 391. 

Dr. Blimber's style of, 392. 

Capt. Cuttle's style of, 392. 

On gin and water, 392. 
Readers— Of books, 50. 
Real and Mimic Lite — Its distinc- 
tions, 272. 
Rebuke — Of impertinence, 246. 
Reception— A cool, 301. 

An American, 392. 
Recreation — Gardening in Lon- 
don, 393. 

In London, 393. 
Red Tape, 340, 341, 393. 
Red-faced Men, 394. 
Referee- Weller on a, 141. 
Reference— Book of, 50. 
References, 394. 
Refinement— An evidence of, 394. 
Reflection — Capt. Cuttle's habit 

of, 215. 
Reformers- (/S'ee Child of Philan- 
thropist), 90. 

A party of female, 394. 
Reforms— PubHc, influence of lit- 
erature on, 394. 
Refrigerator — The noble (Se^ 

Austerity), 26. 
Relations— Poor, 395. 
Relics— Of Rome, 407. 
Religion — Austerity in, 27. 

Practical versus profes8ed,256. 

And lectures in New Eng- 
land, 395. 

A vent for bad humor, 395. 

Austerity in, 395. 

Indigestion, and love, 395. 

Austere, of the Murds tones, 
395. 

True and false, 396. 
Religious Experiences — Of 

Charles Dickens, 115. 
Reminiscences— Of school, 420. 

Of a convict, 117. 
Remorse— Of Mr. Dombey, 396. 
Reparation — Religious, of Mrs. 

Clennam, 396. 
Repining — Useless tears, 396. 
Resemblance— Family, 23. 
Reserve and Affectation, 397. 
Resentment— Mr. Buffle and the 

Major, 397. 
Respect, Self — The modesty of, 

396. 
Respectability— A pattern of (Lit- 

timer), 396. 
Rest— Tranquillity of, 397. 
Restaurant— Dinner in a, 153. 

(See Lunch), 262. 

(See Waiters), 502. 

(.See Inn), 247. 

Question of refreshment, 397 

A, 398. 

A French, 398. 
Restlessness — (See Conscience; 

117. 
Retribution, 398. 
Reticence— Of Mr. Chivery, 399. 

Of Mrs. General, 399. 
Revenge— Advertising a means of, 
8. 



BEVENGE 

ilEVENGE, 310. 

Bevebence — For science, &7. 
Eevebend Shepherd — Stigglns, 

the, 75. 
Ekvemes — ^And memories of the 

sick, 252. 
Review, 307. 

Eevolution — Hunger before the 
French, 24=2. 
Before the French, 399. 
Scenes in the French, 400. 
Mobs of the French, 401. 
Knitting -women of the 
French, 401. 
Rheumatism— rersMS Gout, 210. 

verstis Tombatism, 401. 
Rich Majj — His importance, 401. 
World's tribute to the, 402. 
His fall, 402. 
And poor, 402. 
Ride— Tom Pinch's (^See Coachman), 
113. 
Tom Pinch's morning, 402. 
In winter, 530. 
Riding — And walking, 504. 
RiDERHOOD — Kogue, drowned, 159. 
Rising — Early, 165. 
River— Of Ufe, 272. 

Scenes upon (See City, ap- 
proach to New York), 105. 
Compared to death, 143. 
At night {See Night), 334. 
Its treatment of the dead, 138. 
Scenery, the Ohio, 404. 
Mississippi, on the, 405. 
At evening, 403. 
A portal of eternity, 403. 
A midnight funeral, 404. 
Its foreknowledge of the sea, 

404. 
Scene, on the Thames, 403. 
Side (Docks, down by the), 154. 
Thief, 404. 
And ferry-boat, their moral, 

403. 
A dreary neighborhood by 

the, 405. 
A water party, 405. 
Sports, a rowing match, 406. 
Sports, water excursions, 406. 
P.0A8T ^iG—iSee Weather), 510. 
Rob the Grinder — A victim of 

education, 167. 
Rochester Bridge, 424. 
ROKESMITH— Mrs. John(*S'ee Needle- 
work), 328. 
Mrs. John — Her announce- 
ment of a baby, 32. 
Romance — Of charity, 87. 

Days of {See Old Times), 346. 
Rome — Its catacombs and graves, 59. 
Its past and present, 406. 
Its relics, 407. 
The Coliseum, 407. 
St. Peter's, 407. 
Its ruins, 408. 
Roofs — Oppressed by chimneys, 

106. 
Rooms — (.See Apartments), 17. 

Of Mr. Tartar, 17. 
Rosa Dartle, 533. 
'• Rosy and Balmy "—The, 280. 
Rouge — Miss Mowcher on, 408. 
RouNCEWELL — Mrs. the house- 
keeper of Dedlock Hall, 239. 
Routine— Of daily life, 216. 
RUDGE— Barnaby, 73. 
His raven, 48. 
His devotion, 10. 
Mrs., her expression of ter- 
ror, 182. 
ExjOG— Mr. and Mrs., 73. 
Ruins — {See "Abbey"), 5. 
Of a home, 224, 225. 
Of Home, 408. 

Tourists among (Mrs. Gene- 
ral), 408. 
Of old grave-yards, 103. 
Rumor — Popular, 408. 
Ruth— The iurtuence of her pres- 
ence, 280. 
And John WcBtlock, the love 

of. 270. 
The eyes of, 178. 
As a hiiusekL-eper, 237. 



569 



Sacbedness of Truth, 491. 
Sailor — "Poor mercantile Jack," 
408. 
Mr. Lobley, the, 70. 
Description of Sol Gills, 

410. 
Home of Sol Gills, 410. 
Sailoes — Their characteristics, 409. 
Dance-house, a, 409. 
Their associations (Docks), 
154. 
Saibey Gamp— And Betsey Prig, 
410. 
And Mrs. Harris, 411. 
Her observations, 411. 
On drinking, 412. 
On human anticipations, 412. 
On steamboats, 412. 
Will not suffer " impogician," 

413. 
{Ste Nurse), 338. 
84. 

And Mr. Mould, 201. 
Sale — Auction, Dombey, 25. 
Salutation— A hearty, 413. 

The conventional, 413. 
Sally Brass- Description of, 264. 

{See also Brass), 83. 
Sampson Brass convicted, 379. 
Sandwich — A boy between two 
boards, 9. 
A Mugby Station, 413. 
And entertainment, 413. 
Sarcasm- Its expression, 413. 
Satire— On pride of ancestry, 15. 
Sawbones, 514. 
Sawyer— Bob, 298. 

Experience of, 357, 358. 
Punch of, 382. 
Savage — The noble, a delusion, 

413. 
Sayings— Of Capt. Cuttle, 57. 
Scadder— (.See Speculator), 451. 
Scenes — Christmas, 95, 96. 
Scenery— (.See Alps), 12. 
Of a battle-field, 38. 
A western swamp, 424. 
(.See August), 26. 
Autumn, 28, 29. 
Country, 119, 424. 
From Rochester bridge, 424. 
Landscape, 425. 
Of an American prairie, 

425. 
On the Mississippi, 425. 

Cairo, 425. 
And weather, 426. 
Scholar— The new, 415. 
A poor, 415. 
Sissy Jupe's ignorance of 

facts, 415. 
A 415. 
ScHOOL^-Of*fact8(5'e« Facts, Grad- 
grind), 185. 
The Giadgrind, 169. 
Dr. Blimber'B, 168. 
A holiday in, 415. 
A jumble of a, 416. 
David Copperfleld at, 417. 
Of Dr. Blimber, 417. 
First hours in, 417. 
The village, 418. 
Of Squeers (Dotheboys' Hall), 

419. 
Influence of cruelty in, 420. 
Vacation, 421. 
Of facts, 423. 
Sohoolmaster— Squeers, the, 75. 
The good, 416. 
Dr. Blimber, 62. 
In England {See Edncatlon), 

168. 
Love, as a teacher, 421. 
The old, 4-21. 
The kind, 421. 

Bradley Heiidt^tone, the, 422. 
Creakle, the. 422. 
Mr. McClioakumchild, 422. 
423. 

And mixiresp, 423. 
ScnooLMisTiiKHs— Mi»B Peecher In 
love, 423. 
1 In love, 274. 



SHAKSFEABE 



School-room — And master {See 
Facte), 186. 
First memories of, 185. 
The old master and scholar, 
418. 
School-days, 416. 

A retrospect, 420. 
School-boy— Death of the, 420. 

Squeers on the diet of, 421. 
School-books- The, 421. 
Science— The miflakes of, 426. 
'• Where is it to !^top ? " 34. 
Cuttle's reverence for, 57. 
Scientist— (.See Chemist), 88. 
Scoundrels— Night birds of prey, 

427. 
Scrooge- (.See Death of Marley), 144. 
His opinion of ghosts, 208. 
In foul neighborhood, 329. 
Hia Christmas dinner, 99. 
Sea — Storm at, '427. 

An excursion party at, 427. 
Impartiality of the, 428. 
Mark Tapley's opinion of the, 

428. 
" On the bar," 428. 
The, 428. 
Breakers, 428. 
Voice of the waves, 428. 
And love, 428. 
Its associations, 429. 
In a storm, 429. 
At night (.See Night), 334. 
Captain, his face, 429. 
Scenery, 429. 
Shore, at the, 429. 
Sickness, misery of, 429. 
Sickness, 430. 
Seaport— (Dover), 429. 
Seaside— A scene at the, 430. 
Children at the, 431. 
The, 432. 
Views; approach to CalaiB, 

432. 
Views; landing at Calais, 432. 
Voyage, the end of a, 432. 
Seclusion — Mrs. Skewtou's Arca- 
dia, 119. 
Second-hand Cares — Like clothes, 
70. 
59. 

Furniture, 64. 
Secrets, 433. 

The bearer of, 71. 

Alawj'er the depositary of, 

263. 
Depositaries of, 433. 
Of humanity, -133. 
Possessor of (Suagsby), 433. 
Secretary, Private — His duties, 

381. 
Seediness— The genius of {See Insol- 
vent Court), 121. 
Segab, 445, 446. 
Self-deceit, 433. 
Selfishness, 483. 
In love, 434. 

{See Heart, an empty), 219. 
Self-imi'ortant Mkn, 56. 
Self-importance— (^Ve Egotism). 
Sentiments— Hollow, 94. 
Sentisei.— Sam Weller ai^ a, 434. 
Sepakations- In lile, 434. 
Seiueant Snubbin, 2G0. 
Sermons- Subjects lor, 466. 
Servant, 293. 

(See Waiters), .'iOl. 

(6Vc Footman, Butler, Walter, 

etc.), 2;i8. 
{See Otllce), 3:19. 
Tilly sluwboy as a, 86. 
Steerforth's, 896. 
Bngstock's {See Valet). 497. 
M iserics of housekeeping, 434. 
Skxton— And Little Nell, 1S5. 

(*«Onive-(lig-<r), 212. 
SuABBiNKsa — Of London people, 

274. 
Shabby-gentkkl People, 207, 446. 

{Sfe TlL'g). 77. 
Shadows— Of nieniory, 182. 

Evening, 434. 
Shakers- .Vinerican, 434. 
SuAKSPEAKE— Mr. Woirs Idea of, 
4M. 



SHAlf 



660 



STREET 



SsAM-{See Skimpole), 442. 
Shbrbt-Cobbleb — An American, 

435. 
Ship— A hymn on board, 435. 
At sea, 435. 
Cab-in of a, 435. 
An emigrant, 171, 172. 
First breakfast on, 205. 
Departure of an emigrant, 435. 
In a storm, 436. 
Prayer on board, 436. 
Preparations for departure, 

436. 
Scenes on board, 437. 
State-room of a, 437. 
Voice of the screw, 437. 
Steam, 441, 

Mark Tapley's jollity on, 439. 
• Night scenes on, 440. 
Scenes on, 440. 
Shipbuilding, 326. 
Ships— Their associations, 437. 

The rigging of, 437. 
Shtpwkeck— Capt. Cuttle's descrip- 
tion of a, 437. 
(Death of Ham), 438. 
Shekitf— (5ee Court), 120. 
Shop— A curiosity, 441. 
An old clo', 441. 
Tetterby's, 441. 
Shops — Of brokers, 54. 
Shorthand, 539, 540. 
Shows— Giants and dwarfs, 209. 
Shrewdness, 441. 
Sick— (In hospitals), 229, 230. 

(iSee Invalid), 252. 
Sick Eoom — Eeflections on a, 145. 
Sickness— Its hallucinations, 193. 
Of Johnny Harmon, 88. 
Of Dick Swiveller, 461. 
Of a child, 89. 
The suspense of, 441. 
Sigh, 442. 
Sign— A tobacco, 442. 

The ghost of dead businesses, 

442. 
"An out'ard sign," (Capt 

Cuttle), 57. 
Of a walking-stick shop, 273. 
SiKES — His dog {i>ee Dog, a Chris- 
tian), 155. 
Silence— (5^6 Keticence), 399. 
Silent Sympathy, 474. 
Simon Tappertit — His figure and 

dress, 76. 
Simplicity— Pickwick's, 357, 358. 

Of Captain Cuttle, 61. 
Sincerity, 442. 
Sincerity vs. Bluntness, 48. 
Singing, 289. 
Sinister Eyes, 178. 
Single Men, 33. 
Skettles, Sir Barnet — His art of 

acquaintance, 7. 
Skbwton, Mrs. — Her opinion of 
death, 136. 
Her Arcadia, 119. 
Death of, 136. 
Skimpole, Harold— His character, 
442. 
His philosophy of common 

sense, 114. 
Opinion of bees, 41. 
His idea of debt, 144. 
On trouble, 491. 
On principle, 374. 
Slammer — Dr., description of, 73. 
Slander — (See Press), 372. 
(See New York), 331. 
Of the unfortunate, 443. 
Slang— Of the pulpit, 443. 
Sleep — (See Fat boy). 

Of Pick^vick after dinner, 152. 

Swiveller on, 463. 

443, 444. 

After wine, 444. 

A refreshing (Sam Weller on), 

444. 
Dick Swiveller's " balmy," 

444 
Of Uriah Heep, 444. 
Snoring of Mr. Willet, 444. 
And dreams among the poor, 

444. 
In a stage coach, 445. 



Sleeve — Like a cloth sausage, 159. 
Sloppy— Description of, 73. 
Dress of, 159. 

His story of Johnny Harmon, 
88. 
Sluggishness — (See Drummle), 66. 
Slyme— Dilapidated, 446. 

Chevy, 74. 
Smallweed— Mr. (See Rage), 386. 
Description of, 74. 
Precociousness of, 261. 
SjVTELl — " A simoon of ham," 23. 
Smike— At Squeers', 419. 

Grave of, 212. 
Smile — A crowd of welcomes in 
every, 179. 
(See Sampson Brass), 62. 
Smiles— Description of, 445. 
Smoke, 445. 
Smoking, 446. 

Board and lodging, 446. 
The content of, 446. 
Snagsby— The law stationer, 260. 

Description of Mr. and Mrs., 

74. 
Mrs., jealousy of, 253. 
Her inquisitiveness, 250, 253. 
Snitchey and Craggs — The law- 
yers, 74, 261, 268. 
Snoring— (^See Sleep), 444. 
Snow, 508. 
Snowstorm, 509. 
Social — Distinctions, 272, 446. 
Humbugs, 240. 

Pretender {See Flamwell), 66. 
Tastes and habits, 475. 
Wit, a, 80. 

Ice of Podsnappery, 188. 
Impostors, 246. 
Pretenders, 188. 
Company, a, 80. 
Gradations (See Life), 272. 
Socially Dilapidated — Chevy 

Slyme, 446. 
Society, 293. 

The duty to, 165. 

The passports to, 246. 

The beggars of, 42. 

Fashionable, 188. 

Bachelors in, 33. 

The g3rpsies of, 50. 

Man, 71. 

In England (See Revolution), 

399. 
Of girls, delightful but not 

professional, 209. 
Its vices, 446. 
At dinner, 447. 
Fashionable, 447. 
Mr. Merdle, the rich man, 

448. 
Fashionable young ladies, 448. 
Rich man of, 448. 
Societies— Learned, 361. 
Sofa-bedstead, 41. 
Sold — By friends and society, 448. 
Soldiers — Military glory, 448. 
Military review, 307. 
A swarm of, 449. , 

The corporal, 449. 
SoLiTtrDE— Of a city crowd, 105. 
(See Crupp), 130. 
(See Night), 333. 
Blessings of, 449. 
Misery of, 449. 
Solitary Men— (A^ee Friendle88),201. 
Sol Gills, 410. 
Solemn Eye — A, 178. 
Solemnity- -In dancing, 132. 
Song — Of the kettle, 255. 
An unearthly, 450. 
" Table beer of acoustics," 
450. 
Sorrow— A teacher, 450. 
SoxxNDS — And scenes of a city, 105, 

106. 
SouLLESSNEss— (5ec Heart, an emp- 
ty), 219. 
SowEBBEBRY — The Undertaker, de- 
scription of, 75. 
Spawoles — By daylight, 34. 
Sparks— In a Christmas fire, 450. 
Sparkler— His idea of Dante, 133, 



Sparsit— ]Mrs., 450. 

Spartan Boy. 52. 

Spasms — Inquisitiveness, a cure 

for, 250. 
" Spazzums "—Of Mrs. Crupp, 130. 
Speciality— Sparkler's idea of a, 

451. 
SPECiHiATORs- Scadder, the Ameri- 
can, 451. 
Mr. Lammle's friends on 

Change, 45i. 
In charity, 87. 
Speculations— In shares, 455. 
Speech— A morsel of, 452. 

''The gift of gab," 452. 
Micawber's, 300. 
Public (See Addresses), 7. 
Spenlow, the Lawyer— Descrip. 

tion of, 75. 
Spinster — Bagstock's opinion of 
Miss Tox, 452. 
Influence of young men on, 
452. 
Spiritual Growth— Of dead chil- 
dren, 452. 
Spite, 452. 

Spitting— In America, 13. 
Sponge- (See Skimpole), 442. 
Sports— On the river, 406. 
Sportsman— Winkle as a, 452. 
Spring, 452. 

Time, 453. 

Time ; an evening in, 174. 
Squeers— His expression, 181. 
Description of, 75. 
His opinion of '* wisitations," 

240. 
On philosophy, 357. 
His advice on appetites, 22. 
His bruises, 55. 
Menagerie of, 419. 
Fanny ; a letter from, 269. 
Mrs. (See Nurse). 338. 
Squod— Phil. ; description of, 75. 
Stage— Adapted to the, 453. 

Coach, 445. 
Starched People, 453. 
Stars— Children of the, 92. 

Their alphabet yet unknown 

453. 
The eyes of angels, 453. 
(See Night), 332, 333. 
Starvation— Death by, 141. 
Stationer— The law, 260. 
Stations— In life, 272. 
Statistics, 292. 

Steaiuboat — An American, 453. 
Night scenes on the PotoiB» 

453. 
Mrs. Gamp's opinion of, 41? 
In the harbor, 454. 
Steamer— Crossing the Chaai^L^L 
Steam-engine— A thinkir^jj, 4j55. 
Steamship, 441, 

Steebforth— (.Jee Graooof a gentle- 
man), 208. 
His respectable •OP'<'ant, 396. 
Stenography, 539, 540. 
Stifleb— Dick Swivellfit experien- 
ces a, 279. 
Stiggins— And Sam MFcUtsr, 517, 518. 
Description of the Reverend 

Shepherd, 76. 
Weller's opinion of, 244. 
On the coach. 520. 
As a borrower, 520. 
Sttltstalking- Lord (See Austeri- 
ty), 26. 
Stocks and Bonds ~ The result of 

shares, 455 
Stomach — Influenced by tight 
boots, 50. 
The rattling, 357, 358. 
Stone-cutter— Durdles, the, 66. 
" Stop Thief," 479. 
Storm — Approach of a, 455. 
455, 456. 
At night, 455. 
At sea, 427, 429, 436, 456. 
Thunder, 457. 

Its influence on human pas- 
sions, 457. 
Strategy— Of Mr. Weller, 521. 
Street— A dull, 457. 



STREET 



661 



TOMBSTONES 



Stbeet— A gloomy, 457. 

A London, 457. 

A quiet, 458. 

Houses in a, 233. 

Of perisMng blind honseB, 
236. 

An Italian, 34. 

Lights, 270. 

(See Obstructions), 339. 

Death in the, 138. 

Boy, 52. 

Pig, New York, 362. 

Crowd and mud, 458. 

In London, 316, 458. 
Bteeets — London, at night {>See 
Night), 334, 

Scenes, London, 458. 

In London (morning), 459. 
(The Dials), 459. 

Singer, the, 460. 

Crooked {See Neighborhood), 
328, 329. 

A repulsive neighborhood, 
457. 

(See New York), 331. 
Stbong — Dr., the schoolmaster, 76. 
Study— Of the alphabet, 11, 12. 

(See "Education" and 
"School"), 168. 
Stetvee— A type of misdirected 
ability, 5. 

(See Bank), 35, 76. 

His florid face, 179. 
St. Louis— The houses of, 236. 
St. Peteb's — Kome, 407. 
Subjects— For dissection, 298. 

For sermons, 466. 
Sublime Intelligence — The power 

of, 466. 
SuBPCENA — Sam Weller receives, 

466. 
StTBUEB — A London, 466. 

Of a city, 224. 
Success— A crime, 467. 

Constancy the secret of, 467. 
Suicide— Of Jonas, 320. 

Excuse for, 467. 

Apartment of a, 21. 

(See Mantalini), 297. 
Suit at Law, 126. 
SxjMMEK — An evening in, 173. 

Nature in August, 26. 

A factory town in, 183. 

Quiet, in London, 467. 

468. 

August scenery, 468. 

A legal vacation, 468. 

Scenery, and sentiment, 469. 

Vacation, of Courts, 469. 

Weather, 469. 
Sun, 470. 

A pimctual servant, 470. 

In the city, 471. 

Its influence on Bagstock, 471. 

The summer's, 471. 
Sunshine, 471. 

In church windows, 103. 
Sunbise — Its associations, 471. 

In prison, 374. 
Sunset— An autumn, 174. 

A summer, 472. 

In a cathedral, 472. 

472. 

Its effect on pictures, 472. 

On the Mississippi, 472. 
BxraDATS- In London, 469. 

In childhood, 470. 

Evening, in London, 470. 

(See Religion), 396. 

Bells, associations of, 43. 

Summer, 173. 

Tranquillity of (See Content), 
117. 
SuBFACE— Of beauty, 39. 
SuBOEON— Dr. Slammer, 73. 

SUBQERY EXTRAOUDINARY, 357, 858. 

SuBLiNESs— (Miss La Creevy), 283. 
Surprises, 383, 474. 
Susan Nippee— Her sayings, 472. 
Suspicions — And inquisitiveness, 
253. 

Of lawyers, 267. 

A maxim of life, 474. 
Susquehanna— Crossing the, 474. 

BWAMP SCENEBY, 424. 



SwiVELLEB — Dick, description of, 76. 

Dick, music his solace, 197. 

Observations on dinner, 148. 

His melodramatic laugh, 269. 

Rooms of, 18, 20. 

As a correspondent, 541. 

Drunk, 162. 

The disappointment of, 279. 

His fight with Quilp, 193. 

Dick, and SaUy Brass, 460. 

Dick, his apology for drunk- 
enness, 460. 

His sweetheart, 461. 

Sickness of Dick, 461. 

The Marchioness as his nurse, 
462. 

Observations of Dick, 463. 

Dick soliloquises on his des- 
tiny, 463. 

On extra sleep, 463. 

Dick and the Marchioness, 
464, 465. 

On charitable missions, 310. 

Opinion of, 299. 
Sympathy, 474. 

Silent, 474. 

Influence of, 474. 

Of children, 92. 

(See Affliction), 10. 

The hand of, 217. 

True, 218. 



Table, 296. 

The furniture of a, 223. 

Beer, of acoustics (See Song), 
450. 
Taokleton, 76. 

The child-hater, 94. 

Opinion of woman, 532. 
Talent and Capital, 305. 
Tangle— Mr., 127. 
Tapley— Mark, wants misfortune, 
288. 

His opinion of Americans, 15. 

289. 

Aboard ship, 439. 

As a verb, 498. 

(See Mark Tapley.) 
Tappertit— Simon, 76. 

Life a burden to, 270. 

His legs, 269. 
Taetae— Mr., apartments of, 17. 
Tab-water, 298. 

Taste — Viewed from Gradgrind's 
standpoint, 474. 

And habits, social, 475. 

Versus fact, 186. 

(See Life, Pancks' philosophy), 
273. 
Tavern— (iSec Weather), 507. 

Room in a, 21. 

(See Inn), 247. 
Taxes— True as, 37. 
Tea— A termagant at, 476. 

Drinking, a pastoral, at Mrs. 
Weller's, 475. 

Drinking, a serious, 476. 

Drinker, Mr. Venus as a, 476. 
Teacher in Love, 423. 
Teaes, 476. 

Sam Weller's opinion of, 476. 

Of disappointment, 476. 

Pecksnilflan, 477. 

The mist of, 477. 

Hydraulic, 477. 

A remedy, 477. 

Not the only proofs of dis- 
tress, 477. 

Of Job Trotter, 182, 477, 614. 

Valuable, 477. 

Of Miggs, 477. 

And prismatic colors, 61. 

Useless, 396. 

Drop, a, 477. 
Teeth— Cutting. 31. 

(Sfie Features), 192. 

The attracti<»M of, 477. 

ChatttTiiiir. 477. 
Tblbgraph Wires, 478. 
Tellson's Bank, 35. 
Temper- Of Pirkwlck, 11. 

Mrs. Joe Gargery's, 478. 

The thermoiiH'ter of Mrs. 
Varden'e, 478. 



Temper— And devotion, 478. 
Temptation— A teacber, 478. 
Tenderness- (/See Baby, Dot's), 32. 

Of Tim Linkinwater, 252. 
Tenement House, 232. 
Ten-Pens— (-See New York), 331 
Terror- A look of, 182. 
Tetterby, 296 

Baby of, 31, 32. 
Adolphus (Newsboy), 330. 
Thames— At night (See Night), aS4. 
Thanks —From the heart's mint, 

211. 
Theatre— Maggy's idea of a, 478. 
Det'erted, 478. 
An old, 479. 

Firi«t impression of a, 479. 
(See Shakppeare^, 434. 
(See Stage), 453. 
Theft — Ar. efliporium of, 479. 
Theodosius Butler — A type of 

conceit, 116. 
Thief— -'Stop," 479. 
Literary, 363. 
The river, 404. 
Thin Man, 383. 
This and That— Success of a com- 

bination, 479. 
Thought— Its chance revelations 
218. 
245, 480. 

Capt. Cuttle in, 215. 
Depressing, 479. 
A jumble of, 479. 
A haunting topic of, 480. 
Throat— A thoroughfare, 209. 
Throng— A city, 130. 
Thunder Storm, 457. 
Tibbs- Mr. and Mrs., 77. 

Mrs., as a housekeeper, 238. 
Tide— Barkis went out with the, 37 

High, 480. 
TiGG — Montague, 77. 

His idea of life, 273. 
The financier, 77. 
Comments on debt, 206. 
Tilly Slowboy— Her legs a calen- 
dar, 269. 
85, 
Time— During love, 280. 
Its changes, 87, 481. 
The river of, 272. 
292, 481. 

Its progress, 481. 
Is money, 481. 
A slippery animal, 481. 
Factory of, 481. 
And the havoc of suffering, 

481. 
A gentle parent, 481. 
Timber-yard. 481. 
Tim Linkinwater— (-See '-Clerk"), 
108. 
(See " City Square "), 106. 
Tobacco-chewing — In America, 

177, 481. 
Tobacco— Its use in America, 482. 
(See Pipe), 3ii3. 
Sign, 442. 445. 446. 
Toby Veck— The porter, 369. 
His dinner, 147. 
And the belle, 45. 
Todgers, Mrs.— Iler boarding- 
house, 49, 50. 
Scene from her housetop, 

2;J7. 
Serenade at, 323. 
On gravy, 218. 

(See Ancient Neighborhood), 
8-28. 
Toilette- A boy's, 482. 

Of MissTippine, 483. 
(See Dress). 157. 
Toleration. 483. 
To Let— Apartments, 20. 
Toll, 310. 

Tom-all-Alonb's, 829. 
{Sef Outcast), 350. 
Tom Pinch- His ride with the 
coachman, 113. 
His piuii'iico, 146. 
Tom Smart's Vision, 60. 
Tomb— The silent (Scf Favor), 191. 

Touts on tlie silent. 117. 
Tombstones— A pet rilled jjrove oU 
(Hi. 



TOMBSTONES 


662 


WEAIiTH 


Tombstones, 483. 


TuPMAN-(5'e€ Pickwick), 360. 


Vines— Of Piacenza, 499. 


ToMBATisM— (/^ee Rhenmatism), 401. 


" Turning up," 302. 


VioatJAiiS — Quarrelling with one's, 


Tongue— Of Sampson Brass (See 


TuRVEYDROP— The prince of deport- 


499. 


Compliments), 115. 


ment, 78. 


ViooB— Personal (See Mr. Gteorge), 


TooDLE— A family reunion, 225. 


On deportment, 144. 


67. 


Mr. 78. 


I'wT.ivTT.ow- (.See Fashionable Peo- 


Of character (^ee Laugh), 259. 


Toots— His unrequited love, 275, 


ple), 188. 


Vn.T.AGE— The poor, 499. 


276. 


Twilight, 491, 492. 


Fair, a, 187. 


On the world, 539. 


Wind at, 29. 


Virginia Experiences in a Coach, 


Mrs., a mother, 818. 


In summer, 491. 


111. 


Opinion of woman, 531. 


Seasons, shadows, and as- 


VrBTXTEs- And vices, of weak men. 


A constant visitor, 500. 


sociations, 492. 


499. 


And Miss Florence, 191. 


A winter, 492. 


In excess (See Vice), 499. 


And Captain Cuttle, 58. 


Evening scenes, 492. 


Snagsby as an enemy to, 110. 


Mr., 78. 


Twist— OUver, the hunger of, 242. 


Visits— Fashionable, 188. 


Opinion of his wife, 524. 


Tyranny— Domestic, 493. 


Visitors — The cards of, 58. 


His contrition, 117. 




Constant (Toots). 500. 


His feelinsrs, 198. 


II. 


Vision— Of Tom Smart, 60. 


Bashfulness of. 37. 




Psychological experiences of. 


Acquaintance a charity to, 7. 


Umbrella— (,See Omnibus), 348. 


499. 


ToRTXJKES— Of the Inquisition, 250. 


Uncle— Little Dorrit's, 65, 66. 


Voice— Of the beUs, 45. 


ToTTLE, Watkins— A bachclor, 78. 


Uncommercial Traveller, 490. 


Hard and dry (See Face), 182. 


Tourists— English. 483. 


Uncongeniality — In marriage, 493. 


Of the alarm-beU, 44. 


Town— A factory, 183, 484. 


Undertaker— The, 493. 


(See Laugh of Boythorn), 259. 


Approach to a manufacturing, 


Mr. Mould, the, 494. 


The stm, small, of the heart. 


485. 


at home, 494. 


227. 


A lazy, 485. 


Experiences of an, 494. 


Of Bagnet, 61. 


And country scenery — Jour- 


Shop of the, 495. 


Of the waves, 428. 


ney of Little Nell, 483. 


Sowerberry, the, 75. 


Of a clock, 111. 


Pickwick's description of a, 


Lawyers Like, 267. 


Its expressions, 500. 


485. 


289. 


Little Dorrit's blessing, 500. 


Tox— Miss, her dress, 157. 


HiS philosophy, 201. 


A faint, 500. 


The home of, 222, 226. 


(See Funeral of Mrs. Joe Gar- 


A disagreeable, 500. 


Toys— Christmas, 95. 


gery; Mould, etc.). 


And eyes, of Mrs. Pardiggle, 


ToY-MAKKR— His home, 486. 


Unfortunate — Happiness of the. 


500. 


TozER— (^ee Education), 169. 


217. 


A bass, 500. 


Trades— Eccentricity of, 486. 


Unhappiness — Of caged birds, 47. 


A buttoned-up, 500. 


Tragedia>-— " Feeling a part," 7. 


Unities— Dramatic, 495. 


Not of Toby, 500. 


Traits— Of birds, 47. 


Unsocial — Dinner, an, 151. 


Sam Weller's signals, 500. 


Training— Of children, 91. 


Travellers, 489. 


Like a hurricane, 500. 


Traddles— His hair, 216. 


Ups and Downs— Philosophy of Plor- 


501. 


At school, 416. 


nish, 495. 


A muffled, 501. 


Transcendentalism — In America, 


Usurer— (.S'ee Arthur Gride), 68. 


A sharp, 501. 


486. 


Newman Noggs' opinion of 


Of an old friend, 501. 


Travel — The attractions of high- 


Ralph Nickleby, 495. 


Oppressed, 501. 


way, 487. 


Ralph Nickleby, the, 496. 


Volubility — (^ee CompUments), 


(See Tourists), 483. 


Avarice of, 29. 


115. 


(See Obstructions), 339. 


The home of Arthur Gride, 


Of Mrs. Hominy, 28. 


(See Omnibus), 348. 


204. 




(See Sairey Gamp), 412. 


Utilitarian (See Practical Men). 


\r. 


(See Restaurant), 397. 


(See Opportunities), 348. 




(See Steamer), 454. 


Unwelcome Truth, 491. 


Wakefulness, 30. 


Scenes of, 487. 




WAITER-Traits of the, 501. 


Associations of, 488. 


V. 


Habits of the, 502. 


Experiences of, 488. 




His misfortunes, 503. 


Preparations for, 488. 


Vacation, 421. 


Wrongs of a, 503. 


Traveller- The home of, 220. 


Legal, 468, 469. 


A dignified, 503. 


Bagstock as a, 489. 


Vagabond— A, 78. 


The chief butler, 503. 


The uncommercial, 490. 


(,See Vagrant), 78. 


The model, 503. 


Travellers— Unsociable, 489. 


" Not of the mean sort," 496. 


Characteristics of, 603. 


EngUshmen, as, 173. 


Vagrant— (.S'ee Jingle), 69. 


Waiting— Misery of, 503. 


City^vards, 105. 


(See Dismal Jemmy), 65. 


Walk— An egotistic, 504. 


Travelling— By twilight, 489. 


"Jo," 52. 


A fast, 504. 


In imagination, 489. 


(See Vagabond), 78. 


A dignified, 504. 


The miseries of coach, 113. 


Boy, 62. 


Walking — Better than riding, 504. 


Treadmill — Brass condemned to 


Vagrants- (.S'ee Refinement), 394. 


Walls— Maps bursting from, 232. 


the, 379. 


Vagrancy— In childhood, 91. 


Wandering Jew — Of Joe Millerism, 


Trees, 490. 


Valentine— Sam Weller's, 496. 


77. 


Dead American, 491. 


Valet— Bagstock's native, 497. 


Washington, 506. 


In a city, 491. 


Vanity— Human (.S'ee Old Age), 343. 


Americans in, 13. 


Of Java, a shelter for lies, 179. 


Varden— Mrs., as a Christian, 94. 


Warhtngton Irving— At the White 


Trtat. in Court — (See Court), 120, 


Mrs., 525. 


House, 505. 


125. 


Gabriel, the home of, 223. 


Watch, 291. 


Of a convict, 123. 


Workshop of, 538. 


A model, 505. 


Trifles— The power of, 217. 


Mrs., her family tactics, 186. 


Of Sol Gills, 505. 


Triumph— Of faith, 59. 


Vauxhall Gardens, 497. 


Of Captain Cnttle, 505. 


In argument, a, 177. 


Veck— Toby, in storm, 509. 


Like an anchor, 505. 


Trotter— Job, his tears, 477. 


Vegetables — Language of love, 498. 


Water. 298, 506. 


Job, the face of, 182. 


Courtship of Mrs. Nickleby, 


Making a Sunday tune, 205. 


Trotwood— Betsey,and Mrs. Crupp, 


281. 


Expression of (See Fountain), 


46. 


Veneerings — The (See Dinner- 


199. 


294, 296. 


party), 150. 


In the mountains, 318. 


Troubles— Of workingmen, 537. 


The, 188. 


Pipes, 505. 


Skimpole on taking, 491. 


Venice— A dream of, 498. 


Waterbrook, Mb. and Mrs.- And 


Trumpet Notes— Not always true. 


Venus— On anatomy, 15. 


company, 80. 


491. 


As a tea-drinker, 476. 


Watering-place — Pickwick at 


Truth— Its sacredness, 491. 


Verb— Mark Tapley as a, 498. 


Bath, 506. 


491. 


Verona, 499. 


Waves- The mysterv of the, 136. 


Not always welcome, 491. 


'« Veskits "—For heathen, 310. 


The mystery of the (See Death 


And falsehood, 491. 


Vexation— A cheap commodity, 499. 


of Youth), 143. 


Tugqs— Cymon, in love, 276. 


Vholes— The lawyer, 79, 264. 


Waxwork— Mrs. Jarley's, 506. 


Tuggser— The, 78. 


Vice — Its influence on youth, 52. 


Weaknbss— Human, 506. 


TuLKiNGHOiiN— His facc and man- 


Virtue in excess, 499. 


" Weal Pie ''—(See Weller), 514. 


ner, 180. 


Vices— Of society, 446. 


Wealth— Ignorant men of, 506 
Its influence, 210. 


The lawj-er, 263. 


Kindred, 499. 



A 



WEALTH 

Wealth— Conceit, intol«rance, and 
ignorance of Podenap, 507. 
World's trii)ute to, 507. 
The rich man, 507. 
Without station. 507. 
Weather— Stormy ; The Maypole, 
507. 
The snow, 508. 
Wintry, 508. 
Frosty, 508. 
A November fog, 508. 
Cold, 509. 
Beautiful, 509. 
Toby Veck in stormy, 509. 
A snow storm, 509. 
Dismal. 509, 

Suggestive of roast pig, 510. 
Bainy, 510. 
Foggy, 610. 
Misty, 510. 
Mournful, 510. 

And muffins (Mr. Tugby's 
opinion), 510. 
Wedding — Eegrets of a, 510. 

Christening, and Funeral, 
Pleasant Kiderhood's views 
of a, 510. 
294. 
Weeds— Mrs. Heep's, 524. 
Wego — Silas, description of, 239, 
240. 
As an anatomical subject, 15. 
Reading, 391. 
His insolence, 371. 
Well— (5'ee Grave-digger), 212. 
Welleb — Sam, personal appear- 
ance of, 511. 
As boots, 611. 
Engaged by Pickwick, 512. 
Recognizes the old 'un, 512. 
And the new birth of Mrs. W., 

512. 
Sam, his observations, 512. 
As a dutiful son, 612. 
On the marriage of his father, 

513. 
Sam, receives subpoena, 466. 
Sam, and Job Trotter, 613. 
A flow of ideas, 245. 
And the laundress, 260. 
Mrs., death of, 139. 
296, 297. 

Samuel as a witness, 122. 
Sam (Wery good imitation, 

etc.), 207. 
Sam on law terms, 266. 
Advice to his father, 620. 
Sam in prison, 519. 
Sam, his valentine, 496. 
His idea of an alibi, 11. 
His philosophy of death, 141. 
On legacies, 2G8. 
Described, 511. 
In prison for debt, 518. 
Sam, his opinion of tears, 476. 
Sam at home, 617. 
On clerical shepherds, 244. 
Sam, on principle, 374. 
Sam, on oysters, 371. 
Sam, on post-boys and don- 
keys, 370. 
Sam, the sentinel, 434. 
On widows, 524. 
Sam, and Job Trotter, 513. 
(Tears), 614. 
As a philosopher, 514. 
Sam's opinion of " weal pie," 

514. 
Sam, and the Sawbones, 514. 
On social proprieties, 515. 
Among the fashionable foot- 
men, 515. 
Sam at a footman's " swarry," 

515. 
Sam and the fat boy, 616. 
His compliments, 617. 
At home, 517. 
Sam, and his mother-in-law, 

617. 
Sam and Rev. Mr. Stigging, 

618. 
Imprisoned for debt, 518. 
Sam and his father, 620. 
Father and son, 620. 
Mrs., and Mf. Stiggina, 620. 



WOMEN 



Weller— Mr., and the gentle Shep- 
herd, 520. 
The eider drives Mr. Stlggins, 

The elder on married life, 521. 

" at dinner, 621. 
His opinions of widows, 621. 
The elder, in a quandary, 621. 
Personal appearance of the 

elder, 522. 
Sam in mischief, 426. 
At an election, 170. 
Sam, his story, 153. 
Sam, apologises for his hat. 

218. 
Sam and Job Trotter. 182. 
Mr., on judges of himian na- 
ture, 254. 
His remedy for the gout, 210. 
Sam, «'an out an outer," 39. 
His opinion of coaches, 113. 
Sam, on feelings, 192. 
Sam, on flannel and straight 
veskits, 310. 
Wemmick— Mr., 79, 

His embrace of Miss Skiffins, 

172. 
His opinion of a friendly act, 

200. ^ 

266. 
Westebn Pioneer, 362. 
Westminster Abbey— The dead of. 

135. 
Whiskebs— Peachy cheek of Fledge- 
by, 523. 
A rainbow in, 181. 
Shaving of Mr. Bailey's, 523. 
Whisper- A double-barrelled, 623. 
Whispering — Effect of, 523. 
Whist— Pickwi<;k at, 523. 

524, 
White House- At Washington, 505. 
WiCKAM— (5ee Nurse), 337. 
Widow — Weller's opinion on, 621. 
296. 

Medusa-like glaring petrifac- 
tion, 179. 
A cure for the gout, 210. 
Her weeds (Mrs. Heep), 624. 
Opinion of WeUer the elder, 
524. 
Width and Wisdom — Weller's 

maxim, 524. 
Wife— Toots' opinion of his, 624. 
Of Mr. Pott, 206. 
Duties to a husband, 624. 
A solemn, 524. 
A bad-tempered, 625. 
(Mrs. Varden), 625. 
Of Snagsby, 250. 
Weller's loss of his, 141. 
An imhappy, 624. 
Loss of a, 524. 
Wig — Life in a {See Innocent), 250. 
Wiglomeration of Law, 128. 
Will— A contested {See Courts), 
126-7. 
(See Funeral, the request of, 

etc.), 201. 
Won't and can't, 625. 
Depositary of human pas- 
sions, 625. 
Making of a, 626. 
Mr. Boflto's "tight," 626. 
Of Charles Dickens, 201. 
WiLFER— Mrs., her dress, 159. 

Reginald, the conventional 

cherub, 79. 
Mrs., the frosty, 630. 
WiLKiNS— Samuel, 80. 
WiLLET— John, the landlord, 257. 
The oozing of his ideas, 246. 
Argument a gift, etc, 22. 
Mr., his face and laugh, 180. 
William— Mr. and Mrs,, 80. 
Wind— Change of, 366. 

Leaves, clouds, autumn, 174. 

Charged with aroma, 23. 

At twUlght, 29. 

And Are {See Fire), 196. 

A winter, 626. 

And snow, 626. 

The east, of Mr. Jarndyoe, 

626. 
A gale of, 626. 



Wind— Whistling of the, 527. 

Storm, at night, 527. 

A solemn sound, 527. 

An easterly in London, 527. 

A penetrating, 527. 

An angry, 527. 

The west, 528. 

Around a church, 528. 
Windows— Of the heart, and shut- 
ters, 219. 
WmE— (6'ee Sleep), 444. 

Not wine, but salmon (Set 
Drunkenness), 162. 

Pickwick after, 152. 

Aroma of, 2:3. 

The broken cask, 528. 

Journey of a bottle of, 529. 

Old, 529. 
Wink— (^ee "Eye;" its expres- 
sion), 179. 

530. 

A slow, 530. 
Winking — A vent, 61. 
Winkle— On horseback, 228. 

As a sportsman, 452. 

In Court, 124. 
Winter— (/See Frost), 201. 

Day, a, 530. 

A ride in, 530. 
Wisdom— Age of {See Revolution), 

Wit— And money, 530. 

A social, 80. 
Witness— Winkle an a, 124. 

Evidence of, 173. 

Examination of Sam Weller. 
122. 
WoLP— His opinion of Shakspeare. 

434. 
Woman — Deal lightly with her 
faults, 530. 

Her perceptions, 530, 

Her influence, 280. 

A stately, 530. 

The frosty Mrs. Wilfer, 530, 

A quarrelsome, 530, 

Madame Delarge, the tigress, 
531. 

An angelic, 531. 

An old bundle of clothes, 531. 

A handsome, 531. 

A brave and tender, 531. 

Toots' opinion of, 531. 

An old, 531. 

Influence of a true, 532. 

A betrothed, 532. 

Tackleton's opinion of, 532. 

A delicate, 5;«, 

An enraj,'ed, 532, 

A merciful (See Todgers), 60. 

A true {See Devotion of Little 
Dorrit), 146, 

A lucifer {See Spinster), 462. 

A forcible {See Grammar), 211. 

An ugly old, 192. 

A knitting, 256. 

Dress of an artificial, 169. 

As a lawyer {See Sally Brass), 
264. 

A little, 274. 

A wicked, 210. 

A she devil, 533. 

An unselfish, Miss Press, 633. 

An edge tool (Rosa Dartle). 
633. 

A sharp (Rosa Dartle), 633. 

An artificial, 533. 

Of fashion, paralyzed, 634. 

Of fashion, 634. 

Sympathy for a fallen, 634. 

Instincts and prejudices of, 
634. 

Influence of a good, 634, 

Her rovcngti on dross, 634. 

Character of Mrs. l^agnet, 634. 

Mrs. Bagnet as a true, 636. 

Hor dovotion. 535, 

Her bettor nature, 638. 

Her art at home, 636. 
WoMEN-Falntinj;, 539. 

As drlvorH. 632. 

Pretty, 6.S2. 
Wolf-Mkc. 633. 

Elderly, MS. 

Rights of. 63L 



WOMEN 


664 


YOUTH 


Women— (-S'e« Betsey Trotwood), 46. 


WoRia>— The material and moral,538 


WBtTiNG— Of Joe Gargery, 641, 


(See Female Chaxacters), 83. 


Its hollowness, 539. 


Preparations for, 541. 


Like adverbs (^ee Dingwall), 


Opinion of the, 539. 


Of a beginner, 541. 


65. 


Toots' idea of the, 539. 


A letter, 541. 


Outcast, 351. 


Its idea of bankruptcy, 36. 


WBirmo-DESK— A spattered, 541. 


American, U. 


Of fashion ; its management, 




Opinion of husbands, 243. 


189. "" 


Y. 


Inmates of a hospital, 230. 


The social, 190. 




Beformers, 394. 


Its credulity and incredulity, 


Yard— Timber, 481. 


The knitting (^ee Bevolution), 


193. 


Yawn— An unfinished, 542. 


401. 


Its travellers (See Destiny), 


YBARr-The last stroke of the belL 


{See " Florence "), 275. 


145. 


45. 


(See DoUy Varden), 83. 


Its idea of duty, 165. 


New, 542. 


The world's homage to, 219. 


Wounds— Of affection, 10. 


The old and new, 542. 


Inquisitive, 535. 


Wken, Jbnnt— Her memory of 


Years— Death of, 542. 


WoPSLE's Reading, 391. 


flowers and angels'^ 197. 


The declining of life, 272. 


WOKD— Of honor, 227. 


The funeral of "the poor 


Yes— Its expression, 543. 


The last a new injury, 536. 


boy," 203. 


Young— The death of the, 140, 


Words, 536. 


Write— Kit learning to, 541. 
Writer— Public, 542. 


144. 


And high sounding phrases. 


Youth— Its early experience in 
church, 102. 


536. 


The begging letter, 43. 


Versus oaths, 536. 


A smeary, 540. 


And age, a contrast, 90. 


Parade of, 536. 


Writino— Short-hand, 539, 540. 


The death of Paul Dombey, 


To be economized, 536. 


Attempts of ignorance, 540. 
An ecstasy of pen and ink, 


143. 
Depraved, 543. \ 4 
Depravity of, 543. 


In earnest, 536. 


Their influence, 536. 


540. 


WOEKiNGMEN— Of England, 184, 537. 


Efforts of Sam Weller, 540. 


(See Girlhood). , -' ^ 


Troubles of, 537. 


•'Wery large" (See Death of 


(-See Boy), 52. .' 


Working People, 536. 


Jo), 141. 


(-S-ee Child, etc.), 88, 91. 
A precAious, 261. ♦, 


Workshop— Gabriel Varden's, 638. 


541. 


WOBIJ>— The, 538. 


Dick Swiveller as a corre- 


The influence of ansteritv 


A battlefield, 638. 


spondent, 541. 


npdn,«7. 



LB My '06 



^-^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 

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